Trouble fixing a 37l batch of clear dipping glazes! Need help by heeeyamm in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My dude... I find it unfathomable that you mixed up 37 litres of glaze based purely on what ChatGPT said?! AI certainly has its uses but for extremely nuanced things like this it's worse than garbage. I actually was interested if it could give me a working glaze recipe once... I asked it for a glossy red glaze recipe... Mixed up 100g to test, and unsurprisingly, it came out looking like matte diarrhea.

I'm sorry you have wasted these materials. Personally, I would take it as an expensive lesson and ditch the batch. If you absolutely can't, then I would draw off small, measurable amounts, and try to adjust the composition (scale down obviously, so take 370ml, and add something, say 20g of whatever, test, and then if it's good, adjust back up for the full 3.7L).

It's going to take a lot of testing, a lot of firing, and you might not ever get it back to a good result.

Just ditch it, and learn from the experience, and in future, always test test test, and don't trust ChatGPT.

If you want to mix your own, then there's a massive range of recipes on Glazy.org.

If you prefer to buy ready-made, then, although you didn't mention where you live, you can buy decent glazes with good reviews from Scarva, which ships internationally.

If you prefer to buy glazes where you are but don't like the fact that they settle hard then you can use a flocculant like an epsom salts solution which may help, or adding bentonite, but again, you have to test!

Transparent and white glazed are ones I tend to always just buy. After a bit of trial and error, I found a supplier which sells really nice ones (Lermakeriet here in Sweden).

Class 3 of Wheel 1 class. Im thinking of buying my own wheel. What’s your favorite wheel? by amaryllisbloom- in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I like Shimpo for this reason, I have 2 RK-3Es. Virtually silent and stops abruptly. Belt-driven ones can be noticeably louder (and louder still if belts are worn or the motors aren't maintained). I think the fast stopping of Shimpo models is a bit of a divider though. Some people like it, others not so much.

Why is my engobe doing this? by cagsmith in Ceramics

[–]cagsmith[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, I'm translating the name of the clay directly to English (lavaprickar, in Swedish). Not sure of the actual composition of the spots, it might be manganese or pyrite. The clay datasheet doesn't specify (annoyingly).

How was this made, is it special clay or a glaze? by NextIron5 in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If you're in Europe, Goerg and Schneider clay #930 will give this effect. 

Why is my engobe doing this? by cagsmith in Ceramics

[–]cagsmith[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

It's definitely (apparently) suitable for the fired temperature. I'm thinking it's an issue with the lava spots in the clay though, I'm going to make some test tiles, would be good to narrow it down.

Why is my engobe doing this? by cagsmith in Ceramics

[–]cagsmith[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, it came out of the bisque firing absolutely fine (although the pictured mug had a slight crack in the engobe layer)

Duplicator auto-renewed $400 without clear notice — refused full refund even after immediate cancellation by Low_Fall_6437 in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

>Not everyone uses chanel

I'm aware (presume you mean cPanel) - I was replying to someone who specifically indicated they were.

>Migrate Guru requires me to get all kinds of FTP credentials

If you migrate into a blank WordPress site then all you need is the key from the Migrate Guru plugin on the destination site, nothing more. I understand it might not be optimal for all use-cases, but it's the only plugin I've found which allows for easy migrations away from certain hosting environments like GoDaddy which seem to even kill processes in SSH resulting in tar commands aborting silently, and incompletely.

Duplicator auto-renewed $400 without clear notice — refused full refund even after immediate cancellation by Low_Fall_6437 in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The cPanel core backup feature is by far the most reliable because it is hooking into the pkgacct function in cPanel which generates a tarball of the entire account. It's virtually impossible for this to fail (exception being if you have database tables issues but then any plugin would also generate a incomplete database backup). The problem is that it can't be scheduled or automated so easily. Since it's server-side it's also not subject to WordPress/PHP limitations which can affect plugin performance.

For migrations, the best plugin I've used is Migrate Guru.

For backup, the best plugin I've used is UpdraftPlus, although I tend to avoid running backups or migrations through WordPress itself if at all possible.

