Electric Mid&Hi Fired Ceramics
Potters & Sculptors - Making Rock from Mud
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Steven Showalter
- Male
- Saint Paul, MN
- United States
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Steven Showalter's Page
Profile Information
- What is your experience with ceramics in general. (Long answer encouraged)
- professional
- What is your current involvement with electric fired ceramics? (long answer encouraged)
- I have been a high school pottery/adult ed. teacher and professional potter for the past 10yrs. I have developed hundreds of cone 6 glaze recipes and constantly test glazes both at my home studio and my high school studio. I fire in 4 different types of kilns ranging from a 20cf front loading olympic to a small 7cf skutt. I also fire in a 70cf cross-draft wood kiln, but my involvement on this website will be about the cone 6 electric work.
- All our content is viewable by the public. Why do you want to be a member, when you can already see everything as a non-member?
- It is always fun to network with others that are working with cone 6 pottery. I am a pottery junkie and my wife can only listen to so much talk about new glazes I have developed.
- Where do you work on your ceramics projects?
- home studio
- Do you have your own, or participate in other ceramics Websites:
- http://www.stevenshowalter.com
- How did you find this network?
- search engine
Steven Showalter's Photos
Videos
Use These Links to Support Us
Low cost flat lapping disc can be used on you potters wheel if you, drill bat pin holes in it, and provide a trickle of water to cool it. At amazon.com, 120 grit for aggressive material removal. Click the image to purchase
Members have had great things to say about John Britt's new book, Mid-Range Glazes. Click the image to buy from Amazon.com
Purchase Glazes Cone 6 by Michael Bailey, The Potters Book of Glaze Recipes by Emmanuel Cooper, or Making Marks by Robin Hopper, all available at amazon.com. Mastering Cone 6 Glazes by John Hesselberth & Ron Roy is now out of print.
Harbor Freight is a great place to find unbeatable prices for better HVLP spray guns with stainless steel parts and serviceable economy models, as well as detail guns, all tested by our members for spraying glazes, as well as compressors to power the guns. As yet no one has tested and commented on the remarkably inexpensive air brushes at harbor freight.
The critter siphon gun is a spray alternative that is well liked by some of our members, and is available at amazon.
Amazon is also a competitive source for photo light tents for shooting professional quality pictures of your work. They also have the EZ Cube brand favored by several of our members. You might also want to purchase the book Photographing Arts, Crafts and Collectibles . . .
If you are up to creating videos of your work or techniques you might want to invest in a flip video camera
Following are a few scales useful for potters. Ohaus Triple Pro Mechanical Triple Beam Balance, 2610g x 0.1g, with Tare $169.00
And finally a low cost clone of the OHaus. The Adam Equipment TBB2610T Triple Beam Mechanical Balance With Tare Beam $99.62
ebay is a great alternative for many tools and the equipment used in the ceramics studio - kilns, wheels, extruders, slab rollers are often listed there both new and used.
Tips for Members
If you just want to spout off, it is best accomplished as a blog posting. If you want to get more guidance and ideas from other members, ask a question as a new discussion topic. In the upper right corner of the lists for both types of posting, you will find an "+Add " button. Clicking it will open an editor where you create your posting. 4/16/2014
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Beloved,
I am Mrs. Angela from the United States but live in France. I saw your profile and I decided to contact you immediately. Can you get back to me on my email (anglbria01@gmail.com) for full details
Be blessed.
steve - you mentioned in a message to the group of june 15 the name of a glaze CHS. could be more specif about this glaze. is it commercial or do you have the recipe and if so, is it okay to make public. i'd love to see and try it.
thanks
eleanor a.
It would be a wonderful feeling to be have your knowledge, to teach so many and to share with others a passion for pottery. I have remarried and have a one year old, but when my two teenage daughters were little, I used to travel around to the schools to teach kindergarten children about pottery. Just to see the lovely time that my children had playing with clay gave me the idea to share that with other little ones. To see their little faces light up was very rewarding. I still have all the things that my girls made over the years. My little treasures. I had a break from pottery for about 5 years due to other commitments, but am back now and wonder how i ever could have stopped. I love it and I am constantly thinking about all the things I want to do within the craft that I have not tried yet. I am waiting for my electric kiln to be fixed so I can start testing all the cone 6 glazes that I have mixed. This site has been an inspiration.
I built myself a catenary arch woodkiln in 2001 from bricks I got for free after much begging at my local brickworks (from an old brick kiln). I only fired it about 5 times before I moved interstate. During that time I was only just starting to get to know my kiln. It started off with a bourry box type firebox with a catenary arch chamber but then I was not getting up to temp which could be due to a few diff reasons, but ended up changing the firebox to an arch too and increased the chimney size etc. I had no help firing the kiln each time and collected, split all the wood. My friends thought I was insane. Only another potter would understand, ha, ha.
Keep up the good work and enjoy your break.
Welcome Steven! Magnificent pieces on your Website. I particularly liked the warm colored vases that were possibly carbon trap shino? I had to insert www. into the link you provided to be able to connect to your Website.