A Blog about Ceramic Art and Science
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Most Recent Blog Posts
Start Mixing Your Own Ceramic Glazes – A Shopping List
Are you ready to start mixing your own glazes? Perhaps you’ve reached the point in your ceramics journey that you want to start understanding the materials you’re working with and what is actually happening when you put your pottery into the kiln.
Are You Mixing Your Glazes Well Enough?
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…
The Air Bubble Myth
There’s a common belief in ceramics that leaving pockets of air in your clay, either due to insufficient wedging or by creating an enclosed form, leads to explosions in the kiln. The belief is often communicated in these ways: “Poorly wedged clay containing air bubbles will explode…”
Temperature vs Heatwork – Why We Use Witness Cones
I receive a lot of glaze questions and the first question I generally ask in return is “What did the cones look like?” Knowing whether the kiln was over- or under-fired is important for diagnosing many glaze issues. Sometimes I’m told a kiln temperature in response. But…
How to Make a Cone Pack
In this post, you’ll learn how to make a cone pack using pyrometric witness cones set into a coil of clay. Cones are important for measuring the heatwork of your firings.
15 Tips to Get Started with Glaze Testing
I find ceramic glazes to be absolutely fascinating. I had no idea when I started working with clay that glazes would become the main focus of my life. Glazing was always an afterthought and I basically ruined most of my pieces by glazing them…
Different Styles of Test Tiles You Can Make for Glaze Testing
The word “test tile” can refer to any shape of clay that’s used to test glazes, slips, underglazes, engobes etc. Test tiles can be any shape you wish and can be made in a variety of ways. In this post, I’ll share lots of different examples of ways you can…
How to Add Bentonite to a Wet Glaze
When I was in school and learning to mix my own glazes, I was warned: “Make sure you add bentonite to the DRY materials and mix them together BEFORE you add any water.” It was good advice. The reason for the warning is when bentonite gets wet it swells and gels and…
Commercial Glazes vs Mixing Your Own – A Cost Comparison
This post will give you an idea about the differences between commercial glazes and mixing your own from cratch.
When you flocculate a glaze with Epsom salts, how long does the effect last?
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...
99 Cone 6 Glazes You Can Try
Have you been looking for new glazes to add to your glaze palette? If so, I have 99 different cone 6 glazes you can try. That probably sounds like a lot to look through, but it’s really just 9 base glaze recipes plus 10 colour variations each.
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. Measuring specific gravity is a way to calculate the water content of a glaze to ensure that each time you glaze, you have the same amount of water…
Glaze Testing
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Studio Tips
What’s the difference between Orton self-supporting cones and large cones
Large cones vs Self Supporting cones Question: Orton temperature equivalents - I thought self supporting and large cones were interchangeable, but the table shows slightly different temps for the same rate. How critical are those differences? The Orton Cone Chart can...
Can I speed up my kiln’s cooling cycle?
How can I speed up my kiln's cooling cycle? Question: “What can we do to make big kilns cool down faster? Keep the door slightly open at a certain temperature?” There isn't really a practical way to speed up the cooling cycle. In my free Strategic Glazing class, I...
Why does my kiln fire unevenly?
Why does my kiln fire unevenly? Question: “Why do I get different results on my cone pack based on which shelf-- top, middle, or bottom-- the pack is located?” Our kilns tend to fire unevenly and I've also had the same experience. The new Cone Art kiln that I bought...
Does a lower bisque temp = more pores?
How temperature affects the porosity of our bisque We start with bone dry greenware, which is porous. So all the water - the physical water - has evaporated from the clay body before the bisque firing. Then we put it into the bisque, where all of those particles...
12 Tips for Managing Glazes at a Busy Pottery Studio
Glaze Management 101. It’s a lot of work to run a school or community pottery studio. There are a lot of moving parts to look after. I’ve been a studio technician for 5 years now and it’s a very busy and rewarding job. As the technician, I’m taking care of all the behind the scenes…
A Week in the Life of a Ceramics Studio Technician
What Does a Ceramics Studio Technician Do? Since 2015, I’ve been a ceramics studio technician at a community pottery studio. We run 14 classes per week for both adults and children. We also have an open studio drop-in program where 60 registered members can…
How to Calibrate Your Kiln Sitter for Accurate Firings
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. I have 4 different sized kilns in my home studio and none of them are digital or programmable.
A Potter With a Paycheque?
This post is based on an email I sent out this past Fall about my journey from a struggling studio potter to starting my dream job as a studio technician to reluctantly growing out of that position and quitting my job in order to teach online classes full time.
Don’t Skimp on Safety in the Glaze Lab
Most of our glaze materials come to us in their very basic, unprocessed form. They are dug out of the ground, impurities may or may not be removed, they are ground into a fine powder, bagged and shipped to our suppliers. Working with these minerals in their raw state poses some health risks.
Specific Gravity
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Glazy.org Demos
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Firing
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Glaze Q&A Videos
Doesn’t high speed mixing create bubbles in the glaze?
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 a five gallon glaze bucket stay homogenized for?
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...
If I sieve my glaze, am I sieving out good particles?
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...
If your glaze freezes, is it still ok?
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...
The stir test – how homogenized is your glaze?
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...
Does a lower bisque temp = more pores?
How temperature affects the porosity of our bisque We start with bone dry greenware, which is porous. So all the water - the physical water - has evaporated from the clay body before the bisque firing. Then we put it into the bisque, where all of those particles...
How does the thickness of your piece affect glaze application?
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...