Anyone out there having problems in there studio with stuff drying way too fast and cracking? Any ideas on rescuing cracked pieces? I have a large casserole dish with a lot of time invested with a huge crack running through it..right now I am attempting to rehydrate it for either repairs or replacing the bottom with a slab.
Do you wrap your pieces up really well with plastic? If they're drying too fast, wrap all the way around the piece, including the bottom, and then just loosen the plastic a little at a time to let the piece dry slowly. If you want to slow it down even more, give it a little spritz of water with a spray bottle, then wrap it again.
If I had a huge crack in a piece, I'd recycle the clay instead of trying to save the piece.
Deb R.
How large is the crack? The crack is going to get larger with each firing so repairing is not easy on a piece that is meant to be functional. I have done two different types of repairs that work but I would not feel comfortable with them on a piece that is meant for the oven and both of these repairs were on pieces where the cracked showed up after the bisque firing. In one case the crack was small. I mixed equal parts of a glaze (that was runny - called honey) with clay and pushed this into the crack in the bottom of a bowl. The outside bottom did not fill in completely but the inside bottom was very nice. The other repair was to take a thin slab of clay that I covered with glaze and then placed like a bandaide over the the crack after the entire pot had been glazed. The 'bandaide' can be made in a decorative shape or design (a rectangle with stamped shapes, a leaf shape with veins cut into it, a star, etc.) If it is a stamped piece it can be thicker. This of course is only going to work on either a bottom where it won't slide off or if on the side it has to be 'hooked' over so it won't slide off when the glaze is in liquid form.
Good luck, DK
"Stephanie Coleman" wrote in message news:BRYxd.433$ snipped-for-privacy@fe25.usenetserver.com... Anyone out there having problems in there studio with stuff drying way too fast and cracking? Any ideas on rescuing cracked pieces? I have a large casserole dish with a lot of time invested with a huge crack running through it..right now I am attempting to rehydrate it for either repairs or replacing the bottom with a slab.
thanks everyone!
Well I may still have to mark this up to experience...but not yet! I remembered something from my past (and maybe from this forum too) about white vinegar. I have ised it many times to repair broken greenware. So I set a big sponge inside the piece to get it damp (for 2 days) and then last night used vinegar to losen it up some more and mixed it with slip to fill the crack...now we are drying VERY slowly - which is easier since we've had some rain.
My pottery instructor (and friend gave me a couple of other ideas - one is to grout the crack (not so good for ovenware) or cut out the bottom and replace with a somewhat stiff slab. Of cours if all else fails, it will make a nice oval planter with a bulit in drainage hole!
Happy Holidays everyone!
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