Glaze Q&A Videos

Question: When you use Epsom salts to flocculate a glaze, how long does that effect last? How often do you have to add more Epsom salts? Using Epsom salts to flocculate glazes Epsom salts are magnesium sulphate. When they're dissolved in water, the magnesium breaks...

Question: “Brush on glazes are less consistent in my experience. How do we know the ideal consistency with a brush on glaze?”

Question: Can you use bentonite instead of Epsom salt for hard panning? Dealing with hard-panning In my free Strategic Glazing class, I talk about flocculation. Flocculation is a way of increasing a glaze's viscosity without adjusting the specific gravity and without...

Question: When using tongs, what is a reliable method for covering the small holes left behind in a way that doesn’t show as a different color in the fired piece?

Can you save a glaze that has turned to pudding after adding too much sodium silicate? Question: I added way too much sodium silicate to two big buckets of glaze. They were too thick and water wasn’t helping so I decided to deflocculate with sodium silicate. They have...

What if mixing creates bubbles in our glaze? Question: When high speed mixing, is it necessary to allow the glaze to sit for some period of time before dipping to avoid tiny bubbles? What to do about those tiny bubbles?! A couple people were asking about a milk...

How long will my glaze stay suspended for?  Every glaze is going to be different depending on their composition. Some glazes will settle very quickly, and other glazes will just stay mixed and homogenized for a lot longer. So that's going to be dependent on which...

We sieve glazes to break down clumps (and sometimes remove foreign objects) All of your glaze particles and ingredients should go through the sieve. All we're really doing when we're sieving is we're breaking up things that have clumped together. Sometimes materials...

What happens when glazes freeze? Yeah, freezing is fine. You would definitely want to high speed mix your glaze after it has frozen, but freezing just affects the water. I would high speed mix and sieve my glaze if it had been frozen for a little while. But it's not...

Are you stirring your glaze for long enough? “When you said in the stir test, 10 Seconds. 30 seconds. 60 seconds of stirring. Are you talking about high speed mixing or just hand mixing?” In my free Strategic Glazing class, I gave an example of where I took a large...

How does the thickness of your piece affect the glaze application? In my free Strategic Glazing class, I talked about: When the conditions are the same and we repeat our steps, then the result is going to be the same.  Some of the conditions of our glazing process...