Studio To-Do List

Throw more mugs! This is turning into 100 Mugs in 100 Hours, but luckily I do love to make them. These are simpler forms, fewer throwing marks & stamps, to allow surface for more involved glaze application. 

Replenish glazes, and mix up tests. My glaze palette is in flux! (Haha, get it?) I am ditching glazes, like my celadon, that do not do well in soda, and testing some new ones with a wider firing range, due to the unevenness of the last few firings. Also, I have a couple that, while technically cone 10, they really want 11 starting to go. Though one of them is a favorite of mine (Waxy White), it doesn't make sense to push the kiln to 11 -- firing for an extra hour, or more; burning a ton more propane -- for one glaze. And having to make sure those pots, the ones wearing that glaze, go into the hottest part of the kiln. One of the tests on deck today is an alteration of that glaze, replacing half of the feldspar with neph sy, which will hopefully lower the maturation point to around cone 9. I hope to have more info about the Great Glaze Shake-up in a future post. 

Replace an element...in my dryer. Is this studio related? Well, sort of. I do use the dryer for towels & aprons, but the point is I almost paid someone to do this, and then thought, If I can replace a kiln element -- and I can, I just don't like to -- surely I can replace a dryer element. Do I know how to do this? Oh hell no. But how hard can it be?