Erika Rogers on sun 2 jul 06
I want to make tesselation tiles. Do I make the design slightly smaller to
allow for grout/adjustments? Is a mold the best way or cutting each tile by
hand? Any ideas, help will be much appreciated. Thanks, Erika
marianne kuiper milks on sun 2 jul 06
Hello Erika,
You will not need to make any size adjustments for your design, unless your total needs to be within certain measurements. If this is the case, in any manner, you will need to calculate the exact shrinkage of bisque and final firing, plus the width of the grout you want between the tiles. You also want to think what you want around the final piece: whether you need space there for grout, wood or whatever.
I have made many tile/water walls.I find that uneven-ness is more attractive, but that's an issue of choice. I have hand-carved tiles and I have made molds and molds from molds.If you make a reverse mold from a clay mold/pattern, you will have sizing problems since each will become smaller than the last one. I have also press-printed designs, as well as "drawing" with Elmer's glue on plexiglass, letting it harden and imprinting it in clay. Then play with the tiles in arranging them. Tesselation is so much fun...it is endless!
Hope this helped a little. HAVE FUN!
Marianne Kuiper Milks
Erika Rogers wrote: I want to make tesselation tiles. Do I make the design slightly smaller to
allow for grout/adjustments? Is a mold the best way or cutting each tile by
hand? Any ideas, help will be much appreciated. Thanks, Erika
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Jeanette Harris on sun 2 jul 06
>I want to make tesselation tiles. Do I make the design slightly smaller to
>allow for grout/adjustments? Is a mold the best way or cutting each tile by
>hand? Any ideas, help will be much appreciated. Thanks, Erika
>
Hi, Erica,
No matter what shape tile you are making, you must allow for
shrinkage of the clay in order to know what size the wet clay pattern
must be.
First, figure out the area you want to cover. If it's just
straightforward square feet, measure so you know the what that is.
Add about 1/4-1/2 more in the tile count to allow for misfiring,
warping, and breaking tile when it is set. (Believe me, it's way
better to come out with tile to spare! )
Go to the tile store and look at the spacers used on commercial tile.
Sometimes little nubs are built into the edge of manufactured tile to
space out the grout lines. You may want to draw out your pattern
using something to show grout spaces--a plastic straw or something
like that to use as a measure. In any case, you want to add in the
gout line allowance in order to make a representation of the finished
product.
If you have an irregular-sized area to cover, make a pattern of this
using big sheets of plain paper (Not newsprint--it won't hold up to
all the handling you're going to have to do.) Trace out the ACTUAL
area to be covered. Making or using paper with grids is helpful.
Take a sample of your clay and make 2 rulers. Mark off inches down
to quarter inches and allow them to reach a bone dry state. Fire the
clay rulers along with a regular bisque load and then compare the
bisque rulers to a real ruler.
Now take one of the bisque rulers and glaze it as you would one of
the tiles you want to make. Fire that and compare it to the other
rulers--the 'real' ruler & the bisque ruler. This will give you the
total shrinkage to expect.
(You might want to draw a representation of a real ruler, the bisque
shrinkage and the glazed ruler in your notes.)
Now you will know how much the clay shrinks and what the finished
product will look like--i.e. clay and glaze combo.
Of course, you could do this with sample tiles, but it would be
harder to calculate the shrinkage. When you figure out how much the
finished product will shrink, you can take your actual size tile
pattern to a copy machine and INCREASE the size by dialing in the
percentage that the clay will shrink.
In other words, you want to make your pattern larger than the
finished product so that when it is fired to bisque, glazed and fired
again, the piece of tile will have shrunk down to the size you want
for the finished product --the size of the tiles as you drew in your
original pattern.
When you make the tiles, you will be able to check that they fit by
placing them on the paper pattern. You can even make tiles to go in
places where you have weird shapes or half tiles (cutting irregular
tiles is a real pain.)
Sounds like a lot of work, but doing the preliminary hard stuff makes
the setting of the tile easy. It's worth it.
How do you calculate the shrinkage into percent?
Here's an example:
Say you want a 12 inch tile.
Your ruler fired to 10 inches, meaning the clay and glaze firing
reduced it to 10 inches.
Divide the shrunken measurement (10) by the original size you wanted (12)
12 into 10 equals .8333 (the fired tile is 83.3% smaller than the
original size)
or it shrank by 16.7% percent.
(100% minus 83.3% results in 16.7%.)
Round off* the 16.7 to 17% and this is the INCREASE amount you need
to figure in to get a 12 inch tile.
When you duplicate your pattern, dial in 117% to get the size you
need. The finished pattern should be 14 inches for a 12 inch tile.
(*You may need to round up or down, but I'd go with the lesser figure
because it's better to have a tile that's slightly too small than too
large.
--
Jeanette Harris
Clay Engineer
Poulsbo WA
Snail Scott on sun 2 jul 06
At 10:57 AM 7/2/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>I want to make tesselation tiles. Do I make the design slightly smaller to
>allow for grout/adjustments?
Grout lines should be thin and pretty tight.
If the shapes are pretty basic, you'll
be fine without allowances. Squarish/roundish/
polygonalshapes are easy. 'L' shapes are
usually OK, but beware of 'J' shapes; i.e.
those which interlock around one another. No
room for warpage, and no 'fudge factor': you
can't just spread them further apart if needed.
You can cut by hand using a template, but if
you are doing lots of tiles from just a few
shapes, a cutter may be worth it, especially
if it allows all the parts to be more easily
interchanged for installation.
-Snail
John Post on sun 2 jul 06
To add to Snail's comments about a cutter, if you look on ebay for
cookie cutters, there are some companies that have nice copper cookie
cutters with a smooth rolled top edge. The companies that offer these
for sale will also custom make a cutter to a drawing that you create.
I like to place a layer of saran wrap over a clay slab before I use the
cutter. It gives each tile a rounded edge.
John Post
Sterling Heights, Michigan
>
>You can cut by hand using a template, but if
>you are doing lots of tiles from just a few
>shapes, a cutter may be worth it, especially
>if it allows all the parts to be more easily
>interchanged for installation.
>
>
Erika Rogers on mon 3 jul 06
Thanks everyone for your help. I am rethinking and redesigning my project
with your guidance. Erika
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