The clay here is called jiani, it’s found in various layers along with other yixing clay (but not used for teapots). The translation of this video screen capture (below), provides a fascinating insight into how they judge the suitable temperature at which to fire. First, technicians measure the porosity and firing shrinkage over a range of temperatures, likely looking for a firing "sweet spot". Notice shrinkage reaches a maximum at 1100C, then drops off as the clay begins to expand. But this is not the only thing considered. Notice, in the comments, that they are also looking for "surface luster" (which is not found). They also comment about a "dull sound" and "crisp/clear sound" (so they must create a sounding vessel of some sort). They also break a fired piece and comment of the nature of the cross section, revealing something else interesting: The clay holds on to a dense cross section for 100C degrees after reaching maximum fired shrinkage.

The Yixing teapot craftsmen appear to break all the rules and yet produce impossibly delicate and symmetrical pieces. Hao-Tong Yan, one of those craftsmen, and I have been trying to understand the technical reasons for how this amazing craft is possible. It turns out not to be magic, but actually a highly evolved understanding of a very unusual material. Here are some of the things that we are coming to understand (which is making it possible to create a facsimile of the clay in North America).

-The clay is not highly plastic; the workability comes from surprising places.
-The clay has impossibly low water content, yet can be formed.
-Craftsmen flatten the clay with a mallet, instead of rolling it, yet it does not stick to the board.
-Sections are simply glued with slip, yet they hold.
-The clay burnishes, yet is not smooth.
-Fired ware is smooth, yet the soft clay appears sandy.
-The fired surface is glossy, yet there is no glaze.
-The fired clay appears super dense yet does have porosity.
-The Yixing ore can have the appearance of being like rocks, yet they make a workable clay body from it.

As a result of feedback I realized that hundreds of bouquets of flowers would have a significant environmental impact. I sent one, but told others that if had already done so, I would credit your Insight-live account for 4 years.

Wow. And thank you to Dominic Legault, who set this up and stopped it. It is not the money; it is knowing that my work has been worth something to you. I won't transfer this until I am sure that I can meet the expectations of donors.

Maybe I should get a car! Just joking! I'll use it to better ensure the survival of Digitalfire. Laying the groundwork for that is primarily a technical challenge for me and people I can bring on board virtually. Here is the plan:

I posted this on June 19.

I need goodwill with Plainsman. I know you have been passionate about this whole affair in the past few days. I underestimated how much. Some were so passionate that they have caused trauma with Plainsman staff, we must undo that. Having goodwill with the company I partnered with to make Digitalfire is so important and will make me so happy. We both "pulled the dragon's tail" over misunderstandings.

I consulted Plainsman before posting this, and they requested I add: Here is the biggest one: Digital Fire is not at risk and never was from Plainsman.

I need goodwill, especially if you put staff under stress, and you can help me get it. My first idea was to fill their office with hundreds of bouquets of flowers, but now I realize that's too much environmental impact. I'll credit you 4 years of Insight-live if you already did (this statement was added after I realized this was not a wise request).

On June 19 I posted this: Please, everyone, stop bashing Plainsman. I never intended that. Their staff is suffering under attack. They are really upset. So much of this is misunderstandings. We both pulled the tail of a dragon.

The message that I put up that Digitalfire would shut down on June 26 because I was unable to meet the demands in the lawyer’s ultimatum is what made me fearful and started the whole thing. I was deluged with messages I couldn’t hope to answer, so I created a response and pasted it in. I texted that response to Plainsman as well, so they knew what I was saying. I should have stated more strongly that this is not about bashing Plainsman. I am very sorry for that. They are better positioned than any other company in North America because they have their own clay deposits. I want to work with them, not against them, they are currently the only hope to have a Canadian ball clay and kaolin.

This was posted June 18:

The lawyer's letter had an additional demand: "Remove any documentation or data of DigitalFire from Plainsman’s premises" (this may differ from what Plainsman itself is saying, not sure why). This was confusing, as any data is digital, so I interpreted it to mean all of my physical materials in the lab from and by which the data at Digitalfire was partially built.

