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Mystery Materials


Will Shirley

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Years ago I bought out a small studio. The artist was a porcelain potter and I am a wood fired sculptor type, so I use the bricks and other materials but not the tubs of white powders, probably frits used for glazes. Now the tubs are made of crap plastic and are falling apart so I was going to move the white substances into better containers, but now the labels of masking tape and markers have faded completely and fallen off so none of the powders are labeled. I was hoping there might be a series of simple tests to determine more or less what the powder actually is. Does anyone have an idea how one might identify unknown frits? I can figure out the properties of clay easily enough but as a sculptor I haven't done much with frits. Lately I've been making vessels, though, and glazing them so it seems like I might be able to use the mystery stuff if I can figure out what it is. Any ideas or comments? and yes, bottom line I toss the stuff into a landfill....

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Mike Bailey and David Hewitt wrote a really good article on identifying those mystery materials. They go through various methods of identifying materials including a bulk density test and LOI figures which can be quite useful. Link to it here.

Welcome to the forum.

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