A magnesia speckle matte at cone 6 oxidation: The road toward a cone 10R look-a-like is clearer

Saturday 18th April 2015

I am getting closer to reduction speckle in oxidation. I make my own speckle by mixing the body and a glossy glaze 50:50 and adding 10% black stain. Then I slurry it, dry it, fire it in a insight-live.com/picture/1479">crucible I make from alumina, crush it by hand and screen it. I am using G2934 cone 6 magnesia matte as the glaze on this mug on the left. To it I added 0.5% minus 20 mesh speck. Right is a cone 10R dolomite matte mug. Next I am going to screen out the smallest specks, switch to a matte glaze when making the specks (they are too shiny here), switch to dark brown stain. Later we will see if the specks need to bleed a little more. The next step is to tune the degree of matteness in the glaze and add a tiny amount of blue stain. I am now pretty well certain I am going to be able to duplicate the reduction look in my oxidation kiln. Methodical testing with good records are the key to fine tuning the color, speckle density and size distribution and glaze surface character.

Pages that reference this post in the Digitalfire Reference Library:

Making your own crucibles to make your own speckle, Reduction speckle: a product of iron particles in the body, Oxidation fired speckled glaze!, A tiny percentage of blue stain in a low-fire porcelain: Creates the blue-white color of reduction-fired bodies, Reduction Speckle, Magnesia Matte

This post is one of thousands found in the Digitalfire Reference Database. Most are part of a timeline maintained by Tony Hansen. You can search that timeline on the home page of digitalfire.com.