Digitalfire is facing a takedown order from Plainsman Clays. They are revoking permission to "use any Plainsman content" "on any platform". This is broad and vague enough, and the site large enough, that I am unable to comply or even interpret it in the short timeframe (June 27). This notice arrived with a threat to turn over the plainsmanclays.ca URL, which I rightfully own (and use to voluntarily fund and maintain a live site backup) and plainsmanpotterysupply.com (which I don't have). I had to shut down Digitalfire for part of today because so many people were taking backups of the site. We just need to get them to relent on this demand, call off the lawyer and agree that digitalfire.com is just commentary and I have the right to share research that I compiled. There are lots of backup sites (many people have the API endpoints); don't start downloading or scraping again and overload the server.

Insight-live.com is not affected by this issue.

I bought the URL PlainsmanClays.ca in 2021 and maintained it on my own server, at my own expense, as an active backup and prototyping site for the main dot-com site. It was super fast. Although having no claim, Plainsman has demanded it, using accusatory language, under threat of legal action. I transferred it to them today, for free, as a sign of good faith. I also provided the DNS records and have removed them. This means that body usage information and problem mitigation, testing data, example pieces, glaze recipe suggestions, casting instructions, the Celebration project, etc. that took decades to carefully compile (based on and built from many, many hundreds of customer support issues), is gone. Information on the use of Alberta Slip, Ravenscrag Slip, bodies like Polar Ice, M370, M340 and many others, recommended base glaze recipes to fit the bodies, engobe recipes and usage info, firing schedules, and much more. Important terms on all of the pages linked automatically into Digitalfire. A hundred or more reference pages and many hundreds of pictures have been lost. I am sorry for this; please forgive me. Perhaps Plainsman can be convinced to restore this valuable resource. If you need any of the pages, they are permanently stored at archive.org under PlainsmanClays.com (for April 30, 2026).

The goal of $10k was met in hours. Incredible. Thank you so much to everyone. I am humbled. Actually, it is not stopping. Unbelievable!

Legitimate GoFundMe campaigns will be listed here. If you know of one being set up, please let me know.

At https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-digitalfire. I am beyond grateful to Dominic Legault for initiating this.

Thank you to the hundreds of messages I am getting every day for support. Yikes. I can assure everyone I am not retiring; I am just getting started. I cannot believe the offers of help I am getting from coder/potters, there are so many of them. And how many countries. This is amazing. One message from a country where information is kept highly secretive really moved me. And an offer from a Google engineer to help. Or even a suggestion to move the dark web!

I have never been really emotional, but this is pushing me. Plus, my wife and I spent the first night with a family whose son drowned in the local lake two days ago. It was the most horrible thing we have ever endured, even worse than this. I really needed all this side-channel support in the last two days of their sorrow, it helped so much.

The old logo is from the late 1980s and was used to promote Desktop Insight at trade shows and to advertise it in magazines and later on the early internet. It was done in Aldus Freehand, an early competitor to Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphic illustration was revolutionary at the time. Amazingly, many artists even today do not know what vector graphics is, they are still working with "pixel pusher" apps like Photoshop.

I asked Gemini how it made this, and it said: "I started with a blank canvas of random digital noise (a chaotic grid of pixels) and gradually refined that noise over multiple steps based on your prompt and the layout of your original image. There was not need for a vector stage; the smooth transitions, glowing embers, and soft gradients are baked right into the generation process from the very beginning."

Glazing black clay bodies stained with manganese is just about impossible with typical transparent glazes. The glaze over-fluxes the clay surface and ruins the color. Worse, if it accelerates surface maturity, the body can blister or generate LOI gases that blister the glaze. How about transparent glazes over a black engobe instead? At least the body color is not lost. But the wrong transparent glaze can do what you see here (inside left).

These mugs are a buff stoneware, Plainsman M340. A black engobe was applied by pouring the inside and dipping the outside two-thirds of the way down.

Left: A L3954F black engobe was applied inside and upper exterior at leather hard. After firing to cone 6 using the PLC6DS schedule, G2926B—which is crystal clear on M340 itself—became completely clouded over the engobe because bubbles generated during firing remained trapped in the melt.

