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What Might This Be?


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Last night I finally went through the glazes and glaze materials that I inherited for my studio.

I found a container of mixed, dried materials marked as so:

 

750g Kaolin EPK

750g Dolomite

300g Gerstley Borate

 

It seems very intentionally mixed and labelled. I weighed it at it does add up to 1800g, so none used yet.

 

What do you think? I have searched recipes on the internet that call for 42% Kaolin EPK, 42% Dolomite, and 16% Gerstley Borate,
as well as 50/50 Kaolin & Dolomite, plus 20% Gerstley Borate added.

 

I hate to toss perfectly good materials! If you know what this is, or have recipes that might call for these ingredients in these proportions (which I could just add other materials to), I would be grateful to hear your ideas!

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I'm guessing you didn't get the glaze book of the person who's studio stuff you've come into. What was this other artist's work like? What did hey make?

I think it's a low fire engobe of some kind, although if someone has a different opinion, I'd go with that one. I had a quick pass at it in Insight, and it doesn't fall properly within any glaze limits there, so it's very unbalanced (low silica) as a glass. I hope this isn't someone's idea of a matte white cone 6 glaze.

 

My first impulse is to tell you that none of those ingredients are expensive or rare, and 1800g really isn't that much. I think you should just chuck it. You'll spend a bunch of time testing it, trying to figure out if it's something you actually like, and then figuring out how to incorporate it into your work. It's a backwards method of working, regardless of your involvement level in clay. Your time is more valuable than that.

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I think what you have is a mix that he made up of specifics for a series of glazes that used the same materials. This probably had one of the frits added to it or some other materials to complete a some different glazes.

 

 

best,

Pres

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Thanks. I guess I will toss it. I have already tossed more than 40 yogurt containers of homemade glazes, and about 8 5-gallon buckets of glaze. I was being ruthless (and realistic) about what I would use and what I wouldn't, as well as what was worth keeping (if only a few tbsp left with no recipe to repeat... tossed it)

 

I kept all the ^6 glazes that had enough available to do something with, and/or the ones she left the recipes for (and so could be repeated, if liked)

 

When I came across this I was hoping it would be something easy, like "oh that's X, just add Y and you've got Z!" but... alas, back to the Earth it goes!

Thanks.

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Could do a search lusting these ibgred.

I did a Google search of the ingredients, both in quotations marks and not in quotation marks, as well as with amounts... in grams and percentages. I also peeked through several of my pottery reference books, looking to see if any recipes have those three ingredients as a base, and I don't see them paired together in those ratios anywhere!

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Guest JBaymore

Ran it in Insight... could be a crappy cone 3 glaze....or a really crappy cone 6 glaze.  (low in boron....very low in silica.)

 

 EP Kaolin...................  750.000 
 Dolomite....................  750.000 
 Gerstley Bor (99).......  300.000 
                                 =========
                                   1800.000

          CaO      0.545*  
          MgO      0.435*  
          K2O      0.003*   
          Na2O     0.016*   
          P2O5     0.001*   
          TiO2     0.004    
          Al2O3    0.314   
          B2O3     0.120    
          SiO2     0.721   
          Fe2O3    0.004    

                        
              Calculated LOI:  29.758
                
                       Si:Al:   2.295
                      SiB:Al:   2.679
           Thermal Expansion:   6.980
              Formula Weight: 134.230
 

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