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Consider how valuable your glaze and body development records are. Are they in a three-ring binder? Or do you have pictures and notes scattered across apps on your phone? If you're testing, adjusting, or developing glazes, bodies, underglazes or engobes, traditional notebooks and binders are holding you back. They don't have keywords, and they are only grouped, not categorized. With Insight-live, you can link recipes to each other and to important details like photos, materials, firing schedules and URLs. Organize test recipes into projects, classify them with typecodes (tokens), calculate chemistry, and create mix tickets. Research materials and perform keyword searches. Put anything side-by-side to study and determine the next move. Physical notebooks can’t do this—but your account at Insight-live.com can!

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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 write on all test specimens) 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 first fix to try.
-With all that clay (29 total) it is likely to crack while drying (and then crawl during firing). Try reducing shrinkage with 29 kaolin (no ball clay). If it still cracks, substitute some for calcined kaolin.
-And those colorants: It is better to use cobalt oxide than carbonate. A burnt umber increase could be tested 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).
-Perhaps the best option is to get a different glaze recipe. This is a calcium matte to G1214Z1 would be a good start. For a more pleasant surface, G2934.

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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.

This picture has its own page with more detail, click here to see it.
That is how you know what it is. The recipe. The firing schedule. The pictures. The notes. Its project, 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 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 the records and the records from the code-numbered specimens.
| 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-targeted LIMS (lab info management system). It does glaze chemistry and physical testing the “Digitalfire way”. For technicians, educators, potters and hobbyists. |
| 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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