That belongs in the controversial thread!
What do you mean by yellow???
yes i agree fully, i was going through paulsons colors and i was like paulson beats them in colors, but CPC beats them in edge spot patterns. they need more reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, browns, greys, metallics, pastel colors, and super dark rich colors for all colors as well like a super dark green that looks almost black etc
ALL of these would be awesome even if it was just half or a quarter of them, i would love ducky, pollen, goldenrod, starfruit, chedder, banana and harvest
That's DG saturn
And you are right!
Brass flakes don't age well in lighter colours making them looking dirty from the side. My first set has light green and light blue as base colours and they don't look that great years later.
Until you look at your lighter coloured base chips years later and see how dirty the brass flakes make them look.
Yes but the colours aren't that comparable. When sets are made using mostly unweighted base colours, they start to look alike.
Have you tried a fresh clean and oil? Are you comparing to newer runs of the same color and batch variations? Recent run of light blue for example has been really bright compared to some years prior
Most questions in this thread related to colors and spot patterns. They have all been answered elsewhere in the past as we already ploughed a ton of my own money into abortive attempts to introduce more of both.
Introducing a new color is extremely complex. Yes we have some new colors since 2013 but most were fortuitous or were resurrected from the past.
For example Dayglo Peacock (basically DG Blue) was a color made by the Burt Co. for Huxley customers 50 years ago so we had a formula. Same for Canary and Maroon. There is only one source for Dayglo dyes - Dayglo Corporation. For the product we need, we utilise every color they make. The only color they introduced in recent years was Blaze Orange, and that's how Dayglo Tiger came about. When you add additional dye or brightener to the formula, in most cases it does not blend, so the current colors are effectively at saturation point. The Orange die is very poor to mix, it's used to it's limit in DG Orange, which explains why it is duller than the other DG's.
DG yellow is somewhat the same. Add more and it starts to take on a slight greenish hue, which is how DG Saturn came about, by accident rather than design.
Suitable dyes from other manufacturers are similarly limited and some will not even supply samples (even for $$), they will only supply by the 50LB bag which can cost up to $2,000.
In the earlier years we undertook countless experiments with samples, and with mixing of multiple existing dyes, variations in other ingredients etc. We tried to make about 10 new colors including a number from the TR King pallet like Beige, Light & Dark Turquoise, Gold. I don't see it does any harm here to give a little more insight into the rolling of clay, as without the ingredients (some which Joe Public can't buy), recipes and machinery the info isn't much use to anyone.
First some basic facts (can you show me where it hurts
1. Clay changes color slightly from heat during the pressing processes (mainly due to the removal of moisture present in some ingredients which is not transparent).
2. It is almost impossible to make clay from raw materials alone, it does not blend properly and has nothing to adhere to at the rolling mill.
3. Similarly it is almost impossible to re-roll solid clay made previously on it's own.
4. The clay makes it's way to the press for blanks (slugs) to be made as the first part of the manufacturing process. It's in sheet form, heated and then cut into strips to lay across the cups in the mold. In very simplistic terms you are pressing out a bunch of discs from strips. That leaves you with a bunch of 'edgings' - all the unused thin pieces.
5. A new batch of clay is mixed and rolled by combining an equal weight of edgings and raw materials as they blend perfectly. The resultant color clay, once pressed again, maintains an almost exact color to previous batches of chips. Don't ask why it works as it does, it's various chemical reactions just as in baking. Someone figured it out almost 100 years ago and we stick with it. Now, not relevant to the questions I'm answering, but very occasionally the content of a raw material changes because someone somewhere decided an ingredient wasn't safe to eat or whatever, and even after tinkering with the mix a faint change of color occurs. Now bear in mind that over time your chips are very slightly changing color anyway due to heat, light, being damp, too dry etc. etc. so a re-order is always going to look different but will quickly blend in.
6. Given all the factors above, plus the fact some ingredients are in such small measures (a few grams out of 25LB of mix) it is impossible to mix small quantities. And also given those factors, for a new color you have to break the rules by starting with raw ingredients only, putting them through the press, taking all the pieces back to the rolling mill and adding equal weight or raw materials about 3 times round to get a stable mix with no streaks which will not change color in the future. (Some may remember we had a short lived Mint Green some years ago - when the next batch was made it changed color so we had to abandon it).
7. Figure by this point you have had to make 200LB of clay to get a new stable color (if you even get one). You've used $1600 of other materials, almost certainly had to buy the $2000 bag of dye as the sample was nowhere near enough (unless they tell you it was discontinued while you were testing - yes, that's happened also) and have used some 70 man hours of factory time at $40/hour. You are in for over $6,000 and may not even have a usable color. Half the stuff you made will be scrap because you haven't used it within the shelf life, and you prevented other colors being made*** and disrupted the entire production process for whatever other orders should have been pressed at that time.
8. *** Rolling a batch of clay start to finish is over half a day. Then you have to clean the mill thoroughly unless you just happen to be lucky and need light green and dark green at the same time and you can continue to use the mill. Even on the rare occurrences something like that happens, it's a max of two colors that can be produced on one day. Aside from the tremendous extra outlay (we probably have $75k sunk into raw material/parts inventory at any time), there are two other limiting factors factors on how much you can produce at a time. 1. Shelf Life. 2. The fact you need the edgings in equal quantity per 5. above. Clay has to be rolled on most days as it is. Adding more colors would slow down production considerably and end up costing us money.
I'll answer about the spot patterns in another post.
It's like I've been here before.
I think they work wonderfully, I’m buying something hand crafted and actual clay, not plastic from china. I love the slightly muddied look of the added brass with the little flecks. Maybe over the years it’ll add a tarnish, but isn’t that the beauty of a well loved product?
^^^^^^^^^^
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