Wanna throw porcelain plates with thick bottoms and thin rims?

Thursday 21st February 2019

They need ten days to dry in our climate! This 14" plate has been insight-live.com/glossary/359">thrown with a 1" thick base. The rim is a quarter of that. During the first few hours, the rim would dry quickly, leaving the base far behind. So as soon as it will support the weight of a cover-cloth I put it under that and plastic for several days. After that has to be cut off with a wire (there is a lot of clay here, it waterlogs the bat). The rim is stiff enough to support it for trimming but the base will still be quite soft. Thus, it is doubly important to trim it deep enough to create a cross-section of even thickness. Then, to try to even out the water content between base and rim I place it under layers of cloth and under plastic for several more days. Finally, out of the bag, it dries, with cloth still covering it. Even then, the base may bow upwards or crack. These are difficult, there is no getting around it!

Pages that reference this post in the Digitalfire Reference Library:

Drying Ceramics Without Cracks, Why throw on a plaster bat when making larger pieces?, Heavy and thick plates cracking? What to do?, Could low fire be more practical for large decorative plates?, Drying Performance, Cracking of Clays During Drying

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.