Recently I’ve been preparing to mix my own glazes. I started stockpiling chemicals and raw materials last summer when a Laguna distributor in Michigan had a sale. Over Christmas I got a few books about glazes including Mastering Cone 6 Glazes and The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes. I looked through the recipes in these books and some that I found on the internet and drew up a list of raw materials that I needed to start testing recipes. Then I did some price checking for some online clay and chemical suppliers. (The pottery supply search helped!) [Read more…]
New Ceramic Supplies
I love Spring Break! I recently did some internet shopping at Clay-King.com and Axner.com. Both are good places to get ceramic and pottery supplies.
coyote and amaco glazes
Clay King was having a pretty good sale on glazes. I ordered a few of my favorites (Coyote: Red Gold and Leopard Shino) and a few new colors to test (Coyote: Espresso Bean and Saturated Iron and Amaco: Frosted Turquoise and Iron Lustre). I also ordered 10 lbs. of Pam’s Blue dry powder (by Coyote). Finally! As soon as I mix up the Pam’s Blue I will be able to dip and pour instead of brushing glaze onto every… single… piece… This should drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to glaze a load of bisque ware. I guess at first there will be a lot of blue mugs and bowls but if everything goes smoothly I hope to order some more glazes in dry powder form and mix up some large quantities.
hydrometer, sieve, glaze chemicals, kiln posts
Speaking of mixing glazes… I needed a few more items to get the job done. Axner had some pretty good prices on most of the stuff I needed so I ordered a hydrometer, sieve, kiln posts, and some other dry chemicals. I hope to mix some of my own glazes in the future so I’m starting a small collection of dry chemicals.
In other not-very-exciting news I installed a more permanent light above my wheel and made a small shelf behind the wheel where I can put freshly thrown pots to dry.
In the somewhat-exciting department I have a few mugs and bowls drying on the shelf. I just threw a few more before track practice today which need handles but I’ll try to put up some pictures before the bisque fire. I’m trying a different kind of clay so I’m anxious to see how it fires.
Pottery Supplies and the End Of Summer
Pottery Supplies
I love pottery supply yard sales! I made a trip up to Michigan on Thursday to see my family and check out a yard sale at Crossroads Pottery. They didn’t have the kiln shelf that I needed and I didn’t get all the posts that I wanted but I got a lot of new stuff to experiment with. I picked up some Laguna clay and a few random dry powders. I also got a decent scale ($3!) to replace the cheap plastic Walmart kitchen scale which was probably $5.
Bad news: this is officially my last day of summer break. Good news: The kiln is firing as I’m typing this. [Read more…]