Glazing a spoon or other irregular shapes / Wadding?

[Rick Wise]

Advice needed on glazing small irregular items:    (As an example of the problem) I have made some small "spoons" for honey pots.  They look like a short pencil but with a flattened end on it.  Is there some way that I can glaze fire it so that it does not stick to the shelf?  It has no bottom on which to rest.  There is glaze all over it.  It wont stand on its end.  I have read about "wadding".  Is wadding a way to handle this sort of problem?  Or is there some device like those little 3 prong holders that I can use?  If wadding is the answer, how do you make it?  (Glazing to cone 6 in an electric kiln)

[Callie Beller Diesel]

Wadding is certainly a cheap and dirty soloution to this problem. Usually it's used in soda/salt/wood kilns to keep pots from adhering to whatever they're set on because it resists the fluxes that are introduced into those atmospheres, but it works just fine in a cone 6 electric.  Wadding is meant to be refractory and just crumble away, or be easily ground off.

Wadding recipes are usually a 50/50 combination by volume of alumina hydrate and whatever dry clay is cheap and to hand, usually epk, but anything will work. Some people incorporate organics like flour or sawdust that burn out, and make the wadding easier to remove if it's going to encase, say the end of a spoon, but it's optional. Add enough water to make it workable, and usually if you're just resting a pot on bits of wadding, the wads are glued on with a litte wood glue or white glue in order to get everything into the kiln with minima frustration. The glue burns out at low temperatures.

If the glaze touches the wadding, it will stick, so usually wadding is applied to an unglazed part of the pot.

[Babs]

i guess you have bisqued and glazed them?

wonder what your glazecwould look like at 03..the tripronged spurs or stilts..name may be wrong .. can be used at that temp. still needs a small grind to smooth.

 

another time make a hole in handle and string them on nichrome wire to fire. hole interior glaze free obviously.

or now could wipe glaze off handle end, make holes in surface of soft fire brick, stick yoyr spoons into them....no glaze touching brick and fire...

[Magnolia Mud Research]

In the college cone 10 gas kiln we have been using a layer crushed oyster shells (obtained at a farm / garden store) to support items similar to spoons.  After the firing, the scars at the contact points are polished away after soaking the surfaces in warm water for a few minutes.  The shells calcine to lime. Cone 6 firing would also work just fine. 

I support glazed items of small sea shells and have similar results at both cone 5 and cone 10. 

 

[Mark C.]

When I made lots of soup toureens with spoons I glaze the whole spoon  but fist waxd two contact points (very small )

and fired them on a soft bricks as that material polishes right off. Cone 10 .

[Rick Wise]

Many thanks to you all ....