Glazing, Any Tips For Organizing The Process?

[Marcia Selsor]

Glazing is not everyone’s favorite step in the process. Do you have any tips for organizing the process? Is it assembly line or a painters palette? How do you do it?

[Pres]

For me it is a matter of gathering up all of the bisqueware to be glazed, laying them out together. Then placing the glaze containers out in color organized rows-blues, greens, browns,beiges and whites. Presently no reds, grays, or yellows, or violets. Then I do a preliminary check of the glazes by mixing with a paint stirrer, check with my hand for consistency and if there are particles that are left from previous glazing. If so, back to the sieve. After preliminary preps of the glazes I start with waxing on the pots and figuring what will go in first level, wash these with sponge, and start dipping and pouring. These set up while I do the second shelf area then I go back to first shelf and add any further decoration with engobes and stains either by atomizer, stamp, or brush on. Then I load them into the kiln as finished with final wipe of bottoms for glaze drips and bubbles.

[PSC]

I tend to do mine by color...since i don't often have a lot of time to sit down and glaze all day uninterrupted. I put out all the ones i want a certain color or color combo and do them all at once so often all the bowls coming from a particular kiln will be very similar color wise but the next kilnload will be a different color combo. So when i sit down to glaze it is rare for me to be using more than 4 colors that day.

[Min]

I’m definitely in the assembly line camp.

 

I like to have lots of bisque to choose from when laying out a glaze load.  I do a dry run of filling a shelf with pots, then repeating this until I have a full kiln load.

 

If time permits I sponge then cold wax pots the night before glazing. If not, then cold wax gets melted onto the pot with a heat gun to dry it quickly. I also take the time to quickly rub the wax over with a scrap of saran wrap, makes the cold wax as slick as hot wax. I would like to use hot wax since it's so much faster but I have a neighbor from hell and he has no problems reporting the weird lady next door to bylaw enforcement from the smell of hot wax burning off.

 

Most of my pieces get sprayed, I mix concentrated glazes up then thin down just what I need for that load when sieving them for the spraygun. Easier on my back to mix a 2 ½ gallon of concentrate rather then hefting a 5 gallon bucket around.

 

I try and do a full kiln with just one glaze combination, too easy to get fingerprints on clear or light glaze from my dark glazes. If I do a mixed load then light glazes go on one shelf.

 

2 spray guns, 1 for dark glazes, 1 for light.

[Chantay]

I started limiting colors per load also. I try an make sure glazes are mixed and sieved the day before. I always wipe down the day before and sometimes wax bottoms too. The day I glaze I separate pots by glaze color. If anything is getting a special color combo I write a note on a piece of paper and lay it in the pot as a reminder. Then it's a production line of pouring all the insides, dipping the out sides and wiping bottoms. 

[clay lover]

What she said ^