There were hundreds of projects in the pipeline producing data. Promising ones were DIY dipping glazes, base coat dipping glazes, an Alberta slip calcination pilot, casting Coffee clay (without raw manganese or umber), casting M390, M340 and even H440, a new 440-on-steroids, 200 mesh MNP PR3D work, the beer bottle demo casting, better and new engobes, DIY underglaze, an amazing iron red glaze, and so much more. I was learning the power of CAD, donating 3D printers. There were countless projects to help customers navigate the idiosyncratic clays. And for companies/people from around the world. The physical assets could have been the basis for a one-of-a-kind Digitalfire field school for DIY clay-gathering and testing. Luke Lindoe worked there. His books and the personal records, and those of past techs in the local ceramic industry are there. I knew every square inch, and resisting the demand to dismantle it two years ago got me fired the first time. It was the place I discovered smectite as a catalyst for translucency, Crystal Ice, 3D case molding, the amazing G2934 base matte (and gunmetal black), drop and hold firing, how to calculate Alberta slip, flow GLFL testing, SHAB test procedures, so many glaze chemistry success stories. Perhaps most important, records of testing and recent trips to Flintoft, the Blue Hills, Claybank and other sites having much better clay than the current mine (no lab has ever documented these amazing clays like I did).

Posted ~June 14: Digitalfire faced a takedown order (with threat to sue if not complied with by June 26) from Plainsman Clays (dated Wed, June 10). It took a few days to realize its scope. It wide-reaching terminology revoked permission to "use any Plainsman content" "on any platform". This was broad and vague enough, and the site large enough, that I was unable to even begin to comply in the short timeframe. This notice arrived with a threat to turn over the plainsmanclays.ca URL, which I rightfully owned (using it to voluntarily fund and maintain a live site backup) and plainsmanpotterysupply.com (their asset on their GoDaddy account which I didn't have access to). Panic ensued and I had to shut down Digitalfire for parts of two days during the week 15-19 because so many people were taking backups. My focus became getting them to relent on the demand, call off the lawyer, agree that digitalfire.com is just commentary and I have the right to share research that I compiled. I urged people to stop download and assured them that lots of backup sites already have the content protected.

There was alarm among Insight-live.com users, I put a banner there assuring them that it was not affected by this issue.

I bought the URL PlainsmanClays.ca in 2021 and maintained it on my own server, at my own expense, as an active backup and prototyping site for the main dot-com site. Plainsman demanded to "return it", under threat of legal action. I transferred it to them on June 18, for free, as a sign of good faith. I had also been hosting the DNS records and have removed them. That meant that body usage information and problem mitigation, testing data, example pieces, glaze recipe suggestions, casting instructions, the Celebration project, etc. that took decades to carefully compile (based on and built from many, many hundreds of customer support issues), are gone. Information on the use of Alberta Slip, Ravenscrag Slip, bodies like Polar Ice, M370, M340 and many others, recommended base glaze recipes to fit the bodies, engobe information, firing schedules, and more. Important terms on all of the pages linked automatically into Digitalfire. I expressed regret for this and stated the impact on Digitalfire: Thousands of links to the Plainsman website would stop working because they depended on the existence of an API there. Perhaps Plainsman can be convinced to restore this valuable resource.

As a further sign of goodwill today, I helped them recover from losing their Bitwarden password. This enabled login to their own GoDaddy account to get the URL plainsmanpotterysupply.com (which they accused me of harbouring). I helped them login to their own Gmail account which I also did not have access to (GoDaddy needed it for login). This was possible because I discovered that one of the browsers on an old computer I once supplied for use there, autofilled the Google password. And an Android phone I supplied for 2-factor logins, which I still have, was able to scan the 2-factor challenge code for the Google login.

I posted this on June 17

$10k in hours. Incredible. Thank you so much to everyone. I am humbled. Actually, it is not stopping. Unbelievable!

Legitimate GoFundMe campaigns will be listed here. If you know of one being set up, please let me know.

At https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-digitalfire. I am beyond grateful to Dominic Legault for doing this, I would never have otherwise considered it.