cone 6 ash glazes

So now that I'm done with school I am using an electric kiln in lieu of my beloved soda/ wood firings. That being said I wanted a way to get similar glaze effects. I have also been curious about using local materials (or relatively) to reduce the old carbon footprint. With that in mind I decided to use redart (while a commercial clay it is from here in ohio) and woodash (from fireplaces and thus free).

So the next bit of reasoning to go into the process was what other ingredients to use and what sort of blend I wanted to go with. I knew that I wanted these two ingredients for ecological and economical reasons, yet for the purposes of a more stable glaze I wanted to add a feldspar. I decided on a feldspar only (rather than a more typical quadraxial blend with the glassformer silica added also) for two reasons; first: the clay, woodash, and feldspar all have some silica in them, and second I have limited time to work on glazes as this is a side project in my new classroom. Now for the feldspar choice, I went with Nepheline Syenite which while it is from canada is still on the same continent and has a lower melting temp which made it more suitable for cone 6 rather than cone 10.

These are the 6 tiles from a 15 tile blend that I will be testing into a weight value (the tiles were origionally tested by volume) and then adding colorants. Although I will keep the bases to them without colorants because I personally love the earthy tones that the redart provides.