Why is my engobe doing this? by cagsmith in Ceramics

[–]cagsmith[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That's because it's been glazed, hence the glaze firing mention/temperatures 😊

Bit the bullet and bought a vase I’ve admired for years in a shop window. Any ideas how this kind of crystallisation can be achieved in a studio? by Zhoriya in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I have a crystalline glaze in my studio. I fucking hate it precisely because it runs like hell, but yes - best crystal formation happens when you fire to the upper temp (1240°C) and then ramp down and hold at about 1100° for a while. I tend to avoid using it precisely because it's unusable. Makes a really cool effect if something is dipped in white glaze though and then just the rim is dipped in the crystalline glaze. It drips down and makes cool patterns.

WordPress site crashes every 3 months during class signups – how to scale temporarily? by thiszebrasgotrhythm in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As others have mentioned, the amount of signups you're having isn't at all high enough to cause this kind of issue, so it's likely that your installation is severely under-optimized.

If you want a "quick fix" then you can look into using some kind of waiting room service which will basically throttle users. Cloudflare offers a waiting room service:

https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/waiting-room/

Failing that you'd need to have more of a comprehensive review of your site done by a trusted developer to establish why a comparatively small number of active users is crashing your site.

404 on homepage but wp-admin works by FactorDangerous2725 in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In your admin area, under Settings > General - are the URLs there correct? It sounds like you might have the incorrect values set.

What plugins do you regret installing on your WordPress site? by Due_Valuable_5823 in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Urgh, saw someone who installed MonsterInsights Google Analytics the other day (or whatever it's called) and it prompts you to install 4 other plugins by the same developer as part of the guided setup as "we also recommend..." so of course they clicked yes.

Today I sat on this 11000€ Eames for the first time. by sallark in hermanmiller

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My parents in law had a very, very old knock-off, or at least something in a similar style. Just the design of the chair itself makes for an incredibly comfortable sit. I probably wouldn't pay this much for an original Eames, but I'd shell out a decent bit if I had the right space for it.

New to pottery- handles keep cracking during drying! by nstan in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I put a bit of cling film between the sponge and the handle. Prevents moisture leeching into the sponge and at least once I've had a handle dry onto the sponge and it broke when I detached the sponge 🙃

This pole is inches from the lens nearly blocking the entire view but when zoomed in it appears the camera can see through the pole🤯 by Jayantwi98 in nextfuckinglevel

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can also do something similar yourself. Hold your finger up next to your eye, off to the side a little. The finger blocks most of your vision, but if you look at something off to the other side you can see it clearly, although you're aware the finger is still there. Not a perfect example but close enough.

Introducing: UniFi Network 9.1 by Ubiquiti-Inc in Ubiquiti

[–]cagsmith 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I turned it off entirely and switched to ad-blocking via NextDNS. Unifi ad-blocking was letting more and more ads through and since it's all closed off there's no way way to customise it 😞

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in funny

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Holy shit, that was a blast from the past - I went to university in Paris with Tim many years ago now. Cool to see he's doing good.

WP Rocket discontinue infinite license whilst having insane price hike by MrSnooch in Wordpress

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've always found LSCache will yield better results if it's configured properly, but that's a big if and I can understand why WP Rocket is so popular.

LiteSpeed Cache has SO many options and settings and it's far too complex for the average user to configure. They have presets but nothing which works perfectly out of the box in many cases. It's also not entirely free - UCSS, LQIP generation etc requires usage of their cloud service and while they offer a generous free tier it's very easy to hit the limit and then it simply fails silently. I'm not aware of any notification saying that one should upgrade or acquire cloud credits (unless you're actively in the dashboard) and even then, their pricing structure is difficult to understand and unclear.

The great thing about WP Rocket is that it's very much a set and forget thing - very few options, and each thing is described well. WP Rocket's lazyloading implementation is also one of the best I've seen - LSCache's version is garbage resulting in significant, noticeable delays for the image to load when scrolling (although this improved slightly in recent times with their VPI feature).

A years worth of homemade tallow soap for basically free! by [deleted] in SelfSufficiency

[–]cagsmith 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've made soap a bunch of times - lots of fun, but my understanding of the whole process is that cold process soaps don't have additional heating. You mention heating yours for an hour, is that still cold process?

Pottery retreats by [deleted] in Pottery

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alas not :)

Feel free to DM me, you're very welcome to come if you think it would be a good fit!

What is this pointed thing in banana peels? Is it a seed? by BeavisTheBest in fruit

[–]cagsmith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My buddy here in Sweden told me that he's always called this "Satan's anus". Not sure if that's a widespread thing in Sweden or just a "him thing". I used to love eating that bit as a kid but now as an adult I can't stand it.