Glazing

"Mel Owen"

I glaze to the base, but have tested my glazes to know which ones run. In addition, I place the pot on a small, short post to keep it up off the shelf - this post is narrower that the base of the pot.

I fire ^5/6/7 (ox).

Peter NM

I'm not sure what your question is. If the studio requires that you wax the foot and up the side to protect the shelves against accidents then that is what you do. You can use iron oxide on the area that is not going to be glazed and this will give you a color different than white (tan to brown). How high have you been told to wax up to? Are you an experienced glazer? You can always request that you be allowed to glaze down as far as you like and that you will make a biscuit (plate) to go under the piece. Then if the glaze runs you are the one that has to deal with it and not the studio. The problem with this is that you have to trust the person loading the kiln to be responsible for putting the plate under the pot to be fired. You can also make your foot very tall and trimmed so that you have a good size overhang. This allows you to glaze all the way down the outer side of the pot while still being a good distance from the shelf. The unglazed clay is not clearly visible if done right. The problem here is if you are a lousy glazer and you get either a runny glaze or the glaze too thick, then it is still going to drip off the sides onto the shelf. If you are new to this, give yourself time to develop skill and then worry about the perfection of not seeing unglazed clay. If you are not new to this and the studio won't accommodate you, I would find a different studio.

Donna

"Mel Owen" wrote in message news:%pBFh.111025$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe14.lga...

[The reason they are telling you this is because they don't want to have to chisel your stuck pots off their (expensive) kiln shelves, nor to have to grind off the residual glaze so it won't capture other people's pieces in subsequent firings. I'd suggest learning to live with the unglazed band until you've got a kiln (and shelves, chisel and grinder) of your own, at which point you'll be free to do anything you want. While it's possible to glaze all the way down to the foot of a pot and fire it on trivets, this is not something the people doing your firing for you probably want to mess with, and it can still end in disaster if the glaze is especially runny, or applied too thickly.]

Andrew Werby

Are you throwing or handbuilding? How high up the pot are they requiring you to wax?

In a studio with many people of different experience/skill levels, a rule like this is probably in place to protect the kiln shelves.

As other posters have suggested, stilts, trivets or other devices to raise your piece off the kiln shelf and catch and glaze are an option. This may require you to volunteer to help load the kiln, something you should do anyway to make sure your piece is loaded the way you want it. Perhaps even more valuable would be helping to unload the kiln (and clean the kiln shelves) and seeing firsthand what happens when glazes run (and why you have to use wax resist in the first place).

You can also consider colored slips to apply to exposed, unglazed clay, as these should not stick to the kiln shelf. Depending on the recipe, these may need to be applied to leather hard pieces before bisquing.

Another thought is that you think of this as a challenge to trim the bottom of your pot in such a way as to highlight the clay body.

hth, tmo

U¿ytkownik "Mel Owen" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci news:%pBFh.111025$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe14.lga...

I don't use a wax at all (only with glazing beads). I use protecting emulsion to my kiln tiles - it is very useful because when the glaze run off it don't damage the shelf.

When I glaze a plates bottom I use a special triangle (I don't know how it's name in English). This triangle touch a plate only in small tree points and it is an excellent solution if you want have a glaze on bottom on your pottery.

Joanna (Poland)

Thank you all for your suggestions. For the kiln protection I will try and use a biscuit plate under my pieces. How would using a low fire glaze at the base , then adding wax resist, and then dipping into H.F. glaze? Or, paint a very thin coat of the H.F. glaze, dip in wax resist and then dip in the H.F. glaze for the rest of the piece? Mel

Do not under any circumstance use a low fire glaze and then fire high fire. You could highfire glaze, fire at that temperature, glaze low fire (or luster) and then low fire the piece but if you do the former rather than the latter, you will have glaze all over the shelves. Since you are a beginner (or you would not have had this idea) you really need to follow the practice at the studio and let them guide you until you have become adept at glazing. It is as important a skill as any of the rest of the process. You really are putting the cart before the horse. Learn to glaze to the point that your glazes stay where you want them and then think about glazing low on the pot.

Try this. It is an advanced technique used by Crystalline glazers. A crystalline glaze is designed to run off the pot so we need to protect the kiln shelf.

Really nice. Thanks. Donna