Well, okay, I'm not DONE. But I am done.
My final count is 202 vertical hexagonal test tiles and 37 horizontal tiles. I only did thirty-seven because I got tired and don't want to make any more, frankly. But I have enough to do the horizontal tests that I really need to have.
But I thought I would show you just exactly what I did to each one of those tiles, just so you know I haven't been slacking as much as it would appear.
As you know from the previous blog post, I had extruded and cut a bunch of tiles. Some of them didn't make it, fell completely apart, which is why I have 202 instead of 210. I only have to have 196, but you never know how what might happen in the bisque, so it's good to have extras.
What follows is a pictorial guide of what my process for each tile was. On the first side I ran a roller stamp down the length.
This will give the glazes something to break and pool in.
Next I smooth the lip and smooth the body for as close to a "clean" surface as possible. As you'll see, I think the more information the better.
The rounded lip will hopefully let the glaze flow instead of break.
On the third side I do a bit of slip trailing. This is almost an opposite of the stamp texture.
On the fourth and fifth sides I will be running a stripe of Strontium Crystal Magic Warm and Strontium Crystal Magic Cool (recipes courtesy of Steven Hill in a recent Ceramics Monthly journal). I also want to see how they behave over different textures as well as smooth, so I stamped and marked in a couple of different ways.
On the last side, I pierced a hole for hanging. Once these are bisqued, I'll set out my grid and use an underglaze pencil to mark what each one is on this side. Then I'll wax it and start glazing!
As you can imagine, it took a while to complete all of them, but I'm Done!
Oh, yeah, then there's the horizontal tiles. These are circles cut from a slab. I used a soft texture on half, a harder texture on a quarter and will have another quarter that's smooth. On these guys I'll write what they are on the back before I wax them. Then they'll fire flat on the shelf.
Then I decided that I'd better mark which tests I really needed that horizontal info on, turns out I have just enough! No extras, so cross your fingers, kiss your kiln goddesses and dance a jig for me they all make it!
2 comments:
It looks like it's the time of year for glaze testing...
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