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Advice On The Best Porcelain


spring

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Hello Everyone,

 

I'm working on a large project in porcelain. My go to porcelain is usually southern ice but its expensive and costs a lot to ship. I need to buy about 300lbs, so I wanna choose wisely. I need a porcelain that will be very translucent, is plastic enough to work in very thin long slabs that will be manipulated, and stays white. I tried frost cone 6 porcelain and found it to be very short and ill suited for my needs. I've thrown with Babu and Coleman; had positive experiences with both but never handbulit with them. I'll be firing cone 10 because the midrange clays available to me in my area do not seem translucent enough nor white enough. I know there are people who have done lots of development in low/mid fire porcelains that are translucent but I don't really have a couple years for this project. Based off of personal experience, please let me know what you think.

 

The types of clay I have to choose from are:

 

Babu

Coleman

Frost cone 10

Laguna 550

 

thanks in advance,

 

spring

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Babu and 550 are about even as far as whiteness

I use them both for that and also because glazes pop on them

Never hand built much past teapot lugs with them.

Porcelain for this long thin slabs project will take experimenting with 1st so I suggest testing before committing to any body. The pool of candidates is small-4 pugs.

And you live where supply is easy.

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I have used Southern Ice and Colman. I have not tried hand building with them. I would recommend adding molochite to the clay by re-pugging or, if you have porcelain scraps...make a slurry and add molochite and dry to whatever consistency you need. Molochite is porcelain grog. It could change the translucency.

Paula Winokur uses this in her large  porcelain pieces. 

Marcia

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Marcia: Before I ended up doing my own custom blends: I had my porcelain custom mixed with 15% molochite added. The added benefit of molochite is also after the firing: it increases mullite in the body  In sculpting, some plasticity is still required: so I am thinking 8-9% molochite. It is also relatively free of iron and magnesium content that could effect color else wise. Lastly, because molochite is 0.05-0.075 particle size: it will also add strength to the body during green ware and vitrified. If sculptures are large, 200 mesh kyanite for ^6 will also help strengthen the final product. 3-5%

 

Nerd

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