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Different Frits ... How Important Is It To Have The Right One?


Briggs Shore

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I'm doing a lot of testing to find the right base glazes for my work.  I'd like to find a nice, very smooth smooth gloss and satin that takes mason stains well.  I'm looking at the recipes in Taylor & Doody's Glaze book, and the recipes provided by Jeff Campana and Chandra DeBuse look absolutely perfect.  I'd like to test them out, but they call for different Frits (3134 and 3124 respectively).

 

I already have 3124, and am wondering if I really need to buy the other.  I don't have a local shop that supplies raw glaze chemicals, so ordering and shipping things is always a bit of a time consuming pain.

 

While I know testing on my own clay in my own kiln is the only reliable way to know exactly what my results will be ... I'm wondering if anyone here has any idea what the difference is in these 2 frits in terms of how it will effect the glaze.  I think 3134 has more sodium, but I don't know how that effects the glaze.  Can anyone enlighten me?

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I think you could try a straight swap and get away with it. The 3124 has more alumina and silica in compared to 3134 but if it is a gloss the glaze can probably take it in. The satin may need some tweaking. Depends how much of the recipe is frit I think too. 

 

From digital fire

This borosilicate frit is high in calcium. It melts are very low temperatures and among the most useful of all common frits because of its glaze-like balanced chemistry. This frit has a chemistry somewhat similar to 3134 (the latter adds CaO, Na2O and B2O3 at the expense of all the Al2O3 and some SiO2.

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There are many, many types of frits.  To know which one you really need (if any at all) you should get some glaze software and plug in your whole recipe rather than blindly follow someone else's recipe out of a book. 

 

Do you know the oxide breakdown of all the other ingredients in your recipe?  The frit is likely the most easy ingredient to nail down.  But the rest of the ingredients will need to be assessed as to their oxide contribution before you get to worried about 3124 vs 3134.  Put another way, feldspars aint feldspars, nor are they neph sys....  Got to know what's in the tank.

 

Yes, I know, why make something so easy (like someone else's recipe) so hard?  Because then you will be baking cakes from scratch (they always taste better) rather than baking out of a box.  If you are really doing a lot of testing then it is worth it.

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 As always, it seems that there is an appropriate thread for any pondering I may have going on.  I measured out 4 glazes yesterday.  A 5000g batch of clear, and 3 1000g batches of tinted clear.  About 4:00 I am starting to sieve said glazes and I am having a heck of a time getting them through the sieve.  And by the time I had it pushed through the sieve, there was almost a cottage cheesy consistency to what didn't go through.  I running all the scenarios through my head while I am pushing this stuff through, messed up the recipe, mixed up the tubs o chemicals, held my mouth wrong......double checked, triple checked.  Finally on the 5000g batch I gave up at 8:00.  I just mixed it all together, cleaned up and came back into the house.

 

I woke up at 4 thinking about all this, and ah ha!  The last two chemicals I purchased were  Wollastonite and ff3134.  The Wollastonite was a partial bag but it looks like Wollastonite....... but what if the 3134 was mislabeled?  And because all the frits look the same, how would I know?  And.....as much as I love my clay guy, there had been a mistake with frits in the past (sold me a bag of something labeled 3182, when I asked for 3124) sooooo how do I check for this??  Would having a different frit make that much difference in the consistency of the glaze??  After reading this, yes, it probably would.

 

Roberta

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 As always, it seems that there is an appropriate thread for any pondering I may have going on.  I measured out 4 glazes yesterday.  A 5000g batch of clear, and 3 1000g batches of tinted clear.  About 4:00 I am starting to sieve said glazes and I am having a heck of a time getting them through the sieve.  And by the time I had it pushed through the sieve, there was almost a cottage cheesy consistency to what didn't go through.  I running all the scenarios through my head while I am pushing this stuff through, messed up the recipe, mixed up the tubs o chemicals, held my mouth wrong......double checked, triple checked.  Finally on the 5000g batch I gave up at 8:00.  I just mixed it all together, cleaned up and came back into the house.

 

I woke up at 4 thinking about all this, and ah ha!  The last two chemicals I purchased were  Wollastonite and ff3134.  The Wollastonite was a partial bag but it looks like Wollastonite....... but what if the 3134 was mislabeled?  And because all the frits look the same, how would I know?  And.....as much as I love my clay guy, there had been a mistake with frits in the past (sold me a bag of something labeled 3182, when I asked for 3124) sooooo how do I check for this??  Would having a different frit make that much difference in the consistency of the glaze??  After reading this, yes, it probably would.

 

Roberta

 

I think it is likely to be the wollastonite causing the problem in the sieve.  Wollastonite can be gritty and lumpy. If you have an old blender I would take what is left in the sieve plus some of the glaze and whizz it for a few minutes and see if that helps. If not I would add an equal amount more of wollastonite to what isn't going through the sieve and sieve that.

 

Since frits are ground I don't think it would be from that. I've never heard of 3182?

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is there zinc in the recipe?  got a bag of zinc once that was granular, not powder.  what a job mixing a glaze!  finally did what Min suggests, sort of, and put the dry zinc into a blender then used the resulting powder in the recipe.  check that your ingredients are all powder and not like grains of sand.

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Min and Old Lady!  Thank you. Yes, it is VERY Gritty!!  I thought that was odd also.  After I posted I went back out to the shop and tried to resieve again.  It was somewhat easier than last night, but still much more of a chore than normal.  I will try the blender.   No, Old Lady, no zinc.  Here's the recipe.....I have used it for years.  I think it is out of Mastering Cone 6. 

G200hp         20

FF3134          20

Wollastonite  15

EPK                20

Talc                 6

Silica                19

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 As always, it seems that there is an appropriate thread for any pondering I may have going on.  I measured out 4 glazes yesterday.  A 5000g batch of clear, and 3 1000g batches of tinted clear.  About 4:00 I am starting to sieve said glazes and I am having a heck of a time getting them through the sieve.  And by the time I had it pushed through the sieve, there was almost a cottage cheesy consistency to what didn't go through.  I running all the scenarios through my head while I am pushing this stuff through, messed up the recipe, mixed up the tubs o chemicals, held my mouth wrong......double checked, triple checked.  Finally on the 5000g batch I gave up at 8:00.  I just mixed it all together, cleaned up and came back into the house.

 

I woke up at 4 thinking about all this, and ah ha!  The last two chemicals I purchased were  Wollastonite and ff3134.  The Wollastonite was a partial bag but it looks like Wollastonite....... but what if the 3134 was mislabeled?  And because all the frits look the same, how would I know?  And.....as much as I love my clay guy, there had been a mistake with frits in the past (sold me a bag of something labeled 3182, when I asked for 3124) sooooo how do I check for this??  Would having a different frit make that much difference in the consistency of the glaze??  After reading this, yes, it probably would.

 

Roberta

 

I think it is likely to be the wollastonite causing the problem in the sieve.  Wollastonite can be gritty and lumpy. If you have an old blender I would take what is left in the sieve plus some of the glaze and whizz it for a few minutes and see if that helps. If not I would add an equal amount more of wollastonite to what isn't going through the sieve and sieve that.

 

Since frits are ground I don't think it would be from that. I've never heard of 3182?

 

Yes, it apparently is the Wollastonite.  I looked at the tub o wollastonite and you can see an obvious line between old and new.  When you dig down to the old stuff, it is more fine and powdery than the new. Thanks for your help.  I was ready to pitch all of it and start over!

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