Exploring the Art and Science of Ceramics
Kiln opening surprises? Glazes not what you were expecting?
Glaze results are affected by application thickness, which is affected by the water content in our glazes. You can control your glaze's water content by measuring the specific gravity and making sure it's always consistent.
Consistent water content = consistent application thickness = consistent results! Take control of your glazes with this free step-by-step guide to measuring specific gravity for repeatable results.
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Understand Your Glazes and Your Pottery Studio
Articles written by Sue McLeod, a studio technician and glaze explorer
How to Calibrate Your Kiln Sitter for Accurate Firings
How the Kiln Sitter Works If you’re anything like me, then your first kiln wasn’t or isn’t going to be the digital programmable kind. Many of us start out with a manual kiln that we got second hand and then one day, we may have...
A Low Tech System for Recycling Clay Scraps
As clay artists, we’re so lucky that we can reduce the amount of waste we produce by reclaiming or recycling our unfired clay. (I use the words “reclaim” and “recycle” interchangeably.) When we make something that cracks, warps...
How to Make a Good Kiln Wash to Protect Your Kiln Shelves
Different Kinds of Kiln Shelves Before I talk about kiln wash, I want to talk about kiln shelves. The kiln shelves that I’ll be referring to in this article are high alumina kiln shelves. Alumina is highly refractory, meaning it...
Do You Put Witness Cones in Every Firing?
I receive a lot of glaze questions and the first question I generally ask in return is "What did the cones look like?" This is because knowing whether the kiln was over- or under-fired is important for diagnosing many glaze...
How to Add Bentonite to a Wet Glaze
Photos, instructions and a video down below!What is bentonite? Bentonite is a very fine particle clay that’s often used as a suspending agent in glazes. Glazes need clay in them to keep all the other materials suspended...
How Well Are You Mixing Your Glazes?
Glaze results on the thin side? As a studio technician at a busy pottery studio, it’s my job to mix and maintain 20 different studio glazes. I’m also the one studio users often go to for help when their glazes don’t work out as...
Why I Don’t Use a Hydrometer to Measure Specific Gravity
Adding Water to Glazes I didn’t always know about measuring specific gravity. Of the 10 years that I’ve been mixing glazes, I’ve only been measuring specific gravity for 3 of them. It wasn’t a technique I learned in school. But…...
Why I Use a Graduated Cylinder for Measuring Specific Gravity
...And what to use if you don't have oneSlender is More Accurate I use a graduated cylinder for measuring specific gravity. A slender container is going to have smaller increments than a wide container, giving higher accuracy....
How to Measure the Specific Gravity of Your Glazes
Video Tutorial In this video I demonstrate how to measure the specific gravity of a glaze I just mixed using a graduated cylinder and a scale. Measuring specific gravity is a way to calculate the water content of a glaze to...
Material Substitutions with Glazy.org – Video Tutorial
Recipe sharing Glazy.org is a free ceramic recipe sharing website where users can upload glaze recipes and photos to share with the ceramics community. Material substitutions In this tutorial, I show you how to use Glazy to make...
Adding Colourants in Glazy.org – Video Tutorial
Recipe sharing Glazy.org is a free ceramic recipe sharing website where users can upload glaze recipes and photos to share with the ceramics community. Adding colourants to a recipe In this tutorial, I go over how to add...
Intro to Glazy.org – Video Tutorial
Recipe sharing Glazy.org is a free ceramic recipe sharing website where users can upload glaze recipes and photos to share with the ceramics community. Intro to Glazy.org If you've never used Glazy.org before, this is a...
“Understanding Cone 6”
NCECA presentation – Pittsburgh 2018
My NCECA presentation “Understanding Cone 6” is all about using glaze chemistry, the Unity Molecular Formula and the Stull chart to understand how different surfaces are created at cone 6. Which glaze formulas are likely to be matte or glossy? Which ones are likely to be crazed or be under-fired? How does flux ratio impact fired results?
“Understanding Cone 6” presentation slides and script are available as a free download!