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thanks and answers to your web site questons

updated sun 23 jun 02

 

David Hendley on fri 21 jun 02


Dear group, thanks for the response to my new web site,
both the bravos and the suggestions for improvement.
I know I'm still a babe in the woods regarding web site design,
but at least I now know enough to know what I don't know.

Here are the answers to the questions that multiple people asked.
Sorry to be impersonal, but I got A LOT of e-mails (thank you
very much):

I used Microsoft Front Page to compose the web site. My son
suggested it for me, since I'm already very familiar with Outlook
Express, Word, etc. and a lot of the procedures and short cuts
are the same.

I know the advertising banners at the top of the page are annoying,
particularly the one that flashes bright red, telling you that you
have won a prize. Jeez.
The funniest thing is, last night when doing some fine tuning, I
kept getting the ad for hair dye for men with grey hair. I
couldn't help but think that they ran some kind of program down
my web pages and noticed my grey beard. Targeted advertising.
I went in and shifted the start of each page down two spaces,
to put some distance between the ads and the start of my stuff.
I think that helps a little.
My hosting on Net Firms is free if you let them run the ads, $15
a month to get rid of them.

For those asking about threaded lids and potter's taps and dies,
sorry but they haven't been made since about 1978. I have a set
of 3 sizes. I didn't buy them when they were available from Bluebird,
when Carl Judson was running it, because they were quite expensive.
Lamenting that I didn't buy them on Clayart one day a few years ago,
Ric Swenson e-mailed me and offered me his set, which he said he
never really used in all those years since the 70's!
They are beautiful machined aluminum. I promised Ric a nice pot
with a screw-on lid, but now I've lost track of him, so if you know
how to contact him let me know.
My college thesis tells how make several kinds of pots with locking
lids. In 1977 I had a few copies bound and had a copt sent to be
microfilmed by University Microfilm. I have no idea if copies of the
microfilm are still available today - or if they even HAVE microfilm
anymore. I kind of doubt it.

I don't have any plans for building my extruder. The best resource
if you want to build an extruder is "The Extruder Book" by Daryl
Baird, published by the American Ceramic Society. There are plans
for 4 or 5 extruders, including my 1976 plans for the 'bumper jack
extruder'. After all these years, I still think it is by far the easiest
extruder to build, and it works good. Bumper jacks are starting to
get a little scarce, since no new cars come with them any more, but
any car junk yard will likely have a few.

All of the copper red glaze on my pots is one glaze, which I call
'Simply Red'. The recipe and how I arrived at it, and photos of test
results are in the October 1999 issue of Ceramics Monthly. My
rutile blue glaze is Simply Red plus 3% rutile.
This glaze has very little clay in it and is not a single fire glaze.
I bisque fire in a large Paragon electric kiln.