Making your own crucibles to make your own speckle

Tuesday 24th March 2015

I mixed a cone 6 porcelain body and a cone 6 clear glaze 50:50 and added 10% Mason 6666 black stain. The material was plastic enough to slurry, dewater and wedge like clay, dry and break into small pieces. I then melted this batch at cone 6 in a insight-live.com/material/1724">Zircopax crucible (which I make by mixing Zircopax with 3-4% Veegum, enabling throwing them on the wheel). This speckle mixture is easy to break away from the crucible because it does not completely melt and it does not stick to the zircon. I then break the black up with a special flat metal crusher we made (the shusher), size them on sieves and add them to bodies for artificial speckle. If specks fuse too much, I lower the percentage of glaze (and vice versa). Of course, the particles are glass, jagged and sharp-edged, so care is needed in handling them (a mask is essential).

Pages that reference this post in the Digitalfire Reference Library:

Calcined Alumina, Step 1 of a speckled dolomite matte at cone 6 oxidation: This result is good enough to prove it is doable, Making my own home-made fired speckle for cone 6, Crucible, Reduction Speckle

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.