Is there a difference between real and fake ash glazes?

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Hello, my name is Kathy King and welcome to the for Flux Sake podcast. I'm coming to you from the Harvard Ceramics program in our fair city, Austin, Massachusetts. I'm here with Rose and Matt Katz of the world famous ceramic materials workshop and they are ready to answer your burning questions about clay and glaze. Happy New Year, Matt and Rose. Oh my god, it's the new year. How is that possible? Happy New Year, I guess. I mean, hopefully it won't be as big of a dumpster fire. It'll be a smaller dumpster fire. Just trash can fire. That's all we can hope for. Yes, just a trash can fire. Dude, we don't even dare to dream anymore. Oh my goodness. Well, great. Well, how was your holiday season? It was good. Yeah, it's always good. We get to see family and that's always amazing. We live out in the woods with most of my family. So Rose, Rose gets to see her family during the holidays. So it choice that. Refreshing drama as opposed to normal drama. Now you guys want the weirdest thing. Rose, Rose and her family get along. We don't have the wrong. I believe it. I believe it. It's you guys. It's so weird. They all like each other. They spend quality time together. And there's no shouting. It's unnatural. It's unnatural to be honest. Good for your children, I suppose. It's probably good for them to have their role models. Oh my goodness gracious. Well, we got some rest. But after the heavy show and sale season, that I'm sure many studios had out there. But this one was particularly wild. We don't talk about this too much. But probably the number one thing that affects when we're able to get together to do podcasts is to show and sail. Like literally Kathy will just block off the month of December. And be like, I'm not talking to any of you. Exactly. I got so much to say I'll to deal with. Well, it is. I mean, despite being associated with Harvard, we are the majority of our budget is through registration. So the doing these shows and sales is one of our two biggest fundraisers for the year. And so we have 102 artists. And they exhibit over the course of a week. And they retain 60% of the sales. And we take 40%. So it's super important. But the thing that I noticed, and I talked to a number of different studios that had record-breaking sales this year. And I was like, that's awesome. What the heck? Why? And I just in talking to people, definitely the trend was, you can't buy an original gift for any, or a unique gift for anybody anymore. It's like, everything's so accessible. So to be able to get something handmade, you see a lot of people getting office gifts or holiday gifts. But, and that was great. And they're also looking for a bargain. I mean, let's not, you know, kid ourselves. Let's not kid ourselves. You know, the fact that they could buy a handmade mug for $25. And I'm trying to tell my, I'm trying to tell my, that's our minimum, you know. And I'm trying to tell my people, you spent more making that. You think you're having us do all this. If you added it all together in a real time, like your own studio, it's like, oh, you would put your, your prices up. But all of our people did a good job in just like inching up a little bit. But the thing that disturbed me the most was what people were willing to buy. And not, oh, no, no. I said, "I'm scared." Well, nothing against my amazing people. But, you know, you can't see everything. When you're working with like hundreds of, you know, maybe like 150 pots in your display, you know, we had a case where a woman had come up to the cash register and she had this piece. It was like a jar that had a seashell knob on it and it had blue glazes on it, looked really beachy. And she brought it up and, you know, we're all working the sales. So the cashier, who's one of our instructors, said, "Listen, there's a big piece of shivered glaze off, you know, missing off of the lid." And she's like, "Yeah, that's okay." And he's like, "No, that's really dangerous." Like, you don't probably want that. She's like, "No, I'll turn it to the wall." That's okay. And he was like, "I insist you should not." And so I got called in. And I was like, you know, I convinced her like, "Oh, this is just not quality." You know, the quality, I'm sure the artist did not catch list, I don't know. And she said, "Well, I'll get in touch with the artist." And you know, I'm here from, I live in Martha's Vineyard, which is a beautiful island off of K-Cod. And I'm like, "Girl, you don't have one shop on Martha's Vineyard that is selling a pot with a seashell knob." Oh, you know, there used to be a lot more potteries on Martha's Vineyard. There aren't too many names. Oh, good point. Okay. Well, there you go. Well, I'm moving. That's my