Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Glaze Testing

Got a lot done in the studio yesterday. Started my bisque kiln bright and early with a load of torso sculptures that I made last year. While that was firing I decided to test some new raku glazes.
Thought I'd post them on my blog just in case I misplaced my notes.
Back left has a black underglaze and a gloss red on the exterior. The interior was glazed with Soldner's Clear Crackle Raku glaze.
Right Rear: Interior and exterior glazed with an opaque glosse white. This was a heavily textured tea bowl on the exterior so applied a heavy coat of the white and then used a metal rib to scrap away the top layer of glaze. In post reduction I am hoping the black will create a nice effect on the unglazed parts of the exterior.
Left front: Interior glazed with Soldner's Clear Crackle Raku. This was also textured on the exterior so I applied a gloss red and used the metal rib to scrape the high areas clean of glaze.
Center: This is a real "experimental" glaze. This is a borax and feldspar glaze with 15% magnesium carbonate added to create a crawling effect. The glaze brushed on terribly because of the Borax I think but I got a heavy coat on it. The interior is an opaque gloss white.
Right Front: opaque gloss white on the interior. Three brush coats on the exterior and then I brushed 3 coats of Amaco Arroyo Black glaze on top of that.
It was way to damn windy to fire up the raku kiln yesterday so I'll have to wait to fire these up. Maybe today. Stay tuned.

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