Using Things that are Meant for Other Things, the Glaze Edition

1. The best source I know of for slip trailing bottles (aka "pointy-squirties") is Howard Electronic. You can buy 10 bottles with steel tips for $13. And best of all, you can buy replacement tips, because that's the only part that gets ruined, right? 
2. Got a glaze that's really powdery and fragile after it dries? Glazes utilizing kaolin as the alumina source often are. Vee gum or CMC gum are made for the purpose of improving dry dtrength, but  in  pinch you can mix in some Karo syrup, and it will strengthen your glaze as well. Downside: it will decompose after a while and smell farty. 
3. Okay, here's a little story: you know how, when you are brushing a glaze onto bisqueware, the ware is so dry and thirsty it sort of grabs the brush, making it difficult to get a fluid line? I read online that glycerine would alleviate the problem, so I went to CVS to buy a bottle of glycerine. No luck: they no longer carry it. Hmm, bummer, I wanted to show my classes, who were glazing the last pots of the session today. But hey, I know a product which is mostly glycerine, and which CVS definitely carries...!

Yes, I brought a bottle of personal lubricant to class, to add to glaze. I added it in about a 3-to-1 proportion, glaze-to-glide, just a tiny batch at a time. And it seemed to work! It thickened up the glaze much more than the product itself is, and the brush flowed very freely across the surface. And we all had a good laugh. The work that I glazed today will be out of Portland Pottery's kilns by next week, and we will see the results.