Clay Pottery Glaze Testing Tips

Video Transcript

"So, like I said this is just a test. You're not probably going to like the glaze the first time it comes out. Especially, not every time. You're going to have to try a bunch of different glazes. And, then also for example I'm looking for a nice kind of mossy forest green at this time. And, so I have labeled some test tiles here. This is from a previous test that I did and these have been fired. And, I have my notebook so I know what ingredients are in each one of these and I can go on from there with further tests. So, what I've done is I've taken this one. Because, it's got a little bit more of the brownish hue that I'm looking for. Kind of an earthiness. And, I have added some colorants increased some colorants in order to try to get what I'm looking for. And, these are my next two tests with that glaze. I've written the number T-four, stands for test number four on this particular glaze test series. This is my first dip, so I wrote a one here. This is one of my current glazes that I already used. I've lapped it over the first one and written two here. Because, that's my second dip. But, I also wanted to see what this glaze did on top of this other glaze. It's very important to test things under and over your other glazes. Because, they'll make extreme differences in the outcome after the firing. And, as you can see these particular glazes weren't compatible and it fell off already. So, I know already that I cannot use this glaze on top of this glaze. And, then I just did the same thing with another one of my glazes where I first dipped the green dipped another one of my grape glazes and dipped the green again. And, I'll get two little triangles here when it comes out of what it looks like under and what it looks like over. And, that's very important. So, remember when you're testing to be patient to keep trying. It might take you weeks if you're only firing once a week. But, eventually once you've got the recipe that you like you're ready to make a full size bucket and put it into your production."