A Textbook Cone 6 Matte Glaze With Problems

Description

Glazes must be completely melted to be functional, hard and strong. Many are not. This compares two glazes to make the difference clear.

Article

The picture below is a flow tester that was fired at cone 6. The tester itself is Plainsman M370. The glaze on the right is G1214W, a typical cone 6 transparent used by potters. It is fluxed by a boron sourcing frit. The glaze on the left is typical of what many use to achieve a matte. The recipe is:

Nepheline Syenite	40.00
Dolomite	15.00
Whiting	10.00
Ball Clay	20.00
China Clay	10.00
Silica	5.00

But this glaze is not flowing at all whereas the boron-fluxed glaze has run right to the bottom (and it is not even considered a highly fluid glaze). This simple comparison teaches us many things about glazes and even ourselves. Here are some of them.

Cone 6 glazes require boron (from frits or gerstley borate) or zinc to melt (the one on the left has neither). Materials like feldspar, dolomite, whiting and talc just do not melt well at all at cone 6. If a glaze is not properly melted then it is not hard and strong and resistant to leaching and cutlery marking.
Textbook glaze recipes often are junk. Unquestioned use of them demonstrates our willingness to accept something ridiculous just because it is in a book or on a web page. We need use common sense when looking at glaze recipes for cone 6 to determine if they are for real or impostors (the glaze on the left is actually really not a glaze, it is a porcelain). If there is no frit, no zinc, no gerstley borate, then a red this-likely-does-not-melt light is flashing.
Glazes with high feldspar or nepheline syenite (40% is really high) are likely to craze. If this one does not craze it is simply because it has not melt enough for the sodium to impose its high thermal expansion on the glass.
A cone 6 glaze with 30% clay (in this case ball clay and kaolin) and no boron is certainly not going to melt well because clay is refractory.
True matte glazes have high alumina and low silica (which this has) but they also need to melt well to form a glass (which this does not). So this is just a matte because it is not melted.
If a white-firing glaze has no zircon or tin oxide, then how can it be white? Something is wrong. In this case it is white simply because it is not melted.
Since this does not melt, evaluating it on the basis of its chemistry would be invalid. Glaze chemistry theory depends on the glaze being melted to a homogeneous glass. Thus, in addition to knowing all about the chemistry, you need to have common sense on the recipe level also.

Understanding your glazes is so much better, especially when it comes to dealing with their problems (and this one would have plenty!).

Related Information

Before spending time trying online recipes, take a minute to do a sanity check on them

A matte glaze melt flow that is not moving at all

This picture has its own page with more detail, click here to see it.

This is a cone 6 GLFL test to compare melt-flow between a matte recipe, found online at a respected website, and a glaze we use often. Yes, it is matte. But why? Because it is not melted! Matte glazes used on functional surfaces need to melt well, they should flow like a glossy glaze. Even though this recipe has 40% nepheline syenite, lots of dolomite and calcium carbonate it is not melting. Yes, these are powerful fluxes, but at cone 10, not cone 6! To melt a cone 6 glaze boron, zinc or lithia are needed. Boron is the most common and best general-purpose melter for potters (it comes mainly in frits, Gerstley borate). The concept of a limit recipe applies here, the idea of eye-balling a recipe and quickly assessing if it is ridiculous or not.

A functional matte cone 6 glaze should melt as well as a glossy

This picture has its own page with more detail, click here to see it.

True functional mattes have fluid melts, like glossy glazes. They need this in order to develop a hard, non-scratching, durable glass. The mechanism of the G1214Z1 matte on the right is high Al₂O₃, it is actually melting more than the glossy G1214W on the left (this was fired between cone 5 and 6, it normally runs right off the runway).

Links

Articles	A Low Cost Tester of Glaze Melt Fluidity Use this novel device to compare the melt fluidity of glazes and materials. Simple physical observations of the results provide a better understanding of the fired properties of your glaze (and problems you did not see before).
Articles	What Determines a Glaze's Firing Temperature? The oxides contributed by glaze materials determine its chemistry. The chemistry is the main factor determining melting behaviour. But the particle sizes, shapes and mineralogies also come in to play.
Articles	Why Textbook Glazes Are So Difficult The trade is glaze recipes has spawned generations of potters going up blind alleys trying recipes that don't work and living with ones that are much more trouble than they are worth. It is time to leave this behind and take control.
Articles	Reducing the Firing Temperature of a Glaze From Cone 10 to 6 Moving a cone 10 high temperature glaze down to cone 5-6 can require major surgery on the recipe or the transplantation of the color and surface mechanisms into a similar cone 6 base glaze.
Articles	Trafficking in Glaze Recipes The trade is glaze recipes has spawned generations of potters going up blind alleys trying recipes that don't work and living with ones that are much more trouble than they are worth. It is time to leave this behind and take control.
Glossary	Matte Glaze Random material mixes that melt well overwhelmingly want to be glossy, creating a matte glaze that is also functional is not an easy task.

By Tony Hansen
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