That's exactly the point of my suggestion: allow modders to add new material types (most likely add a material raw and specify uses) and finer requirements for custom workshops. These two additions would basically allow modders to create production processes for entire lines of materials.
Furthermore, by allowing the addition of new types of furniture and containers, with tags allowing what can be contained in them, even more modding possibilities can be realized.
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My purpose is to suggest a more general system so that if Toady moves to implement or allow the implementation of this suggestion, he can do it in a general way that vastly expands the possibilities beyond those simply related to porcelain.
Well,
if Toady wants to include the ability to mod in hypothetically any kind of industry and the supporting skill sets, the materials, and possibly the ways that dwarves can interact with them, as well as building moddable furniture, then by all means, I hope he goes ahead.
However, considering this is pretty much just something that can be "plugged into" what already exists without much effort, has, as Footkerchief mentioned, been mentioned fairly often, and as such is both at least reasonably desired, as well as probably not going to cause the sorts of bugs that a full raw-ification of that integral a part of the game, I still think this is worth suggesting, and not "wasting Toady's time". Even if all those things get put into raws, I still hope Toady looks at this, as I think it would be a valuable addition to vanilla DF.
Couldn't you just drench the pot to get rid of most of that? Perhaps you'd get sore hands after prolonged use then, but it's not like you're going to notice that if you're storing dried meat in it.
Drench? HCl is what's going out the chimney.
You don't want to stand downwind from that.
I'm looking at the ways that earthenware and stoneware are made, and would like a little more information on the way that clay could be made for them. Apparently, kaolin is rediculously common, at least in impure forms, from what I'm reading on wikipedia, and regular clay might just be fine for stoneware, while terra cotta might be made from almost any soil?
Basically, yes.
Pure kaoline is uncommon but kaolinite is part of many clays or intentionally added to get certain properties.
Stoneware has certain demands. You need an Al2O3 rich clay or it doesn't work.
"Good" clays for that are less common and therefore usually more expensive.
Terracotta or common bricks - yes. If it's "loam" there's a good chance it's usable in one way or another. There are exceptions but I don't think the fiddly bits would add any gameplay value.
Medieval style clay body is always mixed and kneaded by hand. Much like in a bakery.
While it's usually "aged" afterwards, that's another unfun item that should be ignored.
Watching your clay lie about and "get better"? I think not.
BTW: I'm a stoneware man (see and see) so I'm somewhat foggy on things like lower temperature glazes, which have a much wider range of available colours.
OK, is there any way to refine kaolinite chemically? (I'm finding myself, for the first time, wishing my college chemistry course was actually harder.) What impurities are normally in kaolinite that need to be removed from it to make a more pure kaolin, and would anything like an acid treatment or cooking it with other minerals be able to remove those impurities? Even if it's a roundabout method, if there's a way to purify common goods into highly valuable goods (the way that trees become ash become potash become pearlash), then it would help put such goods back on the market, without requiring you to only have 5 actual tiles of suitable kaolin, or denying 90% of the players from ever getting a chance to make it, unless they can import some kaolin.
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I also want to ask what sort of rocks or soil types from inside the game are permissable for glazing? Sand and clay already seem obvious... I guess we could ask for a tweak that makes rocksalt more common, and make more salt glazing... But I'd like there to be multiple alternatives that produce less-valuable results than the "ideal" way of crafting pottery, so that anyone can at least get a stab at this stuff.
According to what I'm getting from Wikipedia, you need quartz or something similar for silica, which would be the obvious place for sand, but in sandless maps, it also says you can get quartz from granite (which makes whole friggin' layers, so that's easy to find), as well as sandstone and gniess and quartzite and... well, it's supposed to be the second most common mineral around, just after feldspar... which is microcline and orthoclase.
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So far, my idea of a ceramics industry goes like this:
Earthenware / Terra Cotta is producable from normal kilns and magma kilns. Magma kilns can produce these products with no fuel, as they "only" need to be cooked at 900-1100 degrees celcius. Such kilns can also be used for second-fire glazing, since most of these don't require more than 1100 degree celcius fires, either. This tier of goods could produce bricks and shingles from common soil types. This could actually be fairly useful on aquifer levels, or useful for humans who don't have stone. Pottery made from earthenware levels can be used as a special type of barrel (Jugs or some such special name), however, only if glazed in some way. The easiest type of glazing would be that ash glazing style, which would simply require throwing some wood or ashes in the kiln with the pot, possibly with some additional material that actually makes the glaze (sand? salt? feldspar powder?). These jugs could make a good replacement for barrels, although they may, perhaps, need to be "stacks" of jugs to hold the same volume a barrel would hold. It would be better, however, if ash (or wood) was modded so that we could get several glazings worth of ash per tree, or it still winds up using a tree to make one barrel-replacement (unless you used a metal powder in the glazing). Such glazes can take place with the original firing. Earthenware would be cheap (material value 1), and generally good for making practice crafts for your rising potters, as well as making bricks, or other basic materials. They could potentially make most crafts you can make with stone out of terra cotta, including coffins or statues. Even better, masonry made of earthenware might hopefully be engravable and paintable, like with many of the extremely decorated facades of real-life temples.
Stoneware could then be the serious industrial ceramics material - taking several coal units (3 or 5?) to fire the high-temperature kiln (1200-1400 degrees celcius), and requiring the air pump to be mechanically powered, as well as a mechanically powered stone crusher to make the powders. Stonewares would be highly valuable trade goods, beyond the price of clear glass, certainly, and nearing that of pricy metals (something like 10 or 15 material value?). Stoneware could have those ash glazes, or more expensive decoration-style glazes, which could use multple glaze powders to boost the decoration value, and even be used to paint detailed scenes with multiple colors, creating a skyrocketing final value. Stoneware could actually be split a little into a lower-grade and higher-grade depending on if you really work the right materials into the clay. (5 material value versus 15?)
Actual porcelain would be a highest-tier, require large amounts of fuel (5?) for the fires (1350 celcius), very picky material requirements, and yet be very valuable for the effort (material value 40?). With a legendary craftsdwarf and 6 or so colors, you might potentially make something in artifact-level (or even mid-sized dwarven syrup roast) values. This process would require powdered kaolin, powdered feldspar (like orthoclase or microcline), and a source of quartz/silica (powdered granite, sandstone, shale, gniess, quartzite, or just plain sand) for the main body.
Now, the glazing apparently requires silica to make glass, a flux material, and whatever it is you are using as the actual coloring pigment. Silica is, again, readily available in sand, or by powdering granite, sandstone, or a host of other common stones. This flux material can be anything with high calcium content, like what we currently use for flux in iron production (I.E. chalk or limestone), something with potassium content (potash), or high sodium content (not so sure about this... it would be nice to get sea salt from evaporating saltwater, but rocksalt is obvious, although maybe other stones could work for this as well?). Perhaps the best way of handling this would be to just treat any stone that COULD be used for the glaze as interchangable, just for simplicity's sake. (Hence, you only need one of potash, flux stones, or rock salt, plus one of sand or sandstone or granite or the other quartz-bearing stones' powder, and maybe could designate which to use.) You then need to add those glaze powders, made out of crushed metal ores, as Gazz and I discussed in a couple of those posts a couple posts up there.
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On a total side note, all this has made we want to look into making lacquer. I'm already thinking of making some "Lacquer Shrooms" instead of lacquer trees... although if they were trees or shrubs, then it would potentially give elves somehting they could produce that would actually be valuable, besides caged giant eagles. I'd like to think that the races in this game have something that is a "specialty", instead of just being exactly like real-life medieval civilizations, but with various bits of technology blacked-out.