cheat that's my. That's my. Hey, I'm okay with low standards. You know, I mean, now that I'm older and make a living of, you know, but like for pots, like back in the day, I, you know, I would give a lot of glaze advice in exchange for seconds. And so I still have what I call the Metcats Memorial Collection, which is hundreds of pots that I have been given for free that are definitively seconds. Yes. And nice pots, I've got, I've got a shivered pot by a very nice artist that lives right above our fireplace that has specifically turned backwards. Oh, okay. Wow. I guess so. Perhaps I protest too much. Maybe I should have let that one go. It wasn't clear. I didn't pay for any of these. Right. You know, but those individuals, of course, are balanced out by people who have taken your classes with us and bringing up pieces and asking me about why this glaze is crazed and should I be selling it and done it, done it, done it. So I'm like, oh, you can't win. You can't win. It's like all sales final. That's all I can say. The people are too smart. Get out of here. Exactly. Get it. So anyway, it was a good season. I hope everybody all the hardworking community studios out there. A bit producer band. Did you all have a sale? Yes. We did our very first sale this year. Nice. And we had, I think, maybe seven whole people come to it. And so we started slow, but I feel like we're like re-educating our county about what handmade pots are. And we're also literally on the Jersey Shore. So they're used to coming to the shore for experiences, not really to buy art. So even though it was a small bit mighty crowd. So hopefully we're going to grow and next year it'll be a little better. I suggest C-shell, nodged, covered jars. All the rummin' up. Beachy. We all start small. That's a great place to begin. That's really true. It is. Awesome. All right. Well, shall we? Shall we? We shall. All right. Yes. Let's do it. Excellent. Excellent. So our first question comes to us from Oliver from Los Angeles. And Oliver has a question about ashes and glazes. Hello. This is Oliver from Los Angeles. And I'm curious about ash glazes and synthetic ash glazes. I understand that you can make ash glazes from various kinds of ashes. And that some people rinse or wash the ashes. And that some people don't use actual ashes at all. But use the chemical components that would be found in ashes. So I was just wondering if there's anything in particular one should know about making and using ash glazes that maybe differs from other types of glazes. Or if you all had any tips in terms of, I don't know, hydration level. or application methods or oxidation versus reduction, anything like that. Personally, working at a Cone 10 studio, so if there are any nuances there, we'd also be happy to hear about them. Thanks so much. So we're not talking about human, then. [LAUGHTER] Those are pretty regulated. Listen, it comes up. It comes really? So? Oh, yeah. We hear a lot about pets, so. Did I ever tell that story that I was approached when I was in college for a ceramic engineering professor who had this entrepreneurial ideal for starting a business, and he needed a pottery student to design pots and vases for him. And I took this meeting, and he's like, well, my idea is that we're going to sell pottery, and it's going to be glazed with people's pets. Yeah. I think I'm good. I'm good. You're looking at great idea. It sounds like it'd be really successful. The funerary industry is a big one. No, no, but this is the plant ashes. I mean, Oliver doesn't specify. And actually, that's an interesting one, because of geography. I actually just had a really interesting experience, because I taught a workshop at Gaia in Bali a couple of months ago. And they were having a real problem because of the types of wood that they have available in Bali. They were explicitly using it for the kiln because it's a highly vegetated place, but everything that they were using for their wood kiln was coffee. They called it coffee tree ash, but when you see the coffee, it's really more like a shrub or a vine. But it just was not melting. And I was never able to get a chemical analysis on it, but we took some of the ash and did some experiments that I compared with wood ash that I get around here of traditional northeastern trees, and that it just did not melt the way normal ashes work. That it just was absolutely, totally refractory, right? Refractory is the opposite of a flux. But ashes do work like they do work. Can you, did you ever work with an ash glaze? - Oh yeah, those were super popular back in the day. And I remember being in New York City at the 92nd Street Y, they had a lot of ash glazes there. And I don't see them as often in community studios. We don't have one right now, but people are always trying to sprinkle a little