Tired of BISQUE firing ? try raw glaze, once fire ...here's how !? with Simon Leach

[@neilahalter9663]

I bought your book with the cds in 2017 . I just now got where I can really have time to do pottery. Thank you for being great inspiration . It's good to see all your knowledge and contributions to pottery through the generations. Thank you again

[@mikeeureka2171]

I believe you are 100 percent correct about spraying the outside ! Since I learned to do it from you way back when you started one firing process you have saved me a lots of propane and electric Thank You Brother

[@cathyvarner3815]

Making pottery again sense 2013... last time in college... many moons ago... I have done single fire many times... I don't like to do it on anything that has a lot of seams or connection... It might work out just fine but to work that hard and make many connections... slip and score... still get that technically wrong... score and slip... sometimes I put pottery in the kitchen oven at 500 F to make sure it is really dry then glaze and fire at cone 5.... a little unconventional but it works for me... Try it you will love it... Thanks Simon I have been a fan of you and your family of potters for years even have a Bernard Leach book... Many thanks

[@sleachpots]

Hey well that’s great news ! Yes works for the most part. Some finer thinner forms though might need bisquing.

[@sleachpots]

Hi Cathy :)

[@cheryldaltonchandler8431]

It was a small subtle statement full of profound truth…. just because the say it’s “science”, doesn’t make it “true”….. we hear a lot of this these days in our world…..it’s very sad. But, your theory on air (gases) trapped in the clay can cause issues on the finish is absolutely true. I completely understand what you are saying here and have experienced this as well…. good to clear the clay out of trapped air before final glazing👍🏼 There is always something new to learn. Thank you

[@deepashtray5605]

Of course no credible scientist would argue with you on that.

[@jerryklaas568]

Dennis parks wrote a book on raw glazing.

[@goldpilot100]

"That's why I am showing you" I love this comment and appreciate you sharing your knowledge!

[@bettytaylor9430]

Thank you for the lesson in Raw glazing and your recipe for the glaze. Have a great Holiday.

[@lisalovelylpa]

Thanks for the videos … I built my first kiln … glad I went with gas and flames rather then electric with computers It worked great. PS bought your cut off wire last summer, worked great.

[@JSmedic1]

@Lisa Lovely LPA I recently built a gas kiln, too, with a flamethrower and propane. I only got to Raku temperatures at around 1800⁰. What type of burner do you use? I heard about Ward burners. Have you ever used one?

[@lisalovelylpa]

@@JSmedic1 hi ! That’s cool … we should do a Facebook group on building your own kiln lol I use a MR100 burner … bought it from Clay Planet .. my kiln is on the small side … the body a standard steel garbage can but it has a baffle and flame diverter and a needle valve. I have a KZbin’s on the features of the kiln. So far I hit 1988 F on the meter , cone 04 by the cone but I only using maybe 10% of the power. I pretty sure it would go up to cone 10 easy , but can’t say for sure , right , I have not tried that yet , mainly though , I think my big concern world be the wear on my insulation etc. Be glad to chat more about kiln making. Check out my KZbin’s.

[@matthewholloway9507]

Hell yeah! I've converted a few electrics to gas in a few different ways. I hit cone ten no prob. Cools a little fast but hey.

[@dennismanning3964]

Thanks! I surely wish I'd seen this before my recent clay glazing binge. Your ideas about consistency of moisture and its pull and direction makes sense. I'm in. I seem to chase and stress the clay properties and add a possibly unique combo of glazes on the same object. My best object is up for glazing now. Ha! I've almost caught up to myself. We are doing a raw firing soon. Hoping to make some magic. I'll know in 10 days.

[@deepashtray5605]

I've heard that pottery shards with woven patterns impressed into them led to the theory that pottery firing may have originated when baskets that had been lined with clay (probably to better carry stuff) inadvertently ended up in the camp fire. The first firing I attempted was in a campfire... on an island in the Gulf of Maine with whatever wood I could scrounge from the shoreline; surprisingly not that hard to pull off.

[@quintacabecadomato]

Thanks, interesting, relatively mild here too, central Portugal

[@asdqwe4468]

I only did this a few times mostly with small pots. But everytime I see Simon doing it I want to try it too. I'm still afraid it won't work :D But saving all the time and energy sounds really good.

