Glaze Testing Madness

Glaze testing has been less than productive lately, my health has taken a bit of a spiral downhill and has kept me in bed. That, and prior to being bed ridden i was bogged down by so many things (i wont get into details, there was just lots). So i have many a test to complete, recipes and cups ready in wait....and i'm stuck at home. boo.

Besides all that, i have had a bit of time for some fun glaze related things and at the start of this week i got some really great news. I came home Monday afternoon, checked the mailbox and found a big fat envelope from one of the universities i applied to (and you know you don't get a big fat envelope unless you've been accepted!). YIPPI! I'll be heading off into the great blue yonder come the fall so i can get my bachelor of the Fine Arts Major in Ceramics~

Oh, right, back to glazes. Well there was this one recipe i was eager to try out but upon checking the ingredients i noticed we had very little Petalite. well, the recipe needed 40% Petalite so i went searching for an alternative. Luckily, I'm fortunate to know Gem, a fellow ceramist and someone with access to one of those glaze recipe computer programs. She showed me how to use it a bit and how to use the chemical components in each ingredient to replace the petalite with other ingredients. So now...

Mottled Purple-Original Recipe
Petalite             40
EPK Kaolin       17
Dolomite           17
Whiting               6
Silica                  10
Cobalt Oxide      10

Mottled Purple-Altered Recipe

Spodumene           21
Ferro Frit 3110        2

EPK Kaolin          19.5
Dolomite              18.2
Whiting                 5.5

Silica                   26.1
Cobalt Oxide          10

So now the recipe is balanced with all the right amount of ingredients so the petalite doesn't have to be added. But the thing is, this hasn' t been completely tested....So i'm going to test it and compare it to the tiles i have from the original test i completed. This test joins about seven others i have in the making, they'll be mixed in a few days if i can, i want the test done with so i can get back to the major task at hand, picking the recipes for the final quadraxial blend in both reduction and oxidation.

Now then, i have a few tests done and some photos to share...and oh! forgot to mention, i decided to include the cone packs with each photo from each kilned test. Just for the fun of it all. Although, the all the tests I've done lately have been dead on cone 6...

Glazes Left to Right: #19 retest, Fake Ash, VC Matt, and Speckled Gold

Glazes Left to Right: Buck Sea Green, Mottled Purple, and Cream Breaking Rust

So most of these tests were just original glazes i found through books or glaze sites, but the #19 retest is glaze number #19 from the Triaxial i did earlier. I didn't have both tiles at the time of the photograph, but the glaze looks nearly identical to the original! I'm very excited about this, even with all the modifications to the recipe to simplify it, it still came out the same.

#19 Retest

Here's a bit of a close up to it all on it's own. I think it still looks wonderful...it just needs a name now to make it look like a more official glaze..hm...

Well, that's all for now, I hope to be back to glazing as soon as i'm well. With more pictures and more stories to tell, no doubt.

Cheers~

Cookies!

Well, it's been more than crazy the last week and a bit since I last updated! After my car broke down, an emergency trip to Vancouver, my parents returning from a trip down South, and a very severe lack of sleep. I am trudging onward with my glazes, now looking into doing some different oxidation/reduction combination tests for my next big test. for now I'm doing some minor tests, finding some new glazes to try and trying to re-create one of the glaze mixtures from the triaxial. I'm hoping to do more testing of the crackle glaze I've been playing with, trying it on larger surfaces....speaking of which...

Vessel shaped tiles! oh my

I made some interesting tiles to test on, why? since the ceramics room is rather busy and full of students this semester i am unable to make any large vessels (that and I'm so busy with glazes that it would be unheard of) i decided to make my tiles in vessel shapes instead of squares, or rectangles, or circles. I have made four vase shapes in each colour clay and four pitcher shapes in each colour clay, that's a total of sixteen tiles. along with that i have thrown three cylinders in each colour to test runny glazes and more layered tests.

Hopefully I can get these dried and bisqued soon so my tests don't have to wait too long. I do have a couple tests I've put through in the large ConeArt kiln over this weekend, I should have the results out tomorrow; I have tested three new glazes and the one re-creation test.

I'll update as soon as I can with the new results! With more pictures!

Cheers~