something, something on pots going into the kiln. - Yeah, well, they, they, they, if not calculated and applied properly, they can be super runny and they can like, absolutely ruin your kiln shells. And so it takes, it takes a deft hand, you know, I always have to bring up, may, may be my absolute single favorite potter, no offense to Kathy. But Ellen Shankin is awesome. - Yeah. - She, man, she just knows how to use form and glaze and she's using fake ash glazes, which Oliver was talking about. And it just so beautifully works against these geometric forms and really, really good, good combinations of, of shape and surface. But yeah, ashes, plan ashes are totally ceramic materials. Like that, I mean, that's the, the short version of them. But you have to be careful in your handling. - Yes. - I mean, 'cause you're producing live and that's caustic. That's a good way to lose a layer of skin. - Yeah, and so yeah, what Rose is talking about is the big problem is that, you know, there's two ways of getting ash onto a pot. If we're talking about natural wood ashes, is that one, wood kilns, that's what wood kilns do. They burn the tree to make, to make the heat, but then the ash is allowed to continue from the, from the, from the, the chamber into the pots and then it builds up and it's the ashes, it's silicon, aluminum, calcium, and sodium. Like that's literally what's in the ashes. And that's why you can glaze, quote unquote, in a wood ash firing. The problem with wood ash firings is that you need to get enough ash buildup on your pots to cover it completely and that's really hard. And much less the temperatures and wood kilns sort of fluctuate up and down, so it's harder to get them to melt and all that. But the other way is you can just take ash of just plain old fire. Like Rosenai have a wood stove and we collect our wood ashes and, you know, we'll use them in the studio. - Yeah, we've got so much that we were not collecting them anymore. - That's true. The last one went on the, on the wood pot, on the burn pile out in the, in the backyard. But the definite thing to know if you are using wood ashes material is A, what type of wood you're using. Every single tree out there has different chemistry. So going back to the coffee wood. That material I think was so much silica and alumina and so little flux, it was not melting. You know, up here with our wood, what, it's a bunch of beach and oak. - Ash oak birch is a big one maple, maple, yeah, although maple's kind of a lower BTU, it's not great for firewood. - Rose is a firewood. - She's a firewood expert, okay. - No, I would not say an expert now. I just know what burns better in my wood stove. - Okay, yeah, she's a hunter for quality. - Because wood fire, fireers, they pay a lot of attention to what kind of wood is going into the kilns, correct? - They'll commonly just get, if they are obsessive, they will get one type of wood for their entire process. And so everybody's got their preferences to what works 'cause it's the trees, it's the time of year, they were harvested, it's the-- - How seasoned they are, all that stuff. - The seasoning is a really big deal. - Yeah, if they're kiln dried, if they're seasoned more than a year, if they're, yeah, there's all kinds of different, if it's green. - Yeah, when you're using just the burned ash, obviously it still matters what you use, but now you can just mix it up as a glaze. What Rose was talking about it being caustic though, is that there is soluble alkaline metals, hydroxides in the ash. And what that means is when you mix it with water, it turns highly alkaline in that water. And that is corrosive, like people think about corrosive as being acids, but alkaline things are much more corrosive. And one of the crazy things if you've worked with wood ash glazes is like your hands will feel super soft afterwards. And that's 'cause it's literally eating away-- - Eating your flesh. - Yeah. (laughing) - Oh, that's that great. - And it's nice and soft, and then you peel off a layer of your skin and it's still soft. - That's okay, we are all old enough. Do you guys remember that commercial where they would like show the ladies like soaking their hands in the soap as like a manicure treatment? They'd be like, my hands are so soft. Yeah, 'cause literally your peeling away dead skin, like a horror movie. (laughing) - Calgon, take me away. (laughing) - But you can treat your real wood ashes to get rid of it and that's called washing. It's pretty easy, put on gloves, take your ashes, mix them with water, and then let it sit, let the ashes settle, and then decant the water. And you're gonna wanna do that two or three times to get rid of all that caustic generally sodium. And actually the cool thing is when you wash your ashes, you get a much more of the regulating