Exploring the Art and Science of Ceramics

Kiln opening surprises? Not what you were expecting?

Glaze results are often 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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A Blog About Ceramic Glazes

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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 in the bucket. If your glaze recipe...

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 they had hoped. Every now and then...

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… I had heard about it enough times that...

Why I Use a Graduated Cylinder for Measuring Specific Gravity

…And what to use if you don’t have one. 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

In this video I demonstrate how to measure the specific gravity of a glaze I just mixed using a graduated cylinder and a scale.

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 material substitutions using the UMF...