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  2. Hi all, Second time posting here and I’m hoping you can help! Hopefully this is the right place to be for a troubleshooting question like this. Im currently working from a recipe for Val Cushing’s Cone 6 Porcelain Slip. grolleg: 15% tile 6: 15% Epk: 3% om4: 10% flint: 25% neph sy: 30% gerstley borate: 2% —————————— Sodium silicate: .0028% calgon: .0005% When I mixed this before, as now, I subbed the deflocculants with Darvan. I mixed it successfully then, but I’m currently have difficulty. I know that darvan generally subs for sodium silicate at 2-1, so bearing that in mind, that’s where I started. I kept adding darvan in small 5g increments up to 100g in a 10000g recipe. That seems like far too much, but maybe I’m wrong? I feel like I’m on the other side of that deflocculation bell curve some how and missed my mark. Every time I come back to the studio the slip is gelled thick but never settled and never develops a skin. When I’ve added more darvan, the slip temporarily thins, but seems to rebound to being too thick the next day. Can the casting process indicate overdeflocculation? If so, in what ways? What should I be looking out for other than settling and a skin in my bucket? Can anyone offer any advice on this recipe or deflocculants? I’ve been doing some hard research and testing and can’t nail it down. My current gravity is measuring at 1.71, so I’m hesitant to add more water, since according to some other online sources I should be aiming between 1.7 and 1.8. I’m wondering if I should throw caution to the wind and say “this slip just needs more water than most”. Ive mixed this slip before with great success two years ago. I have no clue what I did right then. Dumb luck haha. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
  3. Sorry for a not feel good reply but Is there an infinite supply of suitable clay into the future. It's not all about the $ all the time is it? Take a visit to where your clay is sourced. Surely as individuals we can get rid of the throw away buy new because we can mentality. Go look at your footprint. Think of your kids and their kids and so on. No apologies just my thoughts. Try to source another employee with the skills you are losing. The fact you are asking the question on a forum can reinforce flawed concepts sometime.
  4. You want to final fire all clays to their mature temperature. With raku and saggar firings being the exception. If you glazed and fired to cone 06 and your clay is supposed to fire to cone 10, it will be extremely fragile, will leak fluids, and you may run into glaze fit issues.
  5. I just had a successful cone 04 bisque fire with porcelain clay. I have cone 9/10 glaze that I will use in the next steps. Question: what benefit do I get by glazing and firing to cone 10 as opposed to just using low fire glazes and firing this porcelain bisque to cone 06? Do I get a better product at a higher temp?
  6. Perfect! I sent the info along to the gallery manager, much appreciated. The only hurdle I can see is getting vendors to print the barcoded price stickers but I'll let the gallery figure that one out. I think the worst case scenario is the gallery prints them off for vendors who can't do it themselves, which should be doable.
  7. Yesterday
  8. I put down a layer of wax, scratch my initials through the wax with a needle tool, fill them in with underglaze, and wipe off the excess.
  9. That's probably a custom made extruder, and it's much better for extruding those small coils than a typical wall mount would be. However it would not be good for extruding much else. For one, it's terribly slow. If I were to do something like that which requires a lot of force to move clay through a tiny hole, I'd modify a car jack. It would be a lot less effort than turning that screw. Notice how much force it takes for him to turn it.
  10. I don't do any recycling at my studio. It's not worth the time and money. Lots of full time potters do not recycle, because their time is better spent making pots or doing other things related to running their business. Do not feel guilty about it. If you can donate it to someone who can use it, then do. But if not, it's just going to go back into the ground.
  11. kraythe, the video is of a worker in an industrial factory, not a private studio. the machinery you saw is not just a common extruder but an industrial machine made by an expert in heavy machinery. is is not available for you to buy.
  12. That's a good idea. I'll look into this, thanks!
  13. are you anywhere near a school that teaches ceramics? consider donating if you have to do NO WORK at all.
  14. I wasn't sure what topic to put this under, but it's about clay. Sorry if this is a repeat subject. Our company recycles 100% of our clay that isn't considered to be contaminated. We have a reclaim system that one of our employees manages, but this person is moving on from the company in a few days. They get the clay to the right consistency and run it through the pug to be reused. The problem we are running into is that it's actually cheaper and simpler to order new clay than it is to manage this process and inventory. So here's the crazy idea that might upset some folks. What if we got an extra disposal container and threw our scraps away? Im looking for pros and cons here. Here are some I've thought of so far: Pros: Cheaper, no (known) negative environmental effects, more reliable clay consistency, fewer defects as a result of foreign contaminates, simpler training for employees Cons: Someone worked hard to get this clay out of the ground, sounds bad in marketing, Another option is to donate Thoughts?
  15. So this talk from NCECA this spring, which I unfortunately missed in person, is now up on YouTube. The speaker worked at Etsy for a number of years, and is a former Etsy seller herself, and she gives a good insider breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of Etsy. It's a 45 minute video, but you can listen to it hands free while you work.
  16. @Min Square does sell a barcode reader it integrates with. It runs about $150 online, shipping time 5-7 days. I believe you need the stand and an Ipad as well, for another $200 for the stand and whatever the ipad runs for if you don't already own one. Barcode generation software is easy to come by, and I did find some of that for free. So not exorbitant, as far as till systems go, but it depends on wether it will be used again, or for how much volume as to wether or not something like that is cost effective.
  17. Probably not for free and/or cheap. Is there a budget you have to work with?
  18. I was wondering about barcoded labels, each vendor getting a supply of those with their pricepoints. Gallery scanning the codes at POS so the customer can get out the door quickly then scanned barcodes getting directly put in software file for each vendor. An app for smartphones that can scan barcodes maybe? Does a system like this exist?
  19. There is a fair bit of spam, we try and get it removed quickly. Members and guests can report a post if they think it's spam then the mods and admin get notified via a report of it. If it's obvious spam then we delete it straight away but there are times when a spammer tries to work the forum in a roundabout way so in those cases it sometimes takes a bit longer to verify that it's coming from a spammer.
  20. Used to dip the bottom of pots in wax when bone dry in the day, then scratch through the wax with a stylus to expose the bare clay, then use a sponge to water etch the surface. Negative, not raised, but still worked. Don't mess with it anymore. best, Pres
  21. If you're using Square, use it as the till system it is. Enter each artist's items, and enter their name under the "category" section. Then you can look up sales by category over your preferred time frame from the dashboard, and you can tell at a glance who sold what. It's a bit of data entry to get it set up, but it makes it way easier in the end. Someone familiar with Square should be able to set something like that up in an afternoon. Edited to add: We used this exact setup when we were working with about 60 different artists at a small one week show. The accounting at the end was very straightforward. added again: the only other software I have used myself would be designed for consignment situations, and it's more suitable for a permanent setup due to the initial software purchase and a bit of a steeper learning curve because it's got more functions you can get confused by.
  22. I have seen very little in the way of spam on the forums...most of the time what I have seen has been just a couple of times and usually on holiday weekends. Is this because there really isn't that much or that the Admin folks are doing such a great job of filtering before it gets to us ?
  23. Im the Plumber from Fallonator.com I interested in talking Reduction in electric kilns. send me a email
  24. Thanks OldLady, I should have been more clear in my post. Tags and inventory on a spreadsheet isn't a problem, it's the time the staff at the gallery need to spend getting the sales to the correct vendors that's the bottleneck.
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