Monthly Tech-Tip | No tracking! No ads! |
Crazing is a disaster for a production potter. Consider what one said: "I have just recently been contacted by a customer due to small lines in her bowl. I am now terrified residual crazing could be happening to lots of functional pieces I have sold! Nightmare! I have a terrible feeling in my stomach. Could anyone tell me if it is the glaze and if there is anything I can do to alter the recipe?"
Don’t let this happen to you. Commercial brushing and dipping glazes are just as likely to craze as ones you mix.
Today, ChatGPT is parroting common wrong suggestions about the cause and solution of the serious issue of crazing. Yet it trained on thousands of internet pages about the subject! Crazed functional ware is defective, and customers will return it. So fixing the problem is serious business, we need correct answers. Consider ChatGPT's suggestions: #1 is wrong. There is no such thing as an "incompