Notes - Reduction Firing September 9, 2010

1. The Strontium Crystal Magic and the Watercolor Green have both been gelling up on me really quickly. During the session when these pots were sprayed, I had a lot of trouble keeping the glazes flowing through the spray gun. The worst thing was that the glaze made it through the filter and only thickened into pudding inside the spray gun so I had to take everything apart to get it cleaned out or constantly fight the glaze (shake the gun, wiggle the trigger quickly to get really short bursts of glaze, etc.). I've since found a possible solution to the problem (with one successful spray session) - more on that in a future post.
2. The Watercolor Green glaze was sprayed too thin on most of the pots, mainly due to the problem with the spray gun getting clogged.
3. A couple of the pots got a strange gray cast on the tops. It looks OK, but I wish I knew what it was. My best guesses are that the SCM was too thin (but the bottoms of my pots always have very thin SCM which turns orange/tan/brown) or that somehow the glaze trapped some carbon. Is that likely without Soda Ash?
4. Generally, the glazes looked pretty good. Other than the whiskey set (flask and four small cups), this was a batch of misfit pots that had been sitting around on my shelves after I tried different clay bodies or messed around with different shapes. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the results.