Glazes
A benefit of doing my own pottery firings is that I can use whatever glazes I fancy. It’s possible to order pre-mixed glazes, and there are some beautiful ones, many well known among potters. For those willing to mix their own, the possibilities expand, while (eventually) the costs diminish. It took four orders from three different suppliers to get ingredients for a couple of glaze recipes. On each order I added another few ingredients for some other possibilities. Now I have towering piles of (mostly) small samples to experiment with, in “tupperware”, jars, and their original bags (see below. I hope that Dolomite comes in handy because the smallest quantity I could order was five pounds).
Mixing the dry ingredients requires a p100 mask and, at least for some of the more toxic stuff, gloves. The mix gets added to some water and then the mask can come off. The glaze needs to pass through an 80 mesh screen twice to thoroughly combine, hydrate, and make sure there’s no tiny chunks of stuff to mar the finish. Then there’s some fiddling around to get the specific gravity right. Finally, it’s ready to be tested. A few weeks ago I bisque-fired some test tiles just for this purpose. Thursday morning the kiln I fired Wednesday had cooled enough to open. (Below: test tiles. a=Spearmint, b=Isa Bomb Blue, c= Isa Bomb Blue over Spearmint, d= Spearmint over IBB, e=Clear over Spearmint, f= Clear over IBB, g=Clear over IBB over Spearmint. And then some close-ups of the most interesting ones.)
I’m excited! Yet I have a few problems still to solve. The 400g batches fit nicely in some tall jars that were perfect for test tiles, but this will not work for anything that’s not long and skinny. Will I need to make a bigger batch to glaze the items I have on my shelf waiting to be bisqued (see below)?
Glazing the inside is easy, just pour the glaze in and pour it out. The outside is harder. I need to be able to dip them in glaze, pour the glaze over the outside, or spray the glaze on. Hmmm. In the meantime, maybe I’ll try a new recipe….