DeDe18

hi Marian, Babs and Lee ... thank you for the welcome, and for your input. After weighing your input, and a discussion with the kiln tech at the community college, it seemed there was so little advantage to firing the 4 porcelain beads to maturity, that I decided to just fire them all in my small kiln at home, where I have my stands, and Kanthal wire, and will fire them with Cone 05 Amaco glazes. Silly me was dreaming of getting translucency, which was not going to happen :-) I'll stick with my existing Cone 05 white clays which has served me well so far for making beads. Again, thank you!

Hello everyone, I find your site tremendously insightful and factual, and this is my first post here. I'm a fairly proficient handbuilder and sculptor but have never worked in porcelain. I need to know whether these lentil-shaped hollow beads will fall flat in the highfire glaze firing, with or without glaze. They are slightly larger than a quarter in diameter, and thickness varies from 11 to 13 mm. A classmate at community college handbuilding class gave me the porcelain clay because I just wanted to see whether I prefer it for my hollow beads. They all have holes, not showing in pic. My concern stems from the fact that I had read that walls can collapse, in porcelain, if not exceeding 30 degrees angle. I did do a LOT of searching and reading, but could not find an answer. Photo shows the bisqued hollow porcelain beads in the foreground, and in background are beads from my same molds, in my usual stoneware clay. I do have Kanthal wire which I usually use in my own, small, low-fire kiln but I'm sure the kiln tech at the college (with a vast volume of stoneware and porcelain pieces to fire) will not be game to be bothered with my little experiment so my intent is to just have her fire them on the shelf, unglazed, to maturity ... and then I will decorate them by other means, if I choose, after seeing the result (hoping to get some translucency?) So, in summing up ... do you think these little lentils will collapse and go flat when fired to the porcelain clay's maturity? I believe it is Cone 6. Thank you for any input!