Three cone6 glaze kilns unloaded 01/26

Last night the actual, it got cold, minus 12 centigrade, and the river froze up because there's no wind, and there are two eagles over there, and they caught something, and we don't know what it is, it's a bit far away. It's probably a seagull, a crow or a duck, but they are feeding on something. It's just a shame my, this is the furthest, closest I can get to it, but as you can see, we got a cold night last night. See if I can zoom out a little bit. Yeah, nobody's landing because of the two eagles over there. These are some leftover pieces that I had, because I haven't been doing much. I wanted to see, got some bat wash on there, I've got to sand off. This is just still one of the few last pieces I will do for a while actually, because I've been doing so much Strontium Crystal Magic, I want to get back to doing some other tests. But this is blue green copper red over speckled clay, I think it's recycled clay actually, and then some variegated blue and oatmeal. This one looks like it might need a touch of refiring, because there's pinholes and little craters everywhere, and I'm not sure, that could be that there was foam in the glaze when I was glazing, but it's not on the outside. But matte turquoise with variegated blue and oatmeal with Strontium Crystal Magic, and China green here, and all three using recycled clay. These will be regular clay I think, and it's blue green copper red variegated with oatmeal. I'll skip over these because it wasn't meant to be a video here. That's still collapsed, I'll have to sand a little bit there. Oh no, it just slipped off, yeah the pin must have been too close to the edge and it slipped off, so there's a little bit of sanding there, and yeah same as the last piece. And this is either my new blue or the bright blue, I'm not sure which, because they're almost identical. Oh actually I think these are different, so this will be the bright blue and this is the new blue, and you can see there is a touch difference, but they're so close I might just mix these two glazes together. And then we've got a purple with Strontium Crystal Magic variegated blue and oatmeal on top. I like these little speckles, you've got sand looking kind of colors there. So there should be three balls on each shelf surrounded by mugs, this is a good combo. Apple green and shiny green is what I call it in my glaze recipes that I've given out in videos. And then you've got oatmeal and over the top of yellow with Strontium Crystal Magic just dipped around the edge a little bit. Nice summery ball there, that would have been good for salad, is good for salad, and that's the same as one I just unloaded in the previous level, blue green copper red lotion. And this is the new blue, and it has no crawling in it, which we had a little bit of in those whale jars I posted recently, but this one is perfect. It's a blue that's a mixture of dark blue and an old blue that I had, so I can't ever reproduce this. Same here, but it's so close to my bright blue, why would I? Except the bright blue has got to be reformulated because that has ghostly borate in it, and I'm using the substitute now. It still worked, I tried one and it worked, and apparently it's better for the glaze, more consistent. Wow, this is the new blue Strontium Crystal Magic, really with a lot of runs. Actually maybe those ones don't have Strontium because you don't see those runs on there, but look at that, it's like a deliberate even pattern all the way around. Really nice. Told you this would be quick, this is the last level. It's just a few pieces that I did a fire in just to keep the studio warm. It's so cold at the moment, highs of minus six, minus seven during the day, down to minus twelve, thirteen at night. That's the new blue with, you can see some Strontium Crystal Magic on this one. Whenever you do fluting, you get those dribble lines which are really nice. This is one that looks like the ocean coming in, isn't that pretty? That's what I've been trying to do, basically create these rock-type surfaces with the runs for the ocean kind of feel, because we're right on the ocean. There's the bright blue from Cone 6 Glazes, Astrin Cone 6 Glazes, Strontium Crystal Magic. It's a bit brighter than the one I just formulated with those two mixes, so that's why I'll just continue to do that one. Astrin Cone 6 Glazes is great because they're all tested, and there's a new book out, Amazing Glaze I think it is, Food Safe Glazes, you should all be getting that one. I got that one for myself for Christmas, so I'm going to be looking at the rest of these that I have against those. And there's the new blue and bright blue, you can easily see the difference there. Last one, it's a nice one, Blue Green Copper Red. So I'm going to sort of skip doing these glazes for a little while, but I might make some teapots in these glazes just to see how they look, but I want to get on to testing some other glazes that I have. Okay, we're in the new studio where I carve my black and white tiles now, and that's mostly what I do in here. And this is one of the first firings I've done, I've done one other. But this one is very special because it has a mural in here, five tiles long, that is going in the floor in front of a wood stove. So I'm really hoping and keeping my fingers crossed. The first tile here, this is a Cone 04 glaze, but I bisque the clay to Cone 01 with weights on all the tile edges all the way around during the bisque firing. And that holds it flat right up to Cone 01, which is 2,035 degrees when held for a 30 minute soak. That's Fahrenheit. And that allows the clay to slump a little bit because it becomes really vitreous at that temperature. So that's Cone 01. And it's about 135 degrees now, so I've let it cool down properly. And it now feels like warm, warm water to pick up so it's not too hot to handle. And this is a tile for a different mural that I've been working