Turquoise Testing

So Busy! I thought reading week would be a nice break but it's been just as busy as a regular week of school, minus the scheduled class hours. I'm a little lagged in terms of what experiments I'm posting, but I'll be adding more posts over this week.

So the test I'll be showing you  is the turquoise glaze i wanted to use for my Triaxial. In the experiment the glaze required some Epson Salts, which I'd never used before, so i tried the test both without and with the salts to see what difference it would make. Actually, it might quite the difference in terms of how the glaze turned out on the tiles. It was supposed to thicken the glaze itself, but after adding it i didn't notice a difference, but on the tile it was obviously thicker.

Tiles to the left of each pair
have the Epson salts

The interesting part was actually on the reverse side of the tiles where the glaze ended up being thicker...somehow. Usually i only take a photo of the front of the tiles but this time....YOU GET BOTH! don't you feel super special? Anyways, without the Epson salts the glaze came out super thin and dark as well as uneven and kinda lumpy. On the red tile the glaze became blistered and rough. However, on the tiles where the Epson salts had been added the glaze was more even over the whole tile and the colour came out beautifully. 

 

Two tiles to left have added Epson salts

I found it rather interesting, this glaze had both Bentonite and the Epson salts, both being suspenders, but with only the bentonite the glaze didn't stay in suspension. I didn't think that having the tiny 1.0% of Epson salts would make a difference, but it did, a really big difference! Even when thick the glaze didn't show any signs of moving although the recipe did warn to not get the glaze too thick or it would move. Actually, i rather liked it when it was applied a bit thicker, but not really as thick as it got on the reverse of the tiles.

Now, at this moment I do have all  the results of the triaxial test, they're lovely, BUT....I want to have time to analyze the results i got and to photograph it properly (there are 42 tiles....i can't photo them like i have done these other little tests). So until I have time to look over the test and photo it, you get teaser pictures of the test in progress~!

I was VERY organized when mixing the 21 glazes
as you can  clearly see...a little OCD..

 ....and maybe one more? All 42 tiles waiting patiently to go into the kiln, they went into the big ConeArt kiln this time since there was so many of them.

So many tiles...

Well, until next time
Cheers~!