effect that most people associate with wood ash which is sort of the run out sheet. - Oh, I didn't do that. - Yeah, yeah, washed ash will give you much better regulating than unwashed ash. - Okay. - The thing though is, as all of us mentioned, is that there is also fake wood ash and Ellen Chink and the Maestra, most of it uses fake wood ash. Fake wood ash is hilarious because fake wood ash is using the regular materials in the glaze lab. And it's generally gonna be like calcium in kaolin and silica. But literally when you look at the chemistry like of the real wood ash and the fake wood ash glazes, they actually have exactly the same chemistry. Like they are molecule for molecule the same. It's just one comes from burning this plant and one comes from combining whiting and kaolin and silica. And so they do it. I tend to like the fake wood ashes more because you can control the chemistry. Like you can manipulate it. You can use a different alchemyr flux. You can get different colorants and all of that type of thing in there and different reactions. - And you're not a slave to what type of wood you're used. - Yes. And they're consistent because like the other thing to note if you're using, like even the wood ash from us, like the batch we have now will be different from we got wood from a new supplier for this winter. So like when we use that for ash in the studio, it's gonna be different. Like it's definitely gonna be different. And so having that level of consistency with the fake wood ashes better. Again, people wanna act like there's more conceptual purity in the real word versus the fake wood. Like I find whatever. But chemically, like it is exactly exactly the same. And so it really does depend on how you use it and what you want to do with it. The last thing that I will say though is that, yeah, that people, that even the term fake wood ash in real wood ash that because the real wood ash is just a naturally occurring material, you can totally use it and manipulate the glaze like you would any other glaze. And we've done a ton of testing with that where you could sort of add silicon alumina and move it around stalls map and get it to go matte and get it to go glossy and get it to stop rivuleting and enhance the rivuleting. So it is, it is just basic chemistry even with natural wood ash. It's just, you're just left with the chemical. they ask of like what the original material is. - Meos. It's okay. (laughing) - Wow, Rose, we're in that government. (laughing) It's like you would've been lulled into a state of deep relaxation listening to your husband wax on about sleep-free. - You've been sent to sleep. (laughing) - Yeah, because like, sleeping with my eyes open, am I there? I might've been a little bit. (laughing) - Oh my God. - Today's episode is brought to you by the Rosenfield Collection of Functional Ceramic Art. The collection exists as an online source for research and inspiration, featuring photos of thousands of objects made by over 800 artists. The images are high quality and can be used with no permission required. To find out more, visit www.Rosenfield Collection.com. - Glazes don't make sense. But that's why Rosenair here at Serant Materials Workshop.com helping translate glazes for real ceramicists like you. So join us for our brand new class, starting October 1st. For everyone from beginners to masters, we clear up all the mysteries of glazes to make them work for you. Join us at Serant Materials Workshop.com for making glazes make sense. - All right, let's go on to our next question, which comes from Jackie from Oak Park, Illinois, California, I don't know. All right, Jackie from Oak Park has a question and we get this quite a bit, but about brushing glazes. So let's get to it. - Hi, Matt and Rose. This is Jackie from Oak Park with a question for you about brushing versus dipping glazes. Someone at my community studio mentioned that they read in an online glazed forum that you shouldn't mix brushing glazes with dipping glazes as it can lead to trouble with various glazed flaws. Assuming we're talking about the same commercial glaze that comes, say, in a pint jar for brushing and as a dry glaze for dipping, is that true? It smells fishy to me. What do you think? Thanks for weighing in, I'm a huge fan. - Okay, so A, if I may comment, everybody in the glazed room is an expert on something. Now she said she read it on an online forum, which is a little bit different, but it is amazing like what I hear and there's a kernel of, I don't know what you're gonna answer, but there's a kernel of truth to it, but it's just a create glazed flaws. I don't know, take it away. - Where do you start, right? - Well, I mean, I've been. - Well, Kathy is exactly right. Like the kernel of truth is there. - Mm-hmm, yeah, I would agree. I could see why