Monday, September 08, 2008

Bisque Backup

The bisque is piling up in the shop. I unloaded this today plus another few boards. Time to glaze fire. I have been stressing over these upcoming glaze firings because of my crawling problem. After all the testing I've still not come up with a glaze that I can commit to.

There is hope though. I was reading over the weekend and found information that states that glazes containing slightly soluble ingredients such as Gerstley Borate may tend to crawl after thickening (flocculation) during storage. If you remember my glaze has 55% G.B. so it seems likely that over time this glaze has changed in the bucket. I have kept adding small amounts of water and that may be adding to the problem. I wasn't having the crawling problem when I first started using this glaze. It seems like it has gotten worse in the recent past. I could try to chemically defloccuate the glaze, but honestly that chemistry stuff is a pain for me.

So today I mixed an 80,000 gram batch of this glaze to use for my upcoming firings. I am keeping my fingers crossed. You can too if you want.

Today I made a couple 6 lb jars some bowls and this big dish. I will likely make 2 more of these tomorrow and also start glazeing.

I've had a couple people ask about why I've stopped salt firing so I'll be addressing that in a post or two this week. Russel also asked about the finger wipes inside my straight sided bowls. I have to think of some clever reason why I do that, so stay tuned.

Off to get supper going...roast chicken, one of my favorite things in life.