on. My goal is to produce 10 murals by the end of January. But I started in December because I sold all my murals during the summer this year. It was a year for artwork selling. So surprise, surprise with all the tariffs and the, you know, things that are going on. The economy held together and was really good. So I sold art this summer, which is better than selling mugs only. So these are the Advancer kiln shelves, and they're very thin. And that's why I really hope that nothing is cracked in here. There's some small ones which will go in little frames too. So this is a 4x4 tile, just under. It's about three and three quarters, I think. But this will go in a frame. And these were studies for the murals that I've been doing. My wife is still really sick. She's had two weeks of being really sick over Christmas, so we didn't do anything, which is why I got a lot of murals carved. Because I've been staying away from her as much as possible and working in here till midnight, just about every night, just so I'm not in the house much. But that's a part of a mural that will be called the Three Churches from Mahone Bay. So this is one of the churches. Okay, this is still part of another mural. Not the commission. So this one is the Government Wharf in West Dublin in Nova Scotia. And I put some lobster boats, because often you see them moored, but these ones are just kind of sitting in the middle in front of the wharf. But I've done this wharf many times, and every one time I do it, it's very different. So that's three so far. Nothing cracked. Am I running out of luck? The gods have in store for me. Deeper in the kiln. This is still part of a different mural. This is part of the Government Wharf. So I try to put it in real perspective when I do these. I love the foreground popping and then you've got the things in the distance. Okay, fingers crossed. I think we're going to get down. So yes, we're down to the mural. These are smaller tiles. They have to be 10 and a half inches by 10 when they're finished. And I measured them and they're exact. I can't believe I got that lucky. But this would be the furthest left in the mural. And that worked good too. All the little wharfs have lobster pops on them during the off-season. But in the season, of course, for lobstering, they're all in the ocean. So I like to photograph the wharfs during the off-season. This is just a study I was doing for the wharf. This is about a seven and a half, eight inch square tile, I think. Maybe seven and a half. This is the second one in on the wharf. I think it's the second one in. So we're good so far. Two out of three. No, two out of five. There's five in total. I'll be very sad if one cracks now. This is New Year's Day. Happy New Year, everyone. Jackie's still sick. We haven't done Christmas or New Year this year. So she's going to be partying for my birthday coming up. There you go. Hopefully, anyway, hopefully I won't get sick by then. This is number three going across the mural. So it feels really good. I'm over the halfway point in the mural. I've got some good perspective, I think, in these pieces. I tried to do something really different. The customer did not want to have mostly schooners. She wanted just wharfs, really. And there we've got number four across. So there is the end of where I've got the wharfs and it's beginning to have a few sailing ships because you wouldn't be Nova Scotia without a few sailing ships in something. But this is really an 80 percent wharfs rather than sailing ships. Oh, good. The last tile is good, too. Isn't that a relief? So none of them are cracked. So this mural will measure 52 and a half inches long by 10 inches high. And that was the required size. And I estimated the shrinkage at about 12, 13 percent. I was right on. There you go. Perfect. I've got a couple of little ones finally at the bottom here. But the important ones are out now. It's another one of those little seven inch tiles. Actually, that's a little smaller than the other. That's probably a six inch tile, I would think. And then the last one. I do these just as studies to see whether I can carve something effectively. But they act up. They basically resolve. And then I use them in little ceramic frames and they all sell, generally speaking. But there you go. So I'm very relieved. Boy, oh boy, I'd hate to have had to redone one of the tiles because it may not have been a perfect match. So that's basically red clay that's mostly fired for people who use it between 06 and 04. But like I said, I raised this temperature to cone 01 because I've noticed that the clay slumps at cone 01. And to get a flat tile, which is important, I figured that if I put weights all the way around, just broken bits of kiln sort of furniture and kiln shell, all the way around the perimeter of the tile and then soak it at cone 01, 20, 35 approximately, for about half an hour, the clay totally slumps. The tile gets totally flat. And then I glaze it to cone 04. And I use a Gursley borate-based glaze, which I've now got to use a substitute. But it then soaks for about half an hour at the cone 04 to get a really clear, totally smooth glaze, as you can see. And I don't have problems with warped tiles. So if you want to do that, red clay from Laguna No. 20 works doing that. And then Pottery Supply House, I just started using that clay because we're in this tariff situation now between the US and Canada. So I've changed over to using the Canadian pottery supply house clay for red moist. It'll be cheaper. Okay, well, thanks for watching. And I may put a couple of things in this video after this. I've got two more kilns to unload at the other studio. So, you know, enjoy New Year's Day. Okay, this is January 2nd. And I haven't unpacked this kiln. There's two of them here that I haven't unpacked for the last three or four days because it was a holiday. And I did take a couple of days where I was very relaxed. So there you go, bright