Post 18 And more new pots

Ok so the last 3 for a while - at least until I make some more. And as I forecast last time, a few more surprises.

The first one is with a glaze I call 'Sea Mist'. As you see a good satin/matte surface and a good foggy blue/green.

  This is a digitalfire.com glaze number G2571A. It is formulated as a cone 10 glaze and so has lots of Custer Feldspar. I've changed it a bit by adding a little extra Silica to get it back into the satin range.

 

Here's a picture of the trial test tiles with three different oxides. Sea Mist is in the middle, no 59. The other two have nice earthy tones, on the left using RIO and Nickel on the right. Sea Mist has 2.5% copper and a little cobalt.
Nice one I'll use it again and reformulate with other colourants.

Next up is derived from Val's Satin Black base and in the test produced a nice mottled green tint. In the pot firing it has come out quite homogeneous with more grey tones. Not unattractive but a surprise. Good surface finish.

And finally for now is one in the test that was quite a mottled rusty red but in the pot firing produced much more of the lighter tones to produce a colouration not unlike a satin terracotta finish. Again not unattractive but another surprise.

All three pots are also around the same size of 380 x 275 x  92, stoneware clay fired to cone 6.
It's coming into winter here in Australia at the moment so my trees need to sit quietly for a couple of months before I can press these pots into service.

These firings have given me quite a lot of information, what it means exactly might take me a little time to analyse! An early observation from a comparison between these pots and the ones I produced last year is that the moisture level of the clay when pressing the pots might be far more influential on stability in glaze firing than you might think. That's something else that I need try to measure and make notes of at the time, in future.

First prioirity is workshop shelves, then back to pressing out some pots. Somewhere in there is making another oval mold too. So much to do and so little time.