Eve Oettinger. on mon 17 nov 97
Greetings, All:
First, I want to say thanks for the wonderful resource this forum has
provided me. I am in awe of the wealth of information, the stature of many
participants, and everyone's willingness to share.
My most vexing problem is crawling. I bought a used Cress kiln last year,
fire to ^5, and have experimented with a wide range of prepared clays
(Laguna, Aardvark) with commercial (mostly Moroccan Sand) and studio-mixed
glazes (recipes I snagged in CM or elsewhere). I have read everything I can
find on the subject of crawling (e.g. Daniel Rhodes), and have tried to
correct the problem with careful application (dipping and pouring) drying the
glaze before firing, not applying new glaze near or over dry, and carefully
smoothing those little cracks (which there are lots of - I don't know why).
By the way, this was never a problem for me when I worked in a high-fire
mode at a local community college ceramics studio.
I welcome your suggestions. I there a component I could add to my glazes to
combat the problem? Is there a dictum about firing that I missed? (I always
leave the kiln lid cracked open for the first 1-2 hours of firing. I fire
glaze for 8-9 hours.)
As an aside, I have yet to discover a ^5 glaze that really sends me the way
the reduction glazes do. The electric "shine" of the gloss glazes I don't
care for. Am I being too fussy?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Regards,
Eve Oettinger
Thousand Oaks, CA
(805) 373-9816
(Sunshine today, but we're bracing for those El Nino storms!)
Kathi LeSueur on tue 18 nov 97
Eve,
There are two think that come to mind about your glaze problem.
First, your glaze batch sounds too thick. Have you tried thinning it?
Second, your glaze probably doesn't fit the clay. That means it needs to be
reformulated. Your glaze is shrinking more than the clay. I'd look at
adjusting the clay content of the glaze. If it contains kaolin you might try
substituting calcined kaolin. If it's a ball clay you might want to adjust
the clay content downward and try to make up some of the alumina content with
some other chemical in the recipe.
Kathi
| |
|
