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Raku Using Ferric Cloride


Pete

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  • 4 weeks later...

What did I do wrong? I placed my 2000f raku piece on a brick & sprayed it with ferric cloride. The cloride evaporated off & no orange color appeared!

 

 

It sounds like you were going for look you get from a sagger fire. In order to get the red/orange color you need to keep the ferric chloride from vaporizing. You spray your piece before you fire it, then you need to sealing your piece coated in ferric chloride in something fire proof. Typically you can wrap your piece in aluminum foil and then fire that in your raku kiln. Once you hit temperature you can remove your piece from the fire and let it cool naturally. You can also look at when the aluminum foil starts to look dusty as if it will flake away, then you also know it done.

 

This has worked for me in the past.

 

Denise

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What did I do wrong? I placed my 2000f raku piece on a brick & sprayed it with ferric cloride. The cloride evaporated off & no orange color appeared!

 

You may have gone too high. Try 1850. If you spray ferric chloride on a crackle white at this temp. you get a gold luster. If you spray it on bare clay , it looks like stoneware. If you over fire, the chloride may burn off too fast. Or is your solution weak?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

What did I do wrong? I placed my 2000f raku piece on a brick & sprayed it with ferric cloride. The cloride evaporated off & no orange color appeared!

 

 

As previously mentioned, you are probably spraying at too high a temperature. I use FeCl several times a month in a raku-type process (horsehair) and spray at approx. 1000 degrees F. FeCl is extremely temperature sensitive and the color will vary from light gold to dark rust red with less than 100 degrees variation!

 

Since you're pulling your pieces at 200 degrees, you might want to try counting seconds in between spray attempts until you get good color and then use that count down number for future pulls. BTW, you don't need to use FeCl at full strength to get good color if the temp. is right. I dilute it 8 parts water to 1 part FeCl. Much safer to use that way.

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