Right: The entire mug was dipped in GA6-B. The Alberta Slip particles and the melt characteristics of GA6-B promote bubble coalescence and escape, producing an exceptionally glossy jet-black surface over the same engobe.

When you learn to make and use engobes correctly, they make magic possible. Here I am turning a dark rustic body into a smooth white one (rear mugs) and a white body into a dark one (front). The engobes have been applied at the leather-hard stage. That is the perfect time, the engobe and body are clay bodies, designed to fit each other; they dry together and fire together creating an inseparable bond.

Handles have been applied, and they have dried to stiff leather hard. Engobe was poured in, poured out, then the mugs were pressed, lip down, into it and extracted. No dwell time was needed. This dipping engobe is DIY thixotropic (not available commercially anywhere). That means I tuned it just before use, to just the right degree of gel (enough for it to drain to the right thickness, then gel just as the last few drops fall from the rim). Honestly, these are a beauty to behold at this stage, the silky, drip-free surface is just so perfect.

You have 147 glaze recipes. How can you get your head around all of them? Is glaze chemistry needed? No, that's a "maybe" way in the future. Right now, you need to start organized documentation. The recipe for each. A few pictures of each fired on different clay bodies, different thicknesses. Perhaps slow and fast-cooled firing. This is what an account at Insight-live does well. What it does even better is tracking your testing. The first step is to assign each recipe a proper code number (replacing these) and write that on all test specimens and buckets. From this point on, learn. Record every observation you make about each in its notes.

Through all of this, constant use in the studio (or factory) will never stop surfacing problems (e.g. settling in the bucket, crazing, running, blistering, material issues, etc.). The seriousness of each will determine the level of attack. First, identify the mechanism of the desired fired result. If it is a base recipe plus additions of colorants, opacifiers or variegators, then check if the base of one of the other glazes has a similar surface texture and character. If so, then could the additives in the troublesome one be used with the better base? If not, then it's time to sanity check the recipe and bring out the heavy guns of at least looking at the chemistry. But in Insight-live, you only need to turn on the display of the unity formula (there is nothing else to do). Next, make sure each material in the recipe links to one in the material database (so the calculated formula is accurate). Then compare the calculated unity formula with a limit formula (often a simple sanity check, like with the recipe, quickly spots oxides that are in excess or are short.

A potter reports that a switch from G-200 feldspar to Mahavir, and EPK to Imerys kaolin, has resulted in this transparent glaze becoming more satin. Is that possible? Yes. Because this glaze is on a unity formula tipping point.

To see it, you do not need to know how to do glaze chemistry, just how to display the calculated unity formulas side-by-side. My Insight-live shows them here. The material change has little effect. But there is an anomaly: 0.29 MgO. That is magnesia matte territory. The MgO is very likely there to help bring the thermal expansion as low as possible (to avoid crazing). For people who cool their kilns relatively quickly, this fires glossy. But a material change could well affect the cooling rate needed to maintain the gloss. That being said, the potter may also be firing slower, yet attributing the mattness to the materials. Or it could be a combination of both.

This is a popular glaze, among others in the book "Mastering Glazes". In Ron Roy's circumstances, and for many others, it is glossy. But for this potter, a small change (in the recipe materials and also likely in firing) has produced this issue.

The functional surfaces on these pieces all employ the GA6-B base honey glaze recipe. On Plainsman native stoneware clays, especially darker burning ones, typical transparents are very prone to micro-bubble and clouding issues. But not this glaze. The likely reason is that Alberta Slip contains coarser particles (it is only processed to 42 mesh), these act as a fining agent.

This glaze brings multiple other benefits:
-It fits Plainsman bodies, all of them.
-It is made from materials mined in Canada.
-The Alberta Slip base produces a thixotropic slurry.
-It acts as a very good base for dark colors and black.

The top mugs are GA6-B inside and out (MNS clay body). The top right has a black engobe under it.
Bottom left: GA6-B inside, GA6-C outside (MNS and Coffee Clay)
Bottom right: L4768E Coffee casting and M340 casting.