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 glaze you’re working with.
For glazes that settle quickly, you might want to add some bentonite to help them stay in suspension. Sometimes flocculation is a good way to help with that. Glazes that settle out really quickly are usually the glazes that are very low in clay content. And so sometimes they need a little bit of help to stay suspended in the bucket.
In Mastering Glaze Consistency, I teach you all about how the composition of your glaze recipes affects their flocculation, when you would want to flocculate or deflocculate your glaze, how we deal with glazes that settle really fast or that dry really quickly or glazes that dry too slowly. All of these things we deal with in Mastering Glaze Consistency.
If you’re glazing a lot of pots, how often do you recommend stirring?
I stir before each and every dip, but it’s not like stirring for 10-30 seconds before dipping each pot. I just stir a couple times around, dip, grab my other piece, give a little stir and dip. So that’s what I do, because I’m just very diligent and very careful. I stir before every dip.
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What You Need to Start Mixing Glazes from Scratch
Are you interested in learning how to mix your own glazes? When you start mixing your own glazes from scratch, your glaze options become infinite. Not only will you be able to stand out with unique glazes that you created yourself, but you'll also start to develop a more intimate relationship with the materials you are using to make your pots.
But before you take the plunge into the world of glaze mixing, you might be wondering what tools and supplies you’ll need to have in your studio. Watch my free "on-demand" class to find out! Click the button for all the details.
Learn to Mix Glazes from Scratch
If you’ve never mixed a glaze from scratch before and want to learn, I teach an online workshop called Glaze Mixing Essentials where I show you all the steps to mix a glaze and then test a base glaze with multiple colourants. Click the link for all the details.
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