Gardening morning

It's a beautiful, coolish morning, so I'll be out transplanting some peppers and tomatoes this morning and some other feeding and weeding. Some critters ate most of my corno de toro frying peppers, so I need to get to Walmart this afternoon to see if they have some similar replacements.

Tomorrow I'll get back in the studio if we put off the trip to Asheville. I need to call Highwater this morning to find out if they have all the cone 6 clays I want to try for those glaze tests, or at least find out when they are expecting them. With all the clay business they have it makes you wonder why they don't buy another mixer. It seems to happen too often that they are out of clay because of lack of enough equipment to keep up with the demand. I've learned to call first!

We could use some young, ambitious person to fill that void. Wouldn't it be great to have someone local mixing great clays run through filter presses. One can only dream. :-)

Here's the C6 porcelainous recipe, that looks like it would be a good throwing body from my recipe files that I'll try. I have other reicpes but I have these ingredients on hand.
FORBES Cone 6 Porcelain (not a true porcelain because of the ball clay)

36 EPK
14 OM#4 ball clay
22 Silica
24 Neph sy
4 Bentonite (I'll probably add 2% V gum T that I'll slake overnight before adding.

I'll make a very wet mix of the body, let it drain in some old pillow cases, the let dry it on plaster bats till it's throwing consistency. With a little addition of some vitamin c, or beer, it would be ready to throw in 3 days. The vitamin C trick is something Angela Fina came up with years ago. It works if you're going to use the clay within a short period of time.