they would think that. - Yeah, but I can just feel in my bones like what the memble on the ceramic internet forums are. And say this all the time, I'm like, we're people that make our living is on the ceramics internet. - I heard. - Okay. - Oh yeah. - Oh yeah, there's no doubt about that. I mean, no doubt about that. - No, I'm married to one too, for sure. - Yeah, go ahead. - No, it's just that, yeah, like you say, if everybody's an expert on the internet, and it's not even a ceramics thing, it's the whole problem with our society of everybody going around throwing their expertise around. But it's not right, but it's not wrong. And I mean, I guess, you know, that's the bigger question of, you know, sort of, you work in a public studio where probably some people are trying to sneak in commercial glazes, and you work with commercial glazes, and maybe some handmade glazes, have you ever found a problem, Kathy? - Well, no, I mean, I welcome people bringing in commercial glazes. I can't afford to provide them for a studio. But, you know, if you're gonna give my glaze mixers a break from having to nonstop, you know, mix ice blue celladon, then great. But the, I wouldn't want them dumping the pint into anything or mixing them, but on the pot itself, sure, it's just about knowing how to apply. We do talk about, you know, trying to make a glaze in a bucket act like that pint of commercial glazes, and then that's gonna involve altering it, which is what I do, adding a gum to the glaze so that it makes brushable. And we don't want everybody doing that and then dumping that back in. But yeah. - And, Rose, do you have any history using commercial glazes? - I mean, very little, very, very little. I mean, I think I've tried it here and there, but that's about it. - They're amazing now. I mean, it's crazy what they do. - Yeah, Rose came from a more hardcore studio from the start. Like, I used them early on in high school 'cause my studio just had the commercial glazes, but when I went to college, it moved away. But yeah, commercial glazes, another problem with them. They're perfectly serviceable 'cause they work well. Like, that's the whole thing about commercial glazes that they're made to work well. The catch is how they work well and why they work well, which is sort of the basis of what Jackie is asking, which is commercial glazes chemically or the same thing as the dipping glazes, the handmade glazes. There chemically, there is nothing different about them. The thing that they do is that they're adding in brushing agents. And that brushing agent is 90% of it is CMC. And CMC is a material you might see in some recipes if you use it, but if you're generally just making up buckets for dipping or spraying, you commonly don't use it 'cause you don't need it. - Yeah, and you don't wanna use that for spraying because it gums up or no. - Oh, no. - Spray gum. - Terrible. - Yeah, it'll turn, it'll just cake everything up because it hardens real well, which is good for commercial glazes that the actual application gets really hard. So it's kinda hard to mess up when you're moving from the application stage to the kill. But the CMC is, it's called a brushing agent. I don't like to think of it that way. I like to think of it as a water retention agent. It keeps the bisqueer from drawing that water in very quickly which is why your dipping glaze is just dry instantly because the water gets sucked into the bisqueer. And when you have a brushing glaze, you don't want that. And probably everybody's experienced it when they've tried to brush their quote unquote dipping glazes that they just don't brush because the bisqueer just draws all the water in and it dries instantly. Well, the CMC keeps the water in the physical glaze so you can keep brushing and brushing and brushing and get it super smooth. Would I want a ton of CMC in my dipping glazes? Well, I should say, it's CMC and then there's usually some bentonite and then there's usually a fungicide, which is 'cause CMC Roths, so they'll put in fungicides to keep them from rotting. But that's usually what most brushing, but brushing media is. Would I want it in my dipping glazes? No, no, it's just an added cost. It's not adding any benefit to your working properties at all. So it's just an added cost that you're kind of thrown away. Yeah, that's not wrong. I'm just trying to think, is it horribly detrimental if it did? No, it's like I've added CMC to glazes to try to get it to do different effects, but it just doesn't play a part in your application. It's just goo. I mean, it is. Exactly. No, when you mix, when you mix CMC with water, it just turns to slime. Yeah. Yes, thank goodness. That's awesome. That's what we're using it for. We like this slime. And with anything, it's like, I adding mine to my translucent glazes. I