tomsawyer on sun 15 jul 01
A few weeks ago, I fell in love all over again. I've been switching from
cone 10 glazes to cone 6 and finally decided to make the switch more final.
A clay that I absolutely fell in love with a few years ago is a raku clay
called sylvia's sold by Axners; it is rated to fire from 05 to cone 6. I
spoke to Ron Roy and inquired if I might add some RIO for color and he
suggested instead to try a 50/50 mix of the sylvia's with a dark iron clay
body called Elizabeth's. Since I have a Peter Pugger, I decided to give it a
try. What a find! I have never been so pleased with a clay body in my 25
years of potting. For years, I have been struggling with "S" cracks that
seemed to appear in about 10-15% of pots that I made using my older cone 10
clay body. I tried everything and would spend huge amounts of time coning
and compressing and still they would occur. I tried thowing as dry as
possible and drying very slowly over several days and was still cursed.
Since switching I've maybe thrown 200 pots and nary a
"S" crack. In addition the body has such great wet strength that I can do
things never before possible. I even told my wife if she wasn't so
wonderfully terrific, I would have a new mistress. I am assuming the fine
grog in the raku clay is largely responsible for the good qualities I am
enjoying. Anyway all I can say "ain't life wonderful".
Tom Sawyer
tsawyer@cfl.rr.com
| |
|