blue, variegated blue and oatmeal. This is the normal without strontium crystal magic, which I've been using a lot on recently. And here's a beautiful folk art white piece. And this is using the chattering that you can, I hope many of you bought those tools before Christmas because they really did change my life as far as the finishing of my pieces. The glaze just fits beautifully over those raised areas and the crevices. And this is folk art white and apple green. The apple green is actually my bright or shiny apple in my recipes that I've put out. In many videos I've posted those. A lot of the videos will say including recipes and that's when you'll see them. Usually they're the kiln unloading videos. That's actually bright blue over tenmeku gold, which did a lot of nice flex. And the chattering sort of isn't quite as visible, but it did a lot to the glaze. You can see the way it breaks the glaze even on that one. This one is a glaze I don't use much. It's Karis tenmeku over red clay. And it actually, it's a glaze I just never find like it knocks my socks off. So I'm still playing with this. I'll try it over white clay next and see what it does over white clay. It's on quite thin in this application as well. On the inside you've got little hints of black breaking to brown. Let's put the light. So you see there's a little hint of it but it's not big. So I guess if you've got some really big carving you might see it more. And this is the same here. And that one, the chattering, shows up a little better. But still, if you can see, it doesn't knock my socks off, does it? And it's just got bright blue and oatmeal over the top. This, oh, it fell off the stilt for some reason. I'll have to grind. I've got some kiln. It must have leaned. I wonder why it was maybe I was rushing. I'll just, but the inside looks really pretty on that. But I just have to grind that off and re-fire again. It's got strontium crystal magic on the outside. A little tray. It's got multiple glazes. Matte turquoise, bright blue over, let's see, purple and focalt white with a dab of variegated blue in the middle. But it looks really pretty. And then a bunch of stoppers for my bird bottle. Down here we have a bird bottle for those stoppers in variegated blue. And then a whole bunch of mugs which I won't go through every one because there's some repeats. I'll just show you what's in here, one of each one. So that's, oh, look at that pink. Can you see that pink down there? That's the tin in the actual oatmeal with the blue-green-copper-red overlapping. So where do we get, there's no chrome in those glazes so that must be just, it's almost like a reduction of that blue-green-copper-red but it isn't. So I'm not sure what caused that because usually that pink you would get is from, it must be just the atmosphere in the kiln with some chrome floating around. Good job we vent the kilns, isn't it? These are beautiful. This is my bright blue variegated blue with oatmeal. What else do we have? Oh, we've got some more harris-tin-macou. So it's definitely a deep brown over that red clay and I put black on the bottom of these that I just made so that I could use up a glaze that wasn't very good with strontium crystal magic. So that really did have a nice effect. Anything different? This is tin-macou-gold. This is a new color combination with the black on the bottom. Tin-macou-gold with bright blue and oatmeal instead of variegated blue and oatmeal. But with the tin-macou-gold that is very pretty. Anything different? Purple. And we've seen this many times in the past. And that's it. The rest are all duplicates. Oh, there's a purple here with black going deeper or further up. So that's kind of a carving I don't usually do either. There's an interesting ball. There are some sort of indications of running there but there's no carving. That's just the glaze strontium crystal magic encourages runs and matte turquoise underneath. And the same on back there as well. And these are all with recycled clay. That's a nice ball. Then we've got three more duplicates of what you saw on the top shelf. Tin-macou-gold, bright blue and oatmeal. Folk art white again. Just another great ship display of chattering there. Purple and black. We haven't been using that but somebody commissioned a piece over the winter, over Christmas. So I made it in black with purple. And yeah, it has good qualities about that. Kind of a new variation on some other colors. And we did the same with some mugs because if I do one piece I like to do a grouping so we can display them together. So those should look nice together in a little shelf somewhere. And again here. I color code my boxes when I store things so I know what I have. So you can see the coloring there. And they've got those little yellow speckles in the purple again which I'm not sure where that comes from. Yep, I'm not sure. Maybe it's where it overlaps the black but I don't think the black went that high. No, the black is just to there. So it's actually purple on its own that does that. On the bottom of this kiln. Oh, that's an interesting one. This is my slop green glaze. And the slop green glaze with Stormteam Crystal Magic Nanta there. And where they overlap you get that. And so this one I'm going to do again because I like that. That's a nice new color addition. Here's another one of the purple with the black. It's a new combination of colors. When you've got 24 glazes in buckets you can always get some new variations. You shouldn't stand still. We should always be trying to find something different. Spend your life looking for something different. It's exciting every day. There you go. It's like Christmas. Oh, that's right. It just happened. This is the bright blue. I'm actually trying a new clay body. 519S from Pottery Supply House in Toronto, which is basically my 519 McGrog. So we'll see how that affects things. That's it for the... This is the other kiln. This was a re-fire