Feldspar
Theoretically speaking, the term 'feldspar' refers to a family of minerals with a specific crystalline presence. However actual feldspar powders are made from crushed crystalline rock containing a mixture of aluminum silicates of sodium and potassium (with minor amounts of lithium or calcium). They normally contain 10-15% alkali (K2O, Na2O) and melt well at medium to high temperatures and are an economic source of flux. Commercially available feldspars tend to predominate in one specific mineral kind with lesser amounts of another and traces of others. Manufacturers do a good job of delivering uniform and clean products when one considers that feldspar deposits vary widely in composition and contain many impurities.
Generally high potash feldspars are employed in bodies and promote vitrification by forming a glassy phase that 'cements' more refractory particles together and triggers the formation of mullite from clay mineral. In glazes it promotes melting at medium and high temperatures (feldspars are the primary ingredient in most high temperature raw glazes).
In glazes sodium feldspars are most common and used mainly as a source of alkalis. Feldspars are mineral compounds of silica, alumina and fluxes and are among the relatively few insoluble sources of K2O, Na2O and Li2O. No other raw material is closer to being a complete stoneware glaze on its own than feldspar. Since feldspars contain a complex mix of oxides, ceramic chemistry calculations are needed to 'juggle' a recipe to achieve the desired balance of fluxing oxides with alumina and silica and to control the high thermal expansion that they impart.
Teaching institutions normally employ theoretical soda and potash feldspars when demonstrating ceramic chemistry. However in industry technicians use the actual chemistry of the name brand materials that they are using.
Many feldspars begin to melt around 2100F (1150C) and make good glaze bases because they contribute alumina and silica in forms that participate well in the melt. Feldspars tend to work well in fast fire glazes because they remain relatively inert until the later stages of firing.
Geologists see feldspar as a mineral and classify feldspars as mainly as albite, microcline, orthoclase and anorthite. However, technically minded ceramists tend to view feldspar as a 'warehouse of oxides' rather than a mineral. For this reason other materials like cornwall stone and nepheline syenite, which have similar chemistry, are viewed as feldspars by many technicians.
Alert
'Flux-saturated' glazes with high feldspar contents tend to be chemically unbalanced and thus make poor bases for functional ware, especially for glaze containing metallic color oxides (the glazes can be soft, leachable, crazed, oxidizable). High feldspar can contribute to a high surface tension in the glaze melt and may lead to high bubble population (producing milkiness in the fired matrix). Stoneware glazes using large amounts of feldspar as a flux almost always craze because high-expansion sodium and potassium predominate. High feldspar glazes often lack clay content and thus do not suspend well, they settle in a hard layer on the bottom of the container and dry to a powdery surface on ware. In fact, thousands of potters are using feldspar saturated glazes and living with many problems without being aware of the cause.
Richard Willis
Any of the aluminum silicate minerals containing alkalis and having very similar chemical structures, especially in their crystal geometry and ratio of alkali metal(s) to aluminum and silicon, and thereby known mineralogically as aluminosilicates. A further classification distinguishes two series of these aluminosilicates based on their continuums (as rock-making minerals) from sodium to potassium and from sodium to calcium, labeling the first series as “alkali feldspars” and the second series as
“plagioclase feldspars”.
As “clays” (i.e., as hydrous aluminosilicates) feldspars are distinguished by their relative purity of clay + alkali; free, for the most part, of any significant traces of the non-alkali metals or earths so common to other earths .
“Feldspathic earths” are usually understood to be the rocks made up principally by feldspars and/or feldspathoids (such as gneisses, granites, magmas and pegmatites) available as natural deposits of decomposed rock or industrially packaged rock milled to varieties of grain-size powder. In the broadest sense, given that feldspars constitute more than 50% of the Earth’s crust, most any earth is “feldspathic” even if containing only traces; so an earth — especially w
ith respect to earths used in making up ceramic clays and glazes — is normally considered feldspathic when the feldspar/feldspathoid content is sufficient to make a real difference one way or another in formulations. As pegmatites are the mother-rocks of feldspars, so are the feldspars the mother-rocks of kaolin and its similars.
commonly used forms (as often labeled commercially)
— albite “sodium feldspar” Na2O, Al2O3, 6SiO2
— sanidine “potassium feldspar” K2O, Al2O3, 6SiO2
— nepheline “sod-pot feldspar” K2O, 3Na2O, 4Al2O3, 8SiO2
— anorthite “calcium feldspar” CaO, Al2O3, 2SiO2
— labradorite “sod-cal feldspar” Na2O, CaO, Al2O3, SiO2
— pegmatite (*) “sod-pot-cal feldspar” Na2/K2O/CaO, Al2O3, 6SiO2
— spodumene “lithium feldspar” Li2O, Al2O3, 4SiO2
— celsian “barium feldspar” BaO, Al2O3, 2SiO2
(*) Though pegmatites are “mother-racks” for feldspars, and not properly feldspars, recipes listing so-called ‘sod-pot-cal feldspars’ are usually asking for pegmatites, such as Cornwall Stone, for example. As well, feldspathoids are often liberally labeled commercially as feldspars, or, more accurately, as feldspathics.
