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bloating emergency-john baymore's comments

updated sat 19 jun 99

 

Cameron on fri 18 jun 99

I am really impressed with John's clarity on a wide variety of
points. His response on Thursday was certainly on the money.

It is interesting to note a few things:
1. there is probably more free silica available than any other
material except clay, however,
2. all glass quality free silica is essentially the same
regardless of the geographic source.
3. glass requires very pure free silica and where glass is made
you will find silica available at a reasonable price.
4. any engineer worth their salt knows that substitution of
feldspar for silica is not a very smart thing to do as they react
quite differently. Feldspar is used as a mineralizer and quartz is
used as a non plastic adder, they are quite different, especially
at medium temperature ranges.
5. companies that sell mainly to industrial firms would never make
a drastic change in their product without first testing it
thoroughly, then they would clearly announce to all the changes
made before shipping, as they would soon find bad material right
back on their doorstep.
6. Even small changes can cause big users to really raise cain, so
changes made by knowledgeable companies are done slowly, carefully
and in the open.
7. Dumb mistakes like this one tend to give the entire industry a
bad name and are studiously avoided by industrial based firms.

If this sounds like I am irritated, I am. Most of us work really
hard to please our customers and we hate to see companies of any
size making such major errors because it makes the customers think
badly about all of us.

Cameron Harman
Born with slip in my blood
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Cameron G. Harman, Jr. 215-245-4040 fax 215-638-1812
e-mail kilns@kilnman.com
Ceramic Services, Inc 1060 Park Ave. Bensalem, PA 19020
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