Reddit reviews The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes: Glazing & Firing at Cone 10 (A Lark Ceramics Book)

First, I would recommend finding someone in the makerspace that uses the kiln and ask to shadow them. You don't want to be the newbie that accidentally fires cone 06 clay in a cone six glaze firing and melts the clay to the kiln shelves causing damage.

If there are no other potters making use of the equipment then I recommend buying some glaze books. Most people fire electric kilns to mid-range, around cone 6 -- if you are going hotter, or using a gas kiln then get the high fire book.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Mid-Range-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1454707771

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1600592163

You will want to google the product manual for the kiln. You usually can find that on the panel that has the temperature switches or the computer controller if it has one.

You can reclaim your clay in a bunch of ways. My preferred way is to let it dry out, then add water, and put it on a plaster slab to dry it out. Wedge on the plaster slab and it is ready to throw (might need a few hours to a couple of days depending on humidity and temperature, and how saturated the slab already is.

There are lots of youtube videos to teach you the skills you need. Simon Leach is a good place to start:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe9BhFmxdS1TWAhyU5xF0rw

What cone do you want to fire to? What texture do you want for your glaze surface? Are you looking for matte, satin, gloss? Do you have specific colors in mind?

Find out what cone your school generally fires to and in what atmosphere (oxidation or reduction), and formulate your glazes for that. Your school may have special firing options like Raku or salt/soda firings which you may want to look into as well. Once you know what you want it's much easier to find recipes online.

If your school has a well stocked chem room, they have someone who can point you in the right direction for glazes. Ask the firing tech/professor for guidance. John Britt's The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes is a good start, but books are only going to take you so far. You usually have to tweak glazes quite a bit before you get the results you want. You'll want to look into line blends and triaxial blends for testing your glazes.

At its core you need 3 components for a glaze: the glass-former, the stabilizer and the flux. You also have colorants and opacifiers. The 5 basic components for a glaze are:

The Glass-former: Silica,SiO2 (and rarely Boron)

The Stabilizer: Alumina Al2O3 (and sometimes other refractory materials like titianium dioxide, and rarely Boron, which is a special snow-flake). This prevents the glaze from flowing and generally slows the melt.

The Flux: Lithium Carbonate, Sodium Carbonate, Potassium Carbonate, Magnesium Carbonate, Calcium Carbonate, Barium Carbonate, etc. also some metals like iron and the bizarre glass-former cum stabilizer cum flux, Boron. These materials make the glaze melt. Each flux has different properties which makes it valuable. They can change the texture, viscocity, surface tension and color of the glaze with small additions. With Lithium and Copper you can achieve an almost electric blue, while you'll likely get a more sedate green with Sodium and Copper. With a significant amount of Magnesium you can cause the glaze to bead up on the surface of the pot.

The Colorant: Cobalt Carb (Generally Blue), Copper Carb (Green, Blue, Red, rarely Yellow), Iron Oxide (Brown, Green, Blue, Yellow, "Red"), Chrome Oxide (Green, Red), Nickel Carbonate (Gray, Brown, variable), Manganese Dioxide (Amber), Cerium Oxide (Amber also opacifying flux), Praseodymium Oxide (Chartreuse), Erbium Oxide (Pink), Holmium Oxide (Pink-Yellow, depending on light), Neodymium Oxide (Pink-Purple-Blue depending on light) etc. Colorants are generally added in small amounts 1-5% of total. Chrome and Cobalt are very strong and generally don't need to exceed 1%.

Opacifiers: Things that make the glaze go from translucent to opaque include, Tin Oxide (powerful 3-5%, generic white), Zirconium/Zircopax (5-10%, refridgerator white), Titanium Dioxide (5-10%, creamy, mottled white), Alumina (Creamy white similar to Titanium).

Many of these materials can be found together in the form of feldspars. Feldspars will often be the base of a glaze and are then modulated with other compounds. Many feldspars are complete glazes in and of themselves, each firing to its own cone.

There are also man made composites known as frits. These are generally formulated to melt at a lower temperature than feldspars and are often the basis of lowfire glazes. Frits are great because they can incorporate otherwise soluble materials (Sodium) in an insoluble format, preventing loss to evaporation etc.

Glazes are weird beasts, but they're also a lot of fun once you start making some progress with them. Good luck in your future experiments!

The Britt book is pretty solid if you are doing cone 10.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1600592163

High-Fire Glazes: John Britt

John Britt's book is the best resource I've found for these types of questions.... and will help answer all of the next questions you are soon to have now that you're dealing with glaze chemistry. Good luck.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1600592163

Buy Britt's book, then you should need to ask about any other recipe.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes/dp/1600592163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381284891&sr=8-1&keywords=complete+high+fire+glaze+book

I'm going to assume that you're firing cone 6 electric. If you are, then get yourself a copy of this book. If you're firing to cone ten, then this one.

John Britt's books are great. Everything you need to know about basic to intermediate glaze chemistry are in those two books, along with a metric shit ton of recipes... most of which he tested himself.
He has a pretty extensive YouTube channel that's worth checking out too.

Initial stocking of a pantry is a little costly, but not too awful. My wife mixes glazes with off-the-rack ingredients and stocking out the basics cost around $200. That gave her 50 pound bages of the important stuff like a couple feldspars, silica, kaolin, etc and then a few pounds of a handful of colorants and more specialized ingredients like copper and strontium. There's enough material to easily keep her in glaze for a few years without restocking. Compared to jarred glazes, mixing your own pays for itself in a hurry.

If you start mixing buckets of glaze, the first thing you need to buy is a respirator. Silicosis is bad and there's an awful lot of it to be had in a dusty glaze room. You're fine once it's in a slurry.

My suggestion, pick up one of the books by John Britt based on how you fire:

Mid-Range Glazes : https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Mid-Range-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1454707771

High-Fire Glazes: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1600592163

These books are GREAT beginners bibles. He describes all of the equipment you need, what all of the various glaze components actually do, how to do various tests, and a HUGE collection of great glazes with photos.

I'm pretty good at reading articles and putting things together, but his books really opened my eyes, and for the low cost of the books, I think anyone who wants to learn about glazes is foolish to not buy them.

When I do tests, I do 100g batches. I make my test tiles on the wheel, about 3 inches high. Then, I'll apply it to my tile in various thicknesses. Lastly, I'll do a bunch of other tests where I see what it is like when it's layered with other glazes that I have. So one new glaze usually results in about 12 test tiles. I try to do at least one set of tiles every time I do a glaze firing.

I also stamp a serial number into each tile and keep notes in a log book - this is very important! Then, I put all the "ugly" ones into a box for future review, in case my aesthetics change. All of the nice ones, I hang from a small rack on my wall.