because there was a blowout. Oh, mustard. Oh, it's still showing it. I dabbed glaze over here and it ran down. It still shows the blowout. A second. It's my cat's water dish. There you go. Temeku Gold. Very good about oatmeal. Okay, this kiln was the last firing that I did before New Year and so it wasn't quite full but I wanted to clear my shelf. So that's Temeku Gold in traditional that I normally do with variegated blue and oatmeal. And this one is the Chun Green. Really, really pretty green. Variegated blue and oatmeal too. We've got some more of this one, which I'll be doing more of. This is matte black Temeku Gold, bright blue and oatmeal. Really pretty piece. I've been trying lots of new colours all summer, actually in all fall. I've been really experimenting, trying to see whether I can shake things up. I even called one of the videos Shake It Up Glazing. But same as the other one. So I've got several new combinations in here, which I'm going to make a note to actually do a body of work in, because I'm trying to make things look different. This is normal. I've done these many times. Folk Art White with Apple Green, which Apple Green, remember, is my shiny apple, shiny green glaze, in the recipes I had now. Another one. And we've got some noodle bowls here. The Folk Art White. This is over white clay, so there's no speckles to show the chattering up in a huge way, but that still shows pretty good. My Folk Art White is almost like a beautiful cream, really. Looks great with the Apple Green. Tenmeku Golds. This is normal, what I keep doing over and over again, so we'll not be getting rid of that one anytime soon. I like that combination. You saw one of these earlier in the firing. It really shows the chattering up nicely. Chun Green with Variegated Blue and Oatmeal. I guess maybe what I'll do is I'll post the glaze recipes all in this video too, so it's the beginning of the year, because people ask me all year and I have to go search where I put them, and basically you can find them yourself if you just search the videos that say includes glaze recipes. But I'll put one again at the beginning of the year. Okay, I was clearing the decks out, but here's the next layer. Another one of the Folk Art White ones and Apple Green. Another one. See the chattering? Shows up really good. Another one of the Chun Green too, where the chattering shows up really well too. Well, I'm ready for another year, I guess. I'm a very consistent producer because I've always felt like I don't like the pressure of, you know, having to run out when you run out of work, having to make it really quickly, so I make it consistently all through the year. This is another one of the Harris Tenmaku. Yeah, I guess it breaks a little bit, but it's never one to really knock my socks off, is it? I guess I have to make a different saying for that. And this is Apple Green again over Red Clay, and that really changes the look of that green a lot, but it still shows the chattering up really well. In actual fact, I like this green a lot over that clay colour. Deep Red Clay. Number 80 from Laguna, or the new one I'm using is for... No, it's 500 or 505, something like that. That's a new red that I'm using from Pottery Supply House. And two more of the Focart White with Apple Green. This is the last shelf of pieces from 2025, and if you're clever, you can't see it much on that one. I'll show you a different one. I date things for the last month of December 2026, or for the next year. There's a little glaze crawled off the edge of that one there, but it's not a chip, it's just leather glaze. Let's find one way to maybe see it. Ah, you can see it a bit better on here. So I write 2026, or the following, the next year, in the month of December, because things that I make in December generally won't be out of the kiln until January. And I don't know if it's relevant or not, but I had customers at one time who, when they ordered wholesale, they wanted the newest pieces. They never wanted me to ship them pieces from a previous year, and I always thought that was strange, but I think galleries reflect what customers want, and customers want new work, so they think anything that's from the previous year is old work. Well, that's a whole debate, isn't it? Because I think new work could actually be not as good as the older pieces sometimes. Isn't that pretty? Yeah, I feel like sometimes I get stuff out and I think, oh, that doesn't look as good this time. Yeah, this is white 519 clay. It shows color really well for the glaze. Things are much brighter on the white clay. If you want bright colors, use a white clay body. This is no Strontium Crystal Magic, this is just my oatmeal and variegated blue over bright blue. And here it is, the last piece unloaded from 2025, and it's a good one. That's a beautiful mug. The black is really nice on the bottom. I usually use oatmeal, so this time I use black. To sign, I just scratch through like Sgraffito through the glaze, and it shows up really well too, so that's nice. It's a little more unhealthy, because when you're signing through a glaze, it's causing the dust to flake off, so you've got to be careful about that. But the temniku gold and white clay, and then the black, it has a classic look to it. And then bright, sorry, yeah, bright blue and oatmeal dipped on the rim. It was a rough wake up this morning, because my neighbor's car wouldn't start, so we had to go find my jumper cables, because he couldn't find his, and I couldn't find mine, so I went to another neighbor who couldn't find his. Finally, we got them from the fourth person, I guess you'd say, in line, and we found jumper cables. But it got cold last night. It was raining when I went to bed at midnight, and it was ice. I couldn't even unlock the doors of the car, so they were just frozen shut. So anyway, happy new year. All right, this is not going to be released till mid-January, but all right, take care.