just over time know exactly how much to put in and how much to apply to the pot. I wanted to mention, for those that are spraying, though, it is possible to spray them. It's just watering them down. And we have an amazing artist and resident at Harvard Ceramics, Chenlao, who, how, Chenlao, how, sorry, we'll cut that. But Lulu is amazing. She does all these sprayed sculptures with underglies. And so she's just watering those down. And she uses the whole velvet line of underglases. Yeah, it's just like if you get it too thick, your gun is impossible to clean. It's not fun. I've done that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of which, Jackie's question is also talking about, you know, sort of applying them and getting different flaws. You definitely can get flaws from that because they are going to physically particle pack on the bisqueer differently. Yeah. So it's really an application issue. It's not that the glazes are so different. It's your application is different. We talked about something similar. When we talked about underglases a while back and we were talking about how like a lot of times glazes don't coat well on underglases. Well, that's because those underglases have CMC in them and that it is going to restrict the absorption of the glaze from the water from the glaze you're trying to put on top of it. So your exposed naked bisqueer will have an absorption rate of like 15 and then your underglases are going to be will have an absorption rate of eight. And it just like literally does not pull as much glaze to the surface. So you get a super thin coating on your under glaze. And so it can make things go really funky like that. So it's the same thing is like if you say put down a brushing glaze and then you try to dip on top of that, like try to line them up 50, 50, you're probably going to get a really bad application where it's trying to apply over the brushing glaze and over the bisqueer. And so it definitely can be tricky. Is it impossible? If you're layering on top of them, that's your added thickness. That's an application problem again. So you can create glaze flaws that way. It does that mean it absolutely is going to happen. No, if you experiment with it, you probably can master the application between the two. Is it the worst thing in the world? No, but yeah, it's not it's not ideal. It's definitely not the way I would do it. But like, is it the worst thing to do? No, you can totally do it. But I would definitely experiment with it and make sure you know that the application is going to be successful. You're all right. Well, I think we have time for one more because we want to start the new year with a sense of pride. Don't you think? Okay. So let's do this. So our final question comes from Pirkita from Finland. I hope that's that's right. And they would like to know about Colourants. Hello, my name is Pirkita. I am sending a message from Finland. And I'm curious about mesh size and size of particles of Colourants. I've written down in my notebook years and years and years ago about iron oxide that you should use at least 100 mesh Steve, maybe even 120 mesh when making a clays that has iron oxide because it is such a small particle. Especially if you're making a salad in place, you you want it to be even and not have freckles on the surface of the piece. But how about other Colourants like copper, goblet, chrome, etc. Is there like a rule of thumb for a successful clays with these Colourants when it comes to mesh size? Very curious to know. Thank you very much. Bye. I don't know the answer to this. So this is exciting. I mean, I think there's definitely there's different mesh sizes of certain Colourants. Not all of them per se come in different mesh sizes though. I mean, the ones I'm thinking of are like manganese, film and night, like I've never seen a granular root deal. Have you? I have. You have? I'm old though. We used to use it back in the in the pioneer days. Wagon, wagon days. Is that when you had all the hipster memes of somebody throwing on a wagon wheel and another kid's video as fast as possible doing it sideways? Well, Rose, Rose as always is exactly right. At least here in the states, most of our Colourants, the only mesh size control we have is larger, not smaller. So certain ingredients, ilmenite, manganese are the two you'll see most commonly. Routil, I have seen before, but as Rose, it's not common, but most of those, they're meant to be chunky. So like granular manganese, you'll add into like a cone six clay body to make it spotty because there's an effect. We call spotty body that can happen in in stone wears with high fire clay content and reduction, but people like to look so they want to fake it in cone six oxidation. So if you mix in granular manganese, it'll do that. There are occasionally