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Making Strong Bond To Survive Bouncing During The Shipment


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I've tried clay slip, vinegar, slip with vinegar, and magic water to make an attachment to my sculpture. None of the bond seems strong enough to survive bouncing during the shipment. In the following examples, the lamb was attached with vinegar, and the mouse, with slip. Nevertheless, they fell off when I unpacked the sculptures at a show.

 

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Reinforcing the attachment with coil is often not feasible because of the nature of my work. Firing attachments separately and gluing them with Epoxy PC7 or PC11 the best solution for this type of problem? If possible, I would like to fire the attachments attached to the main piece, so that they would warp together. I usually fire my sculptures to cone 04.

 

Thank you for your advice.

 

 

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post-63579-0-74914200-1461882852_thumb.jpg

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Is your clay low fire, or are you low firing cone 6 clay? If the latter, your clay may not be vitrified enough for the slip to join the clay bodies. Perhaps using a lower temperature clay would let your attachments join better.

Are you joining at leather hard, or bone dry?  If you are doing bone dry, then you might be better off using sodium silicate as a temporary glue to fire the attachment on your sculpture, and then after bisque use bisque cement and refire to attach.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Duncan-patch-attach-4-oz/dp/B0019LS1FK/

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Thank you for the response, Douglas. The firing range for raku clay I've been using for sculpting is cone 06 to 10. I see your reasoning why the slip did not join clay bodies well. I have a tiny bit of earthenware clay (cone 06-02) left. If I make slip with it and use it to join two raku clay parts, do you think they will adhere better? I stopped using the earthenware because it just did not feel right in my hand.

 

I join pieces at leather-hard or usually earlier stage, but it's good to know we can use sodium silicate as a temporary glue.

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