Acquiring and Processing Ceramic Raw Materials (Video #25 in the Free Online Glaze Course)

[@tadecraftltd]

Hello John! Just thought to let you know that you're raising a great ceramist here virtually in Nigeria. I look forward to seeing you someday very soon🎉🎉❤❤

[@dccreations1361]

Pretty cool stuff John, thanks for sharing!! I've been wanting to dabble in some topics like this, this was a great starter for me to get me started.

[@JHEUFMFPEHRRSEOYN]

John I just discovered this course after looking into other courses and not being able to pay the money, thank you so very much for this resource. I will be sharing this with every potter I know. Free education is such a blessing.

[@johnbrittpottery]

Spread the word. A self directed course requires a bit of commitment but if you do the testing that is the best way to learn. Adding more everyday! Plus if you go on to the Facebook group.... Exploring Midrange Glazes Together with John Britt's Book... you can ask questions of that group which is very helpful. 15,000 people helping.

[@joaocarlosmatiolaguedes1046]

Thank you so much for this.. I am learning English by business travel and this content helped me a lot..

[@marcisaacs9407]

Thank you John this is awesome

[@caleb5986]

Thank you!

[@eugenol_aroma]

Thanks a lot! Was very informative 👍👍👍

[@waynoswaynos]

In regards to the various elements that each tree ash contains.. "Because Leaves absorb things from the soil…", John said at 9:22. I'm not sure that this is the case. You can have an Oak tree and a Pine tree growing in the same dirt and the Pine has no K but the Oak has loads. The Pine ash is hardly alkaline but the Oak makes a really strong lye. Which is odd. You might think the tree takes what it needs from the dirt but that also may not be the case. An experiment I read about conducted a few hundred years ago, where a young willow was potted in some carefully weighed dry dirt and watered with rain water for a couple of years, also carefully weighed. At the conclusion of the experiment all of the dirt was carefully removed from the Willow's root system and the plant pot, and again carefully dried and weighed. It was discovered that the dirt was almost the same weight despite the pounds and pounds of tree that had grown weighed more than the water it was given.The tree then burned and its ashes weighed. We know a lot of that tree-mass came from the water and carbon dioxide in the air, but what about all the other minerals? The water is pretty much distilled being rain water. It didn't add up. The conjecture was that the plant transmuted it from air, water and sunlight.. which seems the most probable.

[@johnbrittpottery]

@@waynoswaynos you will have to take that up with a biologist. I am not a transmutationalist. (something from nothing)

[@waynoswaynos]

@@johnbrittpotteryHey man, thank you. I feel you are right that its a biology issue. Clay is food for microbes, whose waste products are food for yet smaller microbes. When heat, pressure and water aren't changing geology, microbes are. Perhaps part of why Ball Clay particles are smaller than Kaolin. I am an artist that is into science, and when the numbers in the audit don't add up, I get to wondering why. If every element at its smallest is just energy at a given frequency, then the the weird numbers start to make more sense. (i.e. something for something) Ceramicists say that LOI is mostly water but if they ever attempted to condensed that vapour they'd find it was something else entirely. e.g. I once bisque fired some earthenware, at the same time I calcined some limestones in a pile on the shelf below, that should have been just evolving carbon dioxide and water, but the bisqueware was lightly glazed in the process and almost stuck the shelves.

[@deepashtray5605]

You could do a whole series just on notes, journals, recipes and keeping track of all those different materials. Note: diatomaceous earth has a warning label about using it indoors, nasty dust issue... it's actually used as an insecticide, the fine dust grains dig into the exoskeleton of the bugs and kills them.

[@paulauksztulewicz7381]

Also used as pool filtration medium.

[@rehoboth_farm]

@@paulauksztulewicz7381 And they put it in toothpaste.

[@daxgaz]

Great stuff! If I could request some information on the UMF of clay bodies. I've been looking everywhere and have not found much information. I fire cone 6, but I am curious about various temperature clays.

[@johnbrittpottery]

You can look on Glazy. I really don't know much about UMF of bodies. I just use recipe method. I would find recipes and put them into glazy and try to find things.

[@jenniferassinck803]

I harvest my local version of Albany. I have no cracking problems with mine. You may not need to calcine your version of Albany. Although Tony Hansen recommends roasting Alfred, it is a composite they put together and may include an ingredient with larger particles than the original Albany or other illites.

[@ladendaisl888]

What size are the black lidded jars

[@DisVietVetUSA]

Horsetail fern is good source of plant silica

[@nathanielhunter1280]

Thanks John! How much material do you collect at these road cuts and such. What is a good amount that would be efficient and easy to proccess?

[@johnbrittpottery]

5 gallon bucket is easy

[@carlosleon9580]

Hi John, I think there is a lot of pumice down here in mexico, what effect does it bring to a cone 9-10 glaze?

[@johnbrittpottery]

Like a dirty feldspar...so substitute in place of feldspar in a recipe. Also do a button/melt test.

[@carlosleon9580]

@@johnbrittpottery Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! Will do those buttons!