How to Sieve Pottery Glaze

Video Transcript

"So the next step in making your clays is going to be to sieve the mixture. Now I've got one of these large fancy sieves, it's got brushes on the bottom and it turns, and then it comes with screens at different meshes, this one is 80 mesh; the higher the number the finer the particles, so 100 would be tighter woven than this one is. Anywhere from about 80 to 100 is appropriate for most glazes, a 50 might not be fine enough, and you don't want to go too much thinner than a 100, because some of your materials might not be small enough to go through. So you're going to mix, just stir up again, feel the bottom, you want to have a large spoon. Make sure that there's no big chunks kind of laying in weight down there. And then you'll take a pitcher, and get a scoop, poor it right into your sieve. And then with this one you just turn the brushes, and that pushes the material through the screen. If you don't have a big fancy one like this with the brushes, a lot of times wear a rubber clove and just kind of use your hand to work the materials through the screen that works also. So I'm going to go through this entire bucket, and just keep scooping and pushing it through the screen, until I've got the whole thing complete."