Making your functional ware furniture friendly

[Pyewackette]

Between a (fairly) recent QotW about footrings and the following thread:

Its brought furniture-friendly bottoms back to the forefront of my mind.  I try to always have footrings on everything, even if they are flattish footrings, simply because I want to minimize the contact of the bottoms of my ware on furniture surfaces that they might mar.  Well, partly.  I also just like footrings.

I have 2 different kinds of speckled stoneware coming (soon, I hope), plus other somewhat groggy stonewares.  Some of it will end up as planters of one ilk or another, some as functional ware, mostly bowls, yunomi, and tumblers.  While a plant pot won't sit directly on a table or sill, its saucer will.  I would hate to make a nice planter in speckled clay that has a saucer under it that doesn't match.

I already burnish to push as much grog as possible into the clay body, mostly at rims and bottoms, but it will resurface to some extent during firing anyway.  I count on glaze to make up for that at the rims but we don't glaze bottoms.

I've thought of trying to dip bottoms in slip but then there are issues of the slip fitting.  We only have one kind of slip in the studio so I would have to make my own.

How do you guys "fix" the groggy-clay/furniture interface?

[Bill Kielb]

While I don’t use groggy clay, when I did, wet sand the bisque to smooth as much as practical ( rim and foot)  and ALL pieces after glaze firing - foot diamond grit ( wet) sanded super smooth.

[Chilly]

19 hours ago, Pyewackette said:

How do you guys "fix" the groggy-clay/furniture interface?

Glaze the foot ring, and then sit the centre, unlgazed part of the pot on a kiln post to raise it off the shelf.

[Min]

Take your claybody that the pots are made with and run it through a 60 mesh screen to remove most of the grog / sand. Brush that onto the feet of the groggy clay pots. After glaze firing rub the foot over with a diamond sanding pad.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

A sheet of 220 wet dry sandpaper usually takes care of most residuals, if you’re only using clay with a manganese speckle.

While the piece is still leather hard, it can also help to give the contact points a polish with the little red rib, and make sure the bat you put the piece on to dry has no crumbs that will push into the foot. I hate sanding, so I try to opt for prevention rather than cure.

[LeeU]

I sometimes "cheat" and just spray  some FlexSeal on the bottom of the fired piece (after lite fine sanding before firing).

[Pyewackette]

7 hours ago, Min said:

Take your claybody that the pots are made with and run it through a 60 mesh screen to remove most of the grog / sand. Brush that onto the feet of the groggy clay pots. After glaze firing rub the foot over with a diamond sanding pad.

I'll for sure try that. If there's a way to prevent its better than trying to cure later.  Besides which there is no cure for silicosis LOL!  Though honestly I doubt I'd live long enough to contract it what with the little bit of wet sanding this would most likely entail.

@Callie Beller Diesel I do try to burnish the grog back in after trimming but it does tend to pop back up during firing.  The little red rib is exactly the one I use, sometimes the next size up if the piece is larger.

[Kelly in AK]

I rely on sanding the foot (after glaze firing) to take care of this. I do polish with the wooden part of my tool when trimming, but that alone doesn’t do it. And if a pot warps in drying I’ll slide it around on a wet ware board to flatten the foot, which pretty much ruins that burnished surface. 220 grit to knock the sharp edges off followed by a quick 600 or 800 wet sanding to polish it a bit. It’s not too involved, a brief operation on a pot by pot basis. My feeling is if I can slide the pot on a tablecloth without any snagging it’s done.