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cone 5-6 boron maggie/suzanne

updated fri 10 apr 98

 

maggie j jones on wed 8 apr 98

hello Suzanne, how's the weather in Utah?...spring has sprung here...
I backed off on Gerstley borate..(.was it a typo?) and replaced with
boron frits. GB is trouble in the bucket because it seems to be partially
soluble and is inconsistant in the bag. I had trouble with
crawling...glaze falling totally off the outside of bowls on to shelves!
I used to use a 30+% GB glaze but switched to frits for that reason. My
crazing was minimal until my supplier added pyrophilite to his clay.
I have not heard of boron leaching.***** My glaze was tested by the
government ...some guy showed up and said he was going to test it wether
I approved or not! So now I have a signed, government statement on my
wall that my glaze is safe!
What was your solution to crazing?

Maggie Jones , Turtle Island Pottery, Black Mtn. NC
mrjj@juno.com

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998 09:54:12 -0600 Suzanne Storer
writes:
>Hi Maggie,
>Read your Clayart post. I too work at cone 5-6 and use a glaze
>containing
>quite a bit of boron - 33% gerstley borate. Had some crazing, studied
>books
>on eutetics, did some tests and the opposite of what I thought would
>work,
>worked to stop it. My problem was slight, nothing like yours.
>Reason I'm emailing you is that I've developed my work with books in
>isolation of any other potters working at this temperature and I'd
>like to
>share info with other potters working at this tmeperature. Also,
>Monona
>Rossol advises getting high boron functional glazes tested for boron
>release. Do you know of any labs that do this? She doesn't.
>Am wondering why you've "backed off the boron and are using frits."??
>By the way, I get a nice rutile yellow too.
>Suzanne Storer
>
>

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OWL POTTER on thu 9 apr 98

You wrote: <***** My glaze was tested by the
government ...some guy showed up and said he was going to test it wether
I approved or not! So now I have a signed, government statement on my
wall that my glaze is safe!>

I am interested in how this happened? Where did it happen? Did he show up at
your studio? What department of the government was he from? State, Federal,
Local? Did he explain how he found you and why he was testing your glaze?
And what did he test it for?

Carolynn Palmer, Somerset Center, Michigan