Are Your Glaze Recipes Lost in Binders or Buried on Your Phone?

Keeping your valuable notes, recipes, test results, pictures and notes in a three ring binder? Or are your pictures scattered across your phone with no keywords or context? If you're testing, adjusting, or developing glazes, bodies, underglazes, engobes, etc. for ceramics, traditional notebooks and binders could be holding you back. With Insight, you can link recipes to each other and to important details like photos, materials and firing schedules. Organize test recipes into projects, classify them, calculate chemistry, and create mix tickets. Research materials and perform keyword searches. Physical notebooks can’t do this—but your account at Insight-live.com can!

Related Pictures

How many simultaneous testing projects can you manage at once?

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This two-inch pile of lab test body and glaze mix tickets is about half of what I have tested in the past year. I have added thousands of pictures too (using my smartphone). I just realized why I am doing a lot more testing. It is so much easier to organize the record keeping in my Insight-live.com account. I can manage so many separate testing projects. I have so much more of a sense that I am progressing. And it feels great to build such an organized set of records that I can refer back to.

Never do ceramic body or glaze testing without code numbers

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That is how you know what it is. The recipe. The firing schedule. The pictures. The notes. The project it was in, information about what came before it and what developed from it. These mugs and that test bar are the same clay, I am doing a preliminary tests on a new material from our quarry, it is called "Battle Clay". This code number identifies all my records regarding this test mix in my insight-live.com account. In future I can identify the specimens from my records and my records from the code-numbered specimens.

From Scribbles to Success: Fixing This Glaze Recipe

Pottery glaze recipe scribbled onto a card

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If you do DIY pottery glazing you may have recipes scribbled onto cards like this. But the card is not the big issue here, it is that recipe! It really needs some work. Here is what could be done.
-Add this as a recipe in an account at insight-live.com (and assign it a code number) to start a testing project. Along the way document it with pictures, firing schedules, general notes, etc.
-With all that feldspar it is sure to craze, reducing the high thermal expansion K₂O it contributes in favor of low expansion MgO (from talc) is the most likely fix.
-With all that clay (29 total) it is likely to crack while drying (and then crawl during firing), split it into part calcined kaolin and part raw kaolin (the ball clay is not needed).
-And those colorants: It is better to use cobalt oxide than carbonate. Perhaps the burnt umber could be increased to eliminate the need for both the manganese and iron (since it supplies both and has zero LOI). Better yet, remove all four and use a black stain (7% would likely be enough).

Links

URLs	https://digitalfire.com/university/insight-live/overview/Insight-Live%20Overview.html Insight-Live.com Overview Video
Glossary	Code Numbering In a ceramics lab, studio or classroom specimens of hundreds of glazes and bodies may be present. A code numbering system that links these to written or computer records is essential.
Glossary	Digitalfire Insight-Live A cloud-hosted ceramics-targetted LIMS (lab info management system) enabling collection, organization and learning from data to develop, adjust and study their recipes, materials and processes.
Glossary	Glaze Recipes Stop! Think! Do not get addicted to the trafficking in online glaze recipes. Learn to make your own or adjust/adapt/fix what you find online.

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