Thicken glaze?

[ronfire]

At this point I will only try on a small batch to try and save what I have. Adding Bentonite looks like my next move,I will also call Plainsman tomorrow and see what they have to say .

Read  that adding the Epsom salt without dissolving it first works but has to get mixed well and have time to dissolve into the glaze.

With the amount of Epsom salt added I should be able to stand on the glaze. I know that all the salt was dissolved after screening the glaze and not finding any solids.

I sure do appreciate all the advise and help.

[liambesaw]

1 hour ago, ronfire said:

At this point I will only try on a small batch to try and save what I have. Adding Bentonite looks like my next move,I will also call Plainsman tomorrow and see what they have to say .

Read  that adding the Epsom salt without dissolving it first works but has to get mixed well and have time to dissolve into the glaze.

With the amount of Epsom salt added I should be able to stand on the glaze. I know that all the salt was dissolved after screening the glaze and not finding any solids.

I sure do appreciate all the advise and help.

Overflocculating leads to deflocculating, which could be the issue, however Min said the same glaze also doesn't respond to epsom salts.

Counterintuitive but too much epsom salts does this.  I'm not sure the mechanism but if you were to chart viscosity it is a gradual build and then a complete dropoff.

As far as I know, overflocculating cannot be undone without chemical separation of the epsom salts.

[liambesaw]

I went ahead and looked it up, and over flocculation occurs when the flocculant begins acting upon itself due to the concentration and actually removes itself from suspension in a chain reaction.

[ronfire]

I tried adding vinegar to about 2 litres of glaze and it still did not gel with 5 cap fulls. Just ordered a new bag to be shipped here, might be scraping this batch. I have a call in to Tony at plainsman to hear his advise. Might be able to add some of this glaze to the new batch to thicken it but for the amount I gain might not be worth it. Oh well it is just money.....

 

 

[Mark C.]

Hey I know some potters who dumped about 1/2 gallon of epson salts into a 30 gallon batch of glaze  not knowing a thing about how to use the stuff. They eventually buried the whole 30 gallons in the yard.It was a ahha moment for them..

In ceramics as in life you learn from your mistakes.The only diffference is there are many more mistakes to learn from in ceramics

[Min]

Since it didn't make sense that the epsom salts didn't flocc my glaze and it worked for Callie with this glaze I needed to retest. Today I mixed up a 400 gram batch of this glaze and some fresh saturated epsom salts solution. 1 tsp added to the 400 gram batch and it worked perfectly to flocculate. When I emptied out the old jar of epsom salts solution there were salts that had crystallized out. So, user error on my part, sorry for any confusion caused.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I keep solution in a 500 ml Mason jar, and I find if my studio gets cold, they precipitate out and the bottom gets crusty. Heat it back up in the microwave and they’ll re-dissolve. 

[Min]

I like seeing some salt crystals at the bottom of the jar, I take it to mean my solution is saturated. I don't use a lot of this, I wonder if having it sit around for a couple years has anything to do with it, how much of the salts can precipitate out of solution. 

[ronfire]

Update. After speaking to Tony Hansen at plainsman he was not sure why the glaze did not gel. Suggested it might be the well water and could have a seasonal change and is why it worked well before. The recommendation was to remove some water to thicken it up and use it.

Just emptied the kiln and all the glaze looked great, was a relief as I was worried about the excess Epsom salt.

Now if I could only get that glaze to work on the sinks, will have to try again.

 

 

[Mark C.]

Mark said (if you want it thicker next time use less water. )

Tony said ( remove some water to thicken it up )

Great minds think alike they say

 

when I want glaze thicker I let it settle and take the clear top water off. Water is easy to add and to remove let it sit a day or two and then remove top water.

In smaller amount of glaze I have also cooked off the water on a stove (say a gallon or less) as i'm glazing  now and need it now.