curt Posted August 17, 2018 Report Share Posted August 17, 2018 When I broke some test bars recently to look at a fired clay body, I chanced upon a lovely little bloat! We were talking about bloating recently so I thought I would share these pics courtesy of my hand-held zoom cam. This is a black brick clay body sporting 4.3% molar Iron and 1.3% molar Manganese. I don't think it was ever designed to be fired to Cone 10, so of course that was the first thing I did. Well behaved for the most part, fine for sculptural or decorative work, although I don't think you would be choosing it for your new line of functional dinnerware . This sample was fired in a gas kiln with medium reduction. The bloat you see here occurred very near the surface of the test bar. It is about 0.5 of a millimetre ( 1/50th of an inch) in diameter so pretty small really. I would not have seen it on the surface of this otherwise rough-ish clay body if the break in the test bar had not split the bloat close to right down the middle. Note the smooth surfaces and spherical shape of the bloat bubble inside. The inside edge is strikingly curved and clean. The "black glass" also appears to be evident inside and around the edges of the bloat. In fact the whole inside looks like it could have been coated in a shiny iron. The final picture just for overkill is a reverse lighting image of the inside of the bloat where the dark patches are actually the reflection of the microscope light... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilestrick Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 The first photo looks like a delicious brownie! Thanks for sharing. Super cool images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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