R.I.P. Malcolm Davis

Malcolm Davis passed away yesterday - such a loss! He took American shinos to another level with his years of work on carbon trap recipes and firing techniques, discovering how wax resist over the glaze could give these wonderful patterns, etc.etc. He will be sorely missed.

Spent part of the morning with John Britt, dipping some of his test tiles in some of the flashing slips I made. He'll be putting them in the Energy Exchange wood/soda firing this weekend. I opted to skip it since it turns out it won't be just a firing of tiles as I was originally told, and with 155 of my tiles alone (so far), they wouldn't have room for all of them. So John and I will be doing another firing in his small soda kiln in another week or so. That will actually work better for me since I fire with gas and only introduce a bit of wood in the kiln, so I'll get much more useable results for from that firing.

In the meantime, the flashing slip tests in the wood/soda kiln will give us a good idea if I've fluxed them enough for cone 6 or too much and make some adjustments before we fire in Johns kiln.

On another note, this gives me more time to batch some more cone 6 glazes I've designed for soda. So, it's all good.

I spent the rest of the day (still at it), redoing my notes and chart on the finished tiles, and got my early dinner prep done for tonight's dinner - fettucine with an alfredo type sauce with sauteed mushrooms and ham. It's one of my favorite pastas, but since I put it in the category of "heart attack specials", I only make it once or twice a year and hope the wine will lessen the damage from the cholesterol. :-)