[@theweddingdepartment]

Wretched Biscuit, love it, so I bought the domain

[@theresadoyle6360]

I do this quite often especially if I don’t have a full load for a glaze fire I make a few pieces and raw glaze them to fill the kiln. Maybe I will try a full load of raw glazing.

[@anymoose6685]

Thanks.

[@Christopher_Giustolisi]

Thanks to your videos I don´t do bisque firings anymore. But I always had problems with the glazing process because many bone dry pots would crack when they come in contact with the glaze. I tried different types of clay but I couldn´t get it to work. I guess it´s too much moisture in a short time. I work around that and glaze the inside when the pots are leather hard and the outside when they´re dry by spraying the glaze on.

[@aubreytauer7308]

Most people do put their raw glazes on at the leatherhard stage. You also need to make sure your glaze recipes are optimized for once glazing, one book told me that any glaze that has at least 20% or more of clay in the recipe can be made into a raw glaze, and if that will change your glaze too much then you use bentonite instead, but usually more like 5-10% instead of just 2%, almost all my regular glazes have 2% of bentonite in them just to keep the well in suspension, unless they have more than 15% of clay or a ton of gerstley borate in them. It is generally recommended, raw or bisqued, to fire very thin pots one side at a time, letting it fully try out before doing the outside (for some reason it is more typical to glaze the inside first even if you are painting it on if you are doing them separately. Often if the pots are not particularly thin it isn’t as much of an issue, but that also varies quite a bit with the clay ingredients I personally think. Paperclay is fantastic for raw glazing, it is scientifically proven to be twice as strong as regular clay as greenware, you can (and often have to!) use power tools on bone dry and even bisqued paperclay. It has soooo many other benefits I don’t know why everyone isn’t using it, and contrary to popular opinion you absolutely can throw with paperclay, it really isnt that much different except all the fantastic things it does that regular clay can’t, including making it easier to make bigger and taller forms on the wheel without them flopping or warping.

[@hankkingsley9183]

With LED make sure you research into color temperature

[@boykakri9879]

Does the glaze need to have more clay in the recipe? Can we use any recipe with 2% bentonite? I bisque in a wood firing and will gladly skip it. Now you make me more confident to try! Thank you very much!

[@katekaniff5987]

I haven’t even watched it yet… letting you know I’ve a raw firing going Now… up to 1200°… Shooting for ^6… never done a bisque 🤷🏼‍♀️don’t plan to …thanks Simon! Ill watch it now… Hopefully you’re not gonna tell me that I better bisque fire😳… ☺️know you’re not… Because you taught me to RawFire… I don’t see any other way! cheers to that!

[@mikeu5380]

Hi. Will the piece be weaker because of only firing it once? Thank you.

[@katekaniff5987]

Hi, the stoneware cone6 clay becomes stoneware… If you watch all Simon’s videos about once firing, you can’t fail… It’s the recipe for success! I’ve never bisque fired, never had anything blow up, never a disaster… Knock on wood😉 TRY IT! as usual … I keep on practicing🔥Thanks Simon! 😊

[@s1pproggo25]

Dear Simon, by mistake I glazed a dry piece of clay. Fired it to cone 8.5 and it was good. I glazed only the outer part.

[@mikeu5380]

Hi, Simon. Just a few questions, if I may: 1) Will the piece be weaker since it's only fired once? 2) Will the glaze color be different because of a raw firing? 3) Have you totally banished bisque firings from your life? Thank you for your feedback. Cheers from Iwate-ken.

[@katelyno.9841]

No, to my knowledge it will not be weaker. I don't prefer it in large part because I'm clumsy, and I tend to drop things. Having it bisque fired makes it a little bit more forgiving if I drop it during the glazing stage. 🙂 That said, I can certainly see how this would be beneficial from a production standpoint, rather than a casual hobbyist

[@mikeu5380]

@@katelyno.9841 有り難う！

[@CynD222]

Can you tell me what material you use for ware boards? Thank you!

[@sleachpots]

1/2” plywood from lowes or HD. 4 ft x 8”

[@celiagreenaway725]

Is your celadon recipe for a reduction firing, or will it work in oxidation in an electric kiln?

[@sleachpots]

Yes it’s for reduction at cone 10 only . Will not work the same in an electric oxidization firing.

[@celiagreenaway725]

@@sleachpots Thanks Simon.