typical comparative analyses
potassium feldspar K2O 16.89, Al2O3 18.43, SiO2 66.84
sodium feldspar Na2O 11.82, Al2O3 19.56, SiO2 68.82
calcium feldspar CaO 20.14. Al2O3 36.70, SiO2 43.16
pegmatite (generic) K2O 4.79, Na2O 3.92, CaO 1.44, Fe2O3 0.35, Al2O3 15.11, SiO2 74.23
pegmatite (Cornwall) K2O 3.68, Na2O 3.61, CaO 1.68, Fe2O3 0.26, Al2O3 17.37, SiO2 74.55
Feldspars are notoriously short clays, as natural clays go, which is to say that they are on the side of the less elastic clays, and subsequently are rarely used alone but rather in blends with more elastic clays to give them the manageability for a given need. So-called stoneware clays labeled exotically under names such as Rick's Mix, Helen's Biscuit, etcetera, are almost always blends of feldspars (for the benefits of more alkali and silicon) and “earthenware” clays (for handling
preferences prior to firing and for color after) and kaolin (for strength while firing and for color after). Feldspars usually fire to white, and many so-called white earthenware clays are in fact blends of common buff clays and large portions of feldspars and/or feldspathic clays. “White translucent” porcelain clays are typically blends of kaolin, feldspar and silica; the kaolin and the feldspar providing the whiteness; the feldspar and silica providing the translucency; and kaolin providing the
post to hold the vitrifying feldspar and silica upright during firing and until cooled.
At temperatures below 1190ºC feldspars are strong refractories requiring strong mid- to low-temperature fluxing agents, such as zinc, lead and/or boron, to bring their silica to a melt. At temperatures over 1190ºC the alkalis inherent to feldspars do the required fluxing, helped when and if needed by non-alkali fluxes and/or other alkalis not present in the particular feldspar(s) being used. Fusion temperatures for the great variety of feldspars are, all else being equal, directly determined by th
e type and proportion of alkalis present in relation to the silica present. Generally, potassium feldspars are the preferred forms to compose body pastes, and soda feldspars to compose glaze coverings; and, for both clays and glazes, the varieties of feldspars provide water-insoluble forms of the otherwise soluble alkalis which define the feldspars.
Magmatic/volcanic feldspars (analcime, etc.), feldspathoids (sodalite, etc.) and feldspathics (pumice, etc.), as Nature’s fritted feldspars, equally provide water-insoluble forms of their alkalis but also forms which usually fuse at much lower temperatures than their granite-metamorphic complements. see alkali, calcinates, clay, glaze, rock, silicates, soil, etc., as well as feldspars indivi
dually.
Mechanisms
Out Bound Links
In Bound Links
- (Articles - Unspecified)
A Low Cost Tester of Glaze Melt Fluidity This device to measure glaze melt fluidity helps you better understand your glazes and materials and... - (Articles - Unspecified)
Formulating a Porcelain Understanding the functions of each of the major materials in a high temperature porcelain gives you... - (Materials - Parent)
Spodumene - Li2O.Al2O3.4SiO2 or LiAl(Si2O6)
- (Materials - Parent)
Soda Feldspar - Na2O.Al2O3.6SiO2
Na-Feldspar, Na Feldspar, Albite
- (Materials - Parent)
Custer Feldspar - Potash Feldspar
Custer Spar
- (Materials - Related)
Nepheline Syenite - Generic
Neph Sy
- (Materials - Parent)
Potash Feldspar - K2O.Al2O3.6SiO2
K-Feldspar, Orthoclase, K Feldspar, Potassium Feldspar
- (Materials - Alternative)
Ferro Frit 3110 - High alkali, low alumina and boron leadless high expansion frit
F3110, Frit KFG 4110, Ferro Crystal Frit
- (Materials - Parent)
Calcium Feldspar - CaO.Al2O3.4SiO2 or CaAl2Si2O8
Lime Spar, Lime Feldspar, Ca-Feldspar
- (Typecodes - Unspecified)
1: FEL - Feldspar
- (Materials)
Kaolin A
- (Materials - Parent)
Pegmatite
- (Oxides - Material source)
Al2O3 - Aluminum Oxide, Alumina
- (Oxides - Material source)
Na2O - Sodium Oxide, Soda
- (Oxides - Material source)
Li2O - Lithium Oxide, Lithia
- (Oxides - Material source)
SiO2 - Silicon Dioxide, Silica
- (Oxides - Material source)
KNaO - Potassium/Sodium Oxides
- (Materials - Related)
Nepheline Syenite Norwegian - Generic
North Cape Nepheline Syenite
- (Materials - Parent)
Feldspath ICE 10
Pictures
A comparative flow test of Custer, G-200, high soda and high potassium feldspars.
Feldspar W Hornblende
Feldspar Sphere
Laboradite Feldspar
Labradorite Gem Feldspar
Corundum On Feldspar
Chrysocolla-veined Feldspar
Beryl Feldspar Mica
Augite Feldspar
Aquamarine On Feldspar
Tourmaline On Feldspar
Orthoclase Feldspar Rock
Labradorite Feldspar
XML for Import into INSIGHT
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<material name="Feldspar" descrip="" searchkey="" loi="0.00" casnumber="12168-80-8">
<oxides>
<oxide symbol="K2O" name="Potassium Oxide" status="U" percent="16.920" tolerance=""/>
<oxide symbol="Al2O3" name="Aluminum Oxide, Alumina" status="" percent="18.320" tolerance=""/>
<oxide symbol="SiO2" name="Silicon Dioxide, Silica" status="" percent="64.760" tolerance=""/>
</oxides>
</material> | 
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