Alky drip

What's your set up? Bob built me a rig involving a huge syringe and a control box, all run by an arduino.

The best advice I can give you is to go slowly. If you try to reduce too fast you'll get carbon trapping, and with gold and silver it's just ugly.

I've never tried to reduce on the way up. Will be interested in your results.

I think that reducing 'on the way up" - at less than about 1750 degrees - will cause the Zinc to bubble out of the glaze - that's why I had so much trouble reducing in a gas kiln - am interested to see what results you get.

Arnie

I agree, i have built a unit that can do propane and electric, both computer controlled. If you are reducing around cone 8-9 I believe you will get the zinc to boil out of the glaze. Maybe you can get it to work. Is your goal to produce reds? I think you can get the result you are looking for by reducing on the cooling and have better control over the crystal growth. Also, there are nice alumina tubes you can get from Omega that come in packs of 10 that might be better for your dripper. Your copper tube is going to melt at 1082C.

One last thing and it looks like youve been told this - that first drip of alcohol will cause a bang! I reduce in the cooling, and what i do is when i'm getting ready to reduce, i put on protective gloves, lift the lid and slide a 1/2"thick piece of firebrick under the lid to prop it up. Turn on the gas or alcohol, let the flame pop, then pull the brick and put the lid back down. First time I did it without the pressure release, i jumped the lid about 3 inches off the kiln.

Yo,

I have SOMETHING going, but it is not like others reds really and its extremely difficult to reproduce consistently.

I also used to believe reducing on the way up would produce undesireable results based off of others saying so, but oxblood glazes are done this way and many contain zinc (albeit at much smaller amounts) so why not?

I also believe post fire reduction cannot penetrate the glaze well to get a deeper reder color without the metal rust look. Research says it needs to be reduced in a non post fire way if you want to penetrate the glaze.

I started off on my non post fire reduced reds based off of oxblood glazes but my path has veered from that a bit. I am not using anything unordinary... everything is your regular everyday glaze materials. I could be mistaken, but I believe many doing reds other than post fire reduced copper ones are using something a little special?

plus i cant get red in the bg. But i like that mine are glassy and have no hints of being metallic or rusty. my post fire reduced reds were never really glassy. 

G

Here are a bunch of pics. Some of these are probably on here somewhere already.

They are glassy and refractive. And some obviously were looking for other darker colors. But all were fired in similar ways.

Some of them have body reduction in the clay.

I'm going to try my new alcohol injection set up this week, will post pics.

Fa how'd it go?

Hey Annie....

I have a few... but none of the ones posted, and those were pretty much the only ones that really came out nice. The few I currently have just don't cut it in my eye...

I have just barely started throwing again (10 month break...) perhaps I can possibly get out a nice one for you in time.

Ian Childer's workshop sounds fun! I hope you get a lot out of it, I'm sure you will.

Honestly I don't leave any bungs open... Ive gotten used to it I guess. But my top one does have a few small holes in it so in a way I am providing at least a small amount of oxygen throughout the reduction.

I do suggest leaving one open on the initial introduction of alky tho... especially if you are new... as our close encounter came from a first time from Pam with it all closed up. And we have done it a few times with the top one open initially and the results were no different so it cant hurt.

G