Translucent Glazes

[Pugaboo]

I've been spending a lot of time searching through the online sites selling various brands of glaze and am slowly learning what the different descriptions mean. I have noticed though that not all brands of cone 5/6 glazes state whether the glaze is translucent or not so how do you tell if a glaze is translucent or not without purchasing many many jars to test? I don't have a lot if money to buy one of each kind of glaze to see which ones are translucent. Amaco is very good about stating the opacity of their glazes, Coyote doesn't seem to do it at all, spectrum and Duncan are hit or miss. So is there something in the descriptions that should give me a hint as to their opacity? This might be obvious to those of you more experienced or that mix your own but I am still figuring out glaze chemistry by reading books to learn what minerals cause what reactions in glaze and heat.

 

Thanks for any pointers.

 

Terry

[minspargal]

You can always e-mail the glaze companies. As you said, Amaco labels theirs, so does Mayco and Spectrum.

[Nancy S.]

I've been spending a lot of time searching through the online sites selling various brands of glaze and am slowly learning what the different descriptions mean. I have noticed though that not all brands of cone 5/6 glazes state whether the glaze is translucent or not so how do you tell if a glaze is translucent or not without purchasing many many jars to test? I don't have a lot if money to buy one of each kind of glaze to see which ones are translucent. Amaco is very good about stating the opacity of their glazes, Coyote doesn't seem to do it at all, spectrum and Duncan are hit or miss. So is there something in the descriptions that should give me a hint as to their opacity? This might be obvious to those of you more experienced or that mix your own but I am still figuring out glaze chemistry by reading books to learn what minerals cause what reactions in glaze and heat.

 

Thanks for any pointers.

 

Terry

 

 

Having used several Coyote glazes, I noticed that they don't say whether or not a glaze is translucent...and yet, they do. Basically, all of their glazes are opaque except for the Celadons. You can see in the test tiles that they have on the site whether or not the stamped design in the test tile is visible through the glaze, and how much. Of course, the application method (brushing or dipping) will make a difference as to how it looks for your piece specifically, but it's a start. And even some of their opaque glazes, especially the shinos, are very sensitive to the glaze thickness.