[@TheMarnaiz]

Hi Simon. Thanks for another great demo. I'm wondering if you fire these a lot more slowly, especially at the beginning of the firing?

[@aubreytauer7308]

Yes, you have to add basically the whole first part of a bisque firing to the schedule. Once firing can take almost twice as long as normal glaze firing. There actually isn’t as much total savings of time in the kiln as it seems, you join a bisque firing to a glaze firing and basically only save on having one cooling, which for the most part doesn’t use electricity or fuel anyway so it doesn’t really save you money. But you do save some time with eliminating the time of one cooling, and not having to load and unload the kiln twice. Soda firers and salt firers (and a lot of woodfirers too) tend to do a lot of raw glazing, and I have seen a lot of their schedules for gas, they often have 14-20 hour firings not counting the overnight pre-warm up that many of them do, so they tend to start the actual firing with the kiln already at 300-500C, sometimes a little lower.

[@d.jensen5153]

Simon has posted firings in the past. The link below gives you a good idea of how much time his reduction firings to cone 10 take. kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4jWfX2XaNN4j80

[@stephenrobb8759]

Hydrostatic pressure? . That popped into my head. . Wet outside to balance the surface expansion . Whatever ... It's cool

[@andrewketley71]

Ahoy Simon! I tried this recently, glazing just the inside and lip. It worked, although the glaze layer seemed thinner than when dipping on bisque, giving that slightly rough surface. For my next try, I will either take some water out of the glaze or letit sit for longer before pouring out. Unless I should add anything to help it stick?

[@xm3364]

Hi Simon. Good to know raw glazing, would be great if there is cone 6 raw glazing firing too. Are these mugs and tankers up on Esty UK any sooner? Thank you

[@aubreytauer7308]

You can raw glaze for any temperature. You do have to put in your own schedule for firing, google around and you will find schedules for raw glazing, its a lot like adding a bisque firing to the first part, and then adding in the final climb to final temperature and any holds or drop holds or slow cooling you do. In John Britt’s Midrange Glaze book he includes a raw glazing schedule for cone 6, but it is from someone who does microcrystalline glazes so there are a ton of drops and holds for a verrrrry long time for cooling that make the whole schedule incredibly long. But you could take the first part of the schedule, climbing up to the top temperature (which you likely need to adjust as it is quite a bit low for Cone 6 because of all the extra heatwork in the very long cooling phases and holds, so you should do a couple practice runs with the kiln packed with furniture so it seems like it has about the average amount of ware you would normally have, and use cones and a thermocouple, maybe even with the temperature checks you can buy from Orton, and see what top temperature you need to set it at in order to not overfire by possibly several cones). Digitalfire has some articles on once firing as well.

[@xm3364]

@@aubreytauer7308 Hi Aubrey! Lots of effort to explain in length! :-) Thank you!!

[@aubreytauer7308]

@@xm3364 I live to educate! It’s my pleasure, hope it helps!

[@drjones2419]

I´m just wondering...why not glaze the outside instead of spraying with water?

[@celiagreenaway725]

Will you use the same firing program…or fire more slowly???

[@sleachpots]

Time to fire is perhaps very slightly longer due to the slower start. About a 9-10 hrs firing. Reduction.

[@celiagreenaway725]

@@sleachpots thank you! DefInitely something we all need to be considering with the crazy fuel prices.

[@keesstaps4606]

Once fire all my crystalline glazed pots

[@micheledickey4066]

Doesn’t it take just as much power to do this since you have to fire it for so long? How long does this fire for?

[@sleachpots]

The firing is a very little bit longer perhaps, but not much. I fire for about 9-10 hours. The last couple hours in reduction to cone 10.

[@morekorourke741]

Tired of doing things the way they've been done for thousands of years? Try this!!!

[@keesjoosten2282]

Really Simon, those mugs can´t be bonedry. They would fall apart.

[@sleachpots]

Yes you might think so but they don’t fortunately…try it !

[@DavidHebert62]

They won't fall apart

[@jackiemorrison2661]

Too much extranious chatter.. its why I can never fish your videos.. this is about raw glazing, not how to move pots or being organized... sorry,, cant finish

[@Baylajo]

Do what I do, when he gets off topic a bit, move the video up, pass over the "extraneous chatter."

[@matthewholloway9507]

I'd love to see the process with plates. Any different?