🏺 BuildToDoGood Pottery

Pottery calculators and honest studio gear reviews. For the potter who can throw a respectable cylinder and now wants to understand cone temperatures, glaze fit, and shrinkage rates without a chemistry degree.

The pottery internet has two modes. Either it's beginner content about centering on the wheel, which you don't need by your second year. Or it's PhD-level glaze chemistry forums that assume you already speak in molar ratios. The middle is mostly missing.

These tools are for the middle. The cone converter that doesn't require remembering which cones bend at what temp. The glaze fit calculator that tells you if your clay body and glaze are going to crawl or craze at cone 6. The clay shrinkage math when you're sizing a piece for a known finished diameter.

Tools

Cone-to-Temperature Converter Pyrometric cones converted to °F and °C with heating rate adjustment (Orton cone bending tables). Cone 06 to cone 12. Clay Shrinkage Calculator soon Calculate finished piece dimensions from greenware. By clay body type, including high-shrink porcelains and low-shrink stoneware. Reverse calculation for sizing to target finished size. Glaze Thermal Fit Calculator soon Check clay body and glaze coefficient of expansion match. Predicts crazing and crawling before you fire a test tile. Kiln Load Calculator soon Maximum safe load per shelf, post height calculations, kiln furniture spacing. For electric kilns up to 10 cubic feet.

Honest reviews coming

Studio gear that's worth the money and gear that isn't. First write-up: comparing four mid-priced wheels (Brent CXC, Skutt Prodigy, Shimpo VL-Whisper, Speedball Artista) on a real working studio setup. Six months of throw-time logged per wheel. Honest results including what each one's annoying quirk is.

Plain note about money: Some links are affiliate (eBay Partner Network mostly). Small commission if you buy through them. Doesn't change your price. Studio gear reviews come from actual studio time, not PR kits.