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Re-Firing Commercial Porcelain


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Hi,

 

Thank you for allowing me to join this forum. I have a background of fusing glass so, other than in school, I am pretty dumb when it comes to ceramics. 

 

I want to make a clock out of a Bopla plate. I know I could get stick on letters, (or some sort of permanent paint?) for the clock face. I think it would look much more professional if I could re-fire it with the clock face numbers.

 

I have used fired on decals on fused glass before. Is it possible to re-fire commercial porcelain without any loss to the design. The decals I have fired onto glass fire at around 1000 degrees. I don't know temps for ceramic decals though. 

 

This is for a Christmas present.

 

Thanks,

 

Dave Kingman

 

P.S. If this is possible, I would appreciate finding a source for ceramic decal numbers 1-12. The place I used before required an image file and was pretty expensive.

 

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post-65651-0-95551500-1417727456_thumb.jpg

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It all depends on how the original plate was created. It's possible that re-firing it, even at low ceramic temps, will affect the colors in the glazes. Unless you can find someone who has done it before with that particular brand of plate, the only way to know for sure is to test it.

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big chance because of a temp zone for ceramics called quarts inversion(1025-1080 depends on clay body). If done incorrectly the plate may crack. If you fire take the temp up slow, maybe 125 or 150 deg per hr till decal fuse then slowly down. Have something like silica sand on the shelf to allow the plate to expand/contract and not get stuck to the shelf.

Another idea, how about making a glass disk with hole in center and fire on the decals then assemble to the plate.

Gamble anyway. Hope others might chime in, this is just a guess.

Wyndham

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I do a fair amount of decal work on high fire pots of mine. I refire the decal load to cone 1 (2000ish) and it works well for those glazes. I very recently bought a cheap (and poorly glazed) 50¢ porcelain mug at the Dollar Store and applied a test decal and fired along side my work just to see. The mug survived fine, but the decal was muddy, telling me cone 1 was too hot and the glaze became viscous and "absorbed" some of the toner. I would be hesitant with your plate as Neil said the refiring could change or destroy the plate's colors. My test store bought mug was white. AND it's pretty amazing the color transformation my reduced high fire glazes go through in the reoxidizing atmosphere of the electric kiln. (Iron reds get really red.)

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Hello Dave

 

Welcome to the forums. 

 

I have fired decals onto commercial pottery and most results were good but you do need to know if the piece is earthenware, stoneware/porcelain or bonechina as the glaze chemistry for these categories of pottery are different and may change the colour of the design on the plate or the decal as the glaze softens and starts to activate again. All metal accents on a piece will permanently tarnish or burn out completely because the layer of metal is so thin, ditto with lustre colours and  porcelain painting because these colour films are also very thin.....

 

....having said all that, decals are great fun and will fire onto most china most of the time with very little trouble because the firing temperature of the decal is much lower than the glazes on the piece.

 

I am Australian so I think metric.... my firing schedule is...60C/hr to 150C to thoroughly dry the decal, 120C/hr to 570C hold 10mins, 120C/hr to 810C hold 10mins, off.

 

Would also suggest doing a test piece first.  Good luck and show us the results.

 

Irene

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The orange and lemony green colour in that plate tell me that it probably wasn't glazed with high temperature glazes. A plus one for testing before firing your decal on. Perhaps look into a glass decal, if they make such things. Glass is slumped and fused at much lower temperatures than even ceramic lustres, which fire to cone 018 or 1314* F. This is about the lowest temperature one deals with in ceramics. The lower you keep your temperatures/heat work, the less likely it will be that you alter any glaze colours. The information that Irene mentioned about metallic accents and lustres still holds, though.

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