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Quick Question: Progressing From Test Glaze Batches To Production Batches


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40 pots all the same glaze?   :blink:

 

Yep. All in the same glaze. I have other glazes I will put over that glaze and decorations I will add, but I like simplicity. I actually plan to just do all my work in a few glazes when I start selling. I want people to be able to come back and order more of my work and it fits with their other stuff.

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Just be really methodical as you weigh out your ingredients. I get tons of phone calls and students interrupting whenever I'm weighing out glazes. I mark each ingredient off only when I've actually dumped it into the bucket. If I've got an amount greater than my scale can handle and have to do it in portions, I mark off each portion only when I've dumped it into the bucket. You don't want to mess up 16,000 grams.

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Good Advice. I was making a test glaze a few weeks ago and I was like, did I put this in? ummm.. Poop. My son came in and asked me for some food and I got up and made it, then I came back and was so confused.

 

I am going to make sure I get everything done and be super careful like you said. Thanks Neil.

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Grape, you may want to go to a ceramic supply store for your materials. I just jumped to buying 50 lb. Bags. Once I needed more than 10 lbs of some ingredients it was the most economical. I am sure there is one close enough to drive.

 

Also, I use Insight. Each time I mix up a glaze I print the ingredient list for the batch size I need. Then check off ingredients as added to the bucket.

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I just bought 7 lbs of most of the ingredients. Once I start ordering 50lb bags I am sure I will pick it up locally or get it delivered via freight. Shipping was 30 dollars, which was expensive considering my order was only 90. But I haven't found a supplier with as much stock as axner yet. I will have to check around because next time I will be ordering a lot more I presume.

 

How much is insight?

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grype, i remember a man all alone in his booth at a very expensive venue.  he had 150 feet of shelving and on it were white bowls with blue stars and red stripes.  all identical.  i felt sorry for him and could not understand why he did that.  glad you have plans.

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HAHAHHHAHA. What a funny story. No, I have plans. I am not just dipping the pots and calling it quits. I have multiple test tiles of ideas that I like and plan to try to incorporate in different ways. Blowing on glazes and splattering them with brushes etc etc. Just I plan to keep similar looking glaze as the base of my work. 

 

I think Mea does this as well. I like the/her idea of customers being able to come back a year later and buy more pieces that fit the stuff I was making the previous year etc etc. Plus if you haven't been able to tell from all my previous post, I am kinda OCD about mastering one thing really well before I move on to the next. Its a good and bad thing I guess.

 

Right now I have been making porcelain pieces with brown speckled stoneware slip brushed onto them in random patterns and finger marks and stuff. The base glaze that I plan to use for all this stuff picks up changes in color and texture pretty well, but it doesn't change drastically. So I figured that is a lot of decoration on the pot there, then when I add a few other glazes blown or splattered into the pot should be pretty interesting. I will post some pictures next week of how my first trials go. Basically I am trying to get ready to start selling my first wares in the coming months. Been making pots for about 1.5 years now without a single pot ever going out the door. I think its time to start selling my wares.

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Well I mixed a test batch of my new glaze ingredients. Right away I can see a difference in the color of the glaze liquid. It is much less red and more pink. I am assuming maybe the RIO isn't as pure or maybe a lesser grade. I wouldn't mind if the glaze came out slightly whiter anyways. I will know in about 24 hours. If it's close or very similar making a big batch ohhh yea!

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Okay. So this came out pretty wacko.

 

On the right is the old batch of glaze. It has a few speckles in it here and there, very spread out. 

 

On the left is the new batch of glaze. It has a bajillion speckles everywhere. It is the same clay body fired in the same bisque.

 

I use test bowls when I mix new batches of glaze to see how it looks on flat and vertical at the same time. I don't know if I like the glaze or not. However what happened? I was thinking that maybe I contaminated it from a previous glaze I mixed, but for there to be that many speckles all over the entire pot, on 4 different pots that I tested?

 

Any ideas?  Where in the world are the speckles coming from? 

 

Ingredients:

Minspar 200 

Spodumene

Silica

Kaolin

Dolomite

Gerstley Borate

 

RIO

Tin Oxide

Bentonite

 

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All the ingredients are from a different supplier. However I did the same measurements. 

 

RIO is 2.

Bent is 2 as well. 

 

It is a glaze from John Britts book, so I didn't know if posting the recipe amounts was against the rules are what. 

 

I don't dislike the speckles, its just not what I was expecting at all.

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One thing I know for sure is it isn't as white as I want it to be. I am thinking about lowering the tin oxide by a few % and 3 times the % of tin I remove of zircopax for more of a whiter look.

 

If I could get the base more white I wouldn't mind the speckles as much. It adds a little character.

 

I have like 50 test tiles I am going to bisque today. I think I am gonna end up making a crap ton of 100G test batches experimenting with zircopax and tin oxide changes to get a more white for my opacifier.

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Why do you need any RIO if it is going to be white? Iron = not white.

 

I have found different feldspars have different colours, my cornish stone is the whitest, soda feldspar a little blue and potash looks a little pinker. If you have any different spars I would try swapping them around in your tests.

 

Not sure if mixing tin and zicro will achieve a whiter white.

 

I find a little zinc oxide can help white.

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grype, if you are only trying for color, do not waste your time and materials with 100 gram batches.  ten grams is about a tablespoon of glaze.  divide your hundred grams and test that way.  i thought tin makes the whitest white..       

 

if you are interested in a  cone 6  true white, contact me.

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If you changed iron my guess would be the speckles are from that. I have found that in general zircon opacifiers give more of a toilet bowl white and tin gives a softer warmer white.  Tin with iron can produce a nice toasty rusty colour, especially where it breaks on edges, can't get that with zirco and iron.

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The tin with iron is what makes the nice breaks with brown and rusty colors (i presume?). Which I love over texture. Esp around the rims where it is nice. So I want the tin and the iron in the glaze, which is why I went with this particular glaze in the first place. What I don't want are a million speckles. I wouldn't mind the glaze being slightly whiter, but I still want the creamy white that the tin provides. 

 

I will figure it out, just going to take some testing. I will make a bunch of test batches and I will try using my old iron with the new ingredients and see what happens. 

 

Thanks for you help and advice everyone.

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Run a test without iron. What mesh size are you screening the big batch through? If you're using a blender for the test batches and a screen for the big batch, it could be that the screen is allowing some larger particles through and causing the spots.

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