Waterproofness

Sorry ... no work lately. I spent the last weekend cleaning up and organizing the studio, and this weekend waterproofing the area around my wheel. I used a patio deck coating and it turned out pretty damn good. I laid it on extra thick for durability. Now I'll be able to spray recklessly in order to clean up.

Soon I will begin work on a couple of very large lamps that I've been commisioned for. I've delayed too long on those, have to get to making them.

Also, I had lunch with my first and only ceramics instructor and he reminded me of a cone 6 base glaze formulation by a local, so I intend to try that out soon as well.

Spearmint and Licorice Tests

Here are the results from the last firing. I learned that a lot of the beauty from the previous round did come from the extra thick oatmeal. So, in the future, I think I will double dip the base glaze before applying the ash glaze. Each image is the base glaze with blue frasca, oatmeal frasca, field mouse brown frasca and spearmint frasca from left to right.

oatmeal



field mouse brown



licorice

The licorice tests are interesting to me. The ash glaze seems to have had the affect of fluxing the licorice in such a way that only very little glaze was left at the top of the pot. I've not yet decided if I actually like it.

I think I really like the spearmint quite a bit. I'm tempted to try another blue, perhaps using colourants from bright sky blue. Or, perhaps just adding some rutile to the regular frasca blue.

I'm not sure yet what I will try from here. Perhaps a different ash glaze recipe?

Spearmint Frasca

Today I mixed up a "Spearmint Frasca". That would be the base Frasca glaze with the Spearmint colourants as per Roy & Hesselberth. 4% Copper Carbonate and 6% Rutile. I added a bit too much copper carbonate though, an error reading the calculator. Not that big a deal I don't think.

I'm going to fire 12 test pots tomorrow, three flights of four pots. Each flight is either glazed with Oatmeal, Field Mouse Brown or Licorice, and each flight of four has an overdip of ash glaze. The ash glazes are Blue Frasca, Oatmeal Frasca, Field Mouse Brown Frasca, and Spearmint Frasca. I'm redoing the oatmeal tests because I thinned it out a bit. It was VERY thick in the first series of tests.

I'll post in two or three days how they turned out.

Oatmeal & Field Mouse Brown Ash Glaze

I did my second cone 6 ash glaze test fire yesterday. I tried the Frasca base glaze with colourant additions as per the Oatmeal and Field Mouse Brown glazes in Roy & Hesselberth. I think they turned out very well. In fact if I was English I would say I'm well chuffed. Not sure exactly what that means though.


From left to right:

• Oatmeal Frasca over Bone
• Field Mouse Brown Frasca over Bone
• Blue Frasca over Oatmeal
• Field Mouse Brown Frasca over Oatmeal
• Oatmeal Frasca over Oatmeal

I'm very happy with the Blue Frasca over Oatmeal. I think this combination is a winner.

It may seem a bit strange to try Oatmeal and Field Mouse Brown. They're quite similar in the colourants. In fact, they're identical save for a very small addition of cobalt carbonate in Field Mouse Brown. The results in these additions to the Frasca Ash Glaze are noticeable but, close enough that I would probably just save the cobalt carbonate and go with Oatmeal. The reason I did both though is because I think both of these glazes are amazing.

There is a caveat though, the Oatmeal under the ash glazes was applied quite thick. I'm going to redo these tests with more appropriate glazing.

Next up, I'm interested to see how these look over a black glaze. I'm also going to try the Spearmint colourants in a new batch and try that out. I suspect it will look fantastic.

Cone 6 ash glaze tests

I've been meaning to start a blog where I can record my work for a long time. So ... here it is. I work at cone 6 in oxidation. You can see the web page that I keep with my wife at www.m2crafts.ca. She is a soap maker and I am a potter. On this blog I plan to record more of the behind the scenes goings on in my studio.

I've recently been doing some tests to develop a cone 6 ash glaze so I though that this would be a good time to start the blog. The base glaze "Frasca Ash" that I have started with is due to Harry Spring. The PMI article is available online.. I had tried this glaze before with moderate success among a larger group of tests, so this time around I will concentrate on it alone. Here's the recipe in case that link goes down:

   56% Unwashed ash
   11% Calcium carbonate
   11% Custer feldspar
   11% Silica
   11% Ball clay

Harry adds 2% cobalt carbonate or 4% copper carbonate for blue and green respectively.

The ash I'm using is sourced from my charcoal grill. Mostly. I have gotten some from my parents fireplace too. To prepare the ash I seive twice, once through a very coarse strainer and a second time through an 80 mesh chinois. The chinois makes it much easier to get the ash through as you can be much more vigourous about it without worrying about spilling.

For the first test I did three batches. I tried this recipe with plus or minus 5% ash. I used the blue variant for colour. The one on the left is with -5% and the one on the right is +5%. I much prefer the middle one, which is the recipe as it is. The ash glaze is dipped over Bone by Roy & Hesselberth. But this is Bone that has been in a bucket for my production year, so it's changed slightly due to solubles and contamination it doesn't normally look that yellow.

I don't really like the look of the glaze quite frankly. I think it's too bluntly blue. Some of the rivulets are nice, but lack that really authentic ashiness. Regarding the former criticism I'm going to try the baze glaze with some colourants as for other glazes that I like. And the latter problem ... I have no idea how to make it more authentically ashy. I will probably test with a different base glaze to try to solve that.