materials. Manganese on the opposite ends, through our consulting work, we have seen the ability to buy different mesh sizes of manganese. Yeah, huge array of different mesh sizes, but you don't see it in the ceramic supply world very often. No, you just generally go to the store and you're like, this is your manganese, here you go. And that's pretty much the case for all of the Colourants. But what Prietka is saying is dead on accurate for the iron. And iron is an interesting one, but it's not it's not actually the mesh size. Mesh size is not the problem with iron. The issue with iron is that iron likes to agglomerate, which is like it sticks together in little little chunklets. So even though the particles are small, that's a your vocab word for the day. We need to start that agglomerate. So they will make little chunks and they can be a big problem in certain materials are worse at it. Certain forms of iron. So red iron oxide tends to not be that bad, but black iron oxide, if not mixed well, can totally make agglomerates. Oh my gosh, I hate mixing with that one. The trauma rose, the trauma. Yeah, there's like certain color. It's just like I can't get it to not stick together. Like you pass it through like saves twice and it's still clumbia. It's just a mess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because iron does agglomerate, sivs, sivs really, you know, one thing I do firmly believe is that sivs are there to catch agglomerates. People think that it mixes better whatever it does not. All sivs do is to catch agglomerates. It's not like catching bigger particles because 100 mesh siv at every particle size we're using in a glaze is under 100 mesh. It's not about stopping large materials from getting through. It's trying to break up agglomerates. And you can do it through siving or we tend to do it through more intense faster mixers. And so you can do one, you can do both, but we actually don't siv a lot in the workshop. We tend to just have very intense. High velocity shearing. Something sheep don't like. Well, if you go to the gas, you might get them in the wrong place. The selenon thing though that she was talking about actually is really true. And one thing I will say about iron is that selenons, especially the traditional Chinese selenons, that light blue selenon, need such a small amount of iron. It's generally about a half percent iron that that small amount needs to be distributed evenly to get the homogenous color and to really get it sort of that jewel tone blue. And actually the best trick I have learned from people over the years is oftentimes you'll see selenon recipes that'll use a terracotta clay as an ingredient. So you'll see in the states here, red art is the classic ones. You see red art as an ingredient and then there won't be a colorant. Well, the secret is the red art is the colorant that they are using that red clay because the iron particles inside that red clay are so small and then get really evenly distributed. So in fact, using those high iron clays as a colorant does work. Yellow ochers, the same thing. Yellow ochers, yellow iron oxide bearing clay. And so it just gives you much better homodonization of the color. But like we say, it's more of just an iron problem. Those two are air floated too. So they're processed differently and they're really fine particle. Yeah, absolutely. And that's that's just going to give you a better mix. But mesh size is all in all. No, we don't have a ton of control over it. You know, when I have played with them before, things like different mesh size manganese, it does make a difference for some of the fake bronzes and some manganese crystalline glazes and stuff like that. But really at the end of the day, it's more about the mix than the particle size. Well, I think that if anybody needs a party idea, they should play this episode and take a shot every time the word a glomerate is mentioned. But y'all, that is all the time we have until I see you here or on our Patreon farewell, Matt and Rose. See you on Patreon, everybody. Well folks, that's it for this week's episode of For Flux Sake. I'd like to thank the listeners who submitted questions this week. And if you want your question answered on the show, shoot us an email at [email protected]. So join us next time and win in your studio. Remember what Rose always says. Always remember to test test test. This is a test of the emergency glazed system. Hey for Fluxsaic friends, wish you could hang with us a little more each month. Well, you can come join us at our For Fluxsaic Band Club on Patreon. You'll get discounts on our new merch, chances to chat with us during live Hangouts and extra episodes just for you. Find us at patreon.com, backslash For Fluxsaic podcast. 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