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Can A Candle Produce Enough Heat To Fuse Lid To Body?


dhPotter

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The lid to a  candle burner lantern fused to the body AFTER the glaze firing and while burning a candle in it.  The candle was too big for the application.  The candle should have been votive sized, instead it was about 2 inches in diameter by about 4 inches tall.  The candle burned for a good hour.  The lid got VERY hot but no cracks.  After cool down the lid would not lift off.  Had to take a rubber hammer to it.

 

The lantern was glaze fired to cone 6 with the lid on it.  No problems with removing the lid after the glaze firing.  In the pics you can see a couple of drops of glaze on the unglazed portion of the lid. I do not recall seeing these spots after the glaze firing. The unglazed portion of the lid was waxed for the glaze firing. 

 

Notice the discoloration of the unglazed portion - that came from the candle burning.

 

 

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Not possible. If it got hot enough to melt glaze the pot would have been glowing and the table would have started on fire. You probably just got a bunch of wax vapor or soot in there that stuck it on.

I would have thought that it would have cracked the lid before melting the glaze.

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I agree that the glaze run was there before and you did not see it most likely.

I can say that it is possible for the candle to melt the glaze but only if it caught the whole house on fire and you got some fans or compressed air on that fire and kept the fire deptment away-you then may and I say MAY gotten to cone 6 with the pot and melted the glaze.

You would have noticed the fire most likely at this point as well.

so it is not out out of possibilities-just extremely unlikely.

Mark

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Mark, may not have noticed if I was in a drunken stupor - but not this time!  :P

 

Drunken stupor is a reasonable explanation when dealing with potters. :blink:

 

I do not drink much-maybe 3 beers a year with mexican food-

but I have a porcelain pot that survied a two story complete burn down house fire.

It now looks Raku looking -but the glaze did not melt.

 

Just saying it's a maybe

on the stupor note most and that means 80% of the potter I know are not the stupor types

If you make your living at making pots that lifestyle will bite you in the -ss

just saying-

Mark

Now this thread really is off topic

just saying-

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Was watching the Warren MacKenzie DVD.  He was having trouble with some form and how to put a lid on it.  He said after a few drinks an idea popped in his head.  He went to the studio and started throwing.  After throwing some forms he said "Of course I had to trash them. I wasn't in control of myself and the pots were not in control." or something to that effect. 

 

I agree, definitely have no muscle control, even after 1 beer.  Alcohol and pottery do not mix well.  However, some of the things made sure make it nice to drink from - mugs, flasks, bottles, whiskey cups.

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Says here That a candle flame can get to 2,600F.  That's off the chart hot.  If correct, it puts glaze melt easily within the realm of possibility in this instance; at that point it would be a matter of overall heat work applied.  you could put a video microscope on it, see what the surface where the pieces joined, looks like.  Post a pic of the whole candle holder! 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame

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Says here That a candle flame can get to 2,600F.  That's off the chart hot.  If correct, it puts glaze melt easily within the realm of possibility in this instance; at that point it would be a matter of overall heat work applied.  you could put a video microscope on it, see what the surface where the pieces joined, looks like.  Post a pic of the whole candle holder! 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame

If that where true I could melt my steel screwdriver blade with a candle?

Mark

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Says here That a candle flame can get to 2,600F.  That's off the chart hot.  If correct, it puts glaze melt easily within the realm of possibility in this instance; at that point it would be a matter of overall heat work applied.  you could put a video microscope on it, see what the surface where the pieces joined, looks like.  Post a pic of the whole candle holder! 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame

If that where true I could melt my steel screwdriver blade with a candle?

Mark

 

A forged steel piece of the mass of a screwdriver would absorb but also conduct heat over the course of an hour, it would not melt due to the conductivity and mass of the screwdriver, it would dissipate though a fine steel wire say a micron thick would probably melt or even vaporize in a candle flame. Try holding some fine steel wool over a candle flame for awhile (not literally).  The surface area where the lid of the candle holder met the body might have been thin to thin, and if so, two thin contacting layers of ceramic heated by a 2,600 F flame in that contained, insulating space for over an hour, might have achieved a bond similar to the bond achieved when for instance one fires an unglazed pot within a pot.  Ceramic is a good insulator unlike steel, so that heat would be captured and released between the gap of the lid and the body of the vessel.  Could be dependent upon the thickness of the pieces involved, as in, the overall thermal mass that the heat work of the candle actually gets applied to.  It would be extraordinary, but in the right set of circumstances, the tiny gap between the two pieces might fuse in some areas.   If so there could be some evidence of it. 

 

I would be interested in learning what law of thermodynamics it is, that precludes the possibility of these surfaces bonding at some point sufficiently to stick together...  

 

If the piece still exists, put another, similar candle in the vessel and try it again!  Will some applied light heat, release the two pieces?  Does the join feel 'waxy'?  Scrape it, is there residue?  There should be some evidence of the type of bond achieved.  Fascinating stuff.  I'll have a beer, and think about it some more :)

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Thanks Char.

 

Pretty amazing to me that wax would stick pottery together such that when separated it would actually pull the glaze off just like it was stuck to a kiln shelf.  Perhaps, for the future, the lids should not be so closely fitted.

This is key.  dhPotter suggests here that glaze was pulled off when the pieces separated, as if stuck to a kiln shelf.  But, stuck by wax so securely that the previously vitrified glaze is torn off by it? What sorta candle wax can do that?  I can't visualize a wax bond strong enough to accomplish that unless the glaze were super-flaky to start with.  If I'm reading this right, then there was evidence... That dhPotter may have made a ceramic vessel that self-seals via vitrification with only a candle flame.  Wowza.  

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The glaze is Bill Van Gilder's Raspberry Red.

 

Raspberry Red


Whiting                     20.00    g         
Nepheline Syenite    18.00    g         
Frit 3134                   14.00    g         
OM-4 Ball Clay         18.00    g         
Silica                         30.00    g         
                               100.00     

Add
Chrome Oxide            0.20
Tin Oxide                    3.75

 

It definitely popped off some glaze.  Look at the pics at the top of this thread.  The white spots on the lid is the torn off piece of glaze from the body.

 

The piece is about 7-8 inches tall and about 4-5 inches in diameter.

 

Patsu - you think there might be some money award for the discovery? :o

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Babs - no problem with the lid after glaze firing.

 

I said earlier I did not notice the glaze pluck on the flange of the lid.  But now I remember remarking out loud that I was lucky with that lid when I saw the glaze on the flange.

 

But what occurred after the candle burning is true.  The lid was stuck so that I had to take a rubber hammer to it to unstick it.  Then to my amazement there was the glaze popped off the body and stuck on the lid.  The glaze pluck finally did bite me.  The lantern is still intact and functional.

 

Just went to see if there is any waxy feeling over the lid flange.  Where the flame discolored the unglazed clay on the lid it does feel a bit waxy, but not where the glaze pluck is.  It feels like it looks.  Rough from being torn off the body.

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The glaze is Bill Van Gilder's Raspberry Red.

 

Raspberry Red

 

 

Whiting                     20.00    g         

Nepheline Syenite    18.00    g         

Frit 3134                   14.00    g         

OM-4 Ball Clay         18.00    g         

Silica                         30.00    g         

                               100.00     

 

Add

Chrome Oxide            0.20

Tin Oxide                    3.75

 

It definitely popped off some glaze.  Look at the pics at the top of this thread.  The white spots on the lid is the torn off piece of glaze from the body.

 

The piece is about 7-8 inches tall and about 4-5 inches in diameter.

 

Patsu - you think there might be some money award for the discovery? :o

Ha ha, well I think that first you have to convince Neil & we're not there yet :)  Still there's bragging rights for sure!  On a more serious note, I also like to make candle holders and they are tricky... You may want to look your design, lest some unsuspecting votive worshiper (or burnout), tries to remove that hot lid.  What is its' function, is it a resin burner?  It is sort of scary making candle holders and incense holders since one never knows what crazy things others might try to do with them. Fun though.

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