Wiseman Ceramics

Oxidation fired: ^10, Reduction fired:^021.

(I do apologize for the bad picture here, photo booth was being re-installed).

*Sold*

With almost 800+sq. ft. to work with, I strive to keep my studio as dust-free as is possible:
*I use an exhaust booth for spray glazing and rotary tooling, and a separate vent setup for the glaze mixing table (both exhaust to outside).

*I wipe everything down with a damp sponge, wet mop, etc.
*I use a vacuum that is mounted outside of the studio, eliminating the risk of air/dust leaks, with a hose coming in through a sealed port. It has a standard filter to catch the big stuff, while the finer dust exhausts safely outside.
*During the warmer months I use two sets of intake & exhaust fans set at opposing ends of the studio, creating a continuous draw of fresh air through the workspace.

Regardless of this, I still find dust settling on the tables, floor, and equipment… I’m referring to the really dangerous fine particle stuff which stays airborne for hours after it’s set afloat. Because I can’t run the fans in the winter, & therefore the dust accumulation increases during this part of the year, I’ve installed two 360° HEPA air filtration units at opposite ends of the studio.
I run the HEPA’s on “low” during the day and turn them to “high” at night when we aren’t working, as at that speed they do just as good a job at churning the dust up as they can at capturing it.

I heard so many good things when ITC was first gaining popularity -Mel Jacobson, Nils Lou… all respectable and experienced people, mind you. But even then, the amount of work required to engage the positive aspects of ITC sounded like a sprint through hell.
Since that time, there have been too many horror stories. The only long-term successes I’ve heard of were when ITC was applied to each brick at the factory -by experts… and even those I haven’t heard about recently, so who knows what the kilns look like now?
Tom Coleman once said to me that there was just no information gathered over a long enough time frame to warrant all the excitement, and he’s heard many complaints as well.

ITC may have merits when applied and cured exactly right… but it sounds like it’s very difficult to do it “exactly right”. So, “Oh, look -it protects the kiln”… turns into: “oh… look -it’s flaked off and/or caused electrical arcs to, *whoa* -burn holes in the softbrick…!?!”
Uh-uh. No good.

I welcome responses attempting to educate me further on this, but from what I’ve read and heard (here is a forum thread with some recent testimonies), I’m not real eager to try it myself.