Fine tuning the amount of Darvan in a terra cotta slurry
Friday 10th May 2019
This is slurry is made of 80% insight-live.com/material/1191">Redart and 20% KT1-4 ball clay. It has very good casting properties IF it is deflocculated well (smaller pieces can be cast in 10 minutes and extracted from the mold in another 10). However high-iron slurries are notorious for gelling, either right away during mixing or later. Sometimes a slurry seems to pour well into a mold but 10 minutes later it has gelled so much that vigorous shaking is need to loosen it enough to pour it back out (even then much may hang on in corners). A batch of slurry may need extra deflocculant several times over the first few days of being used. Davan 811 is often used for these. More deflocculant is needed, in this case about 1 gram for each 100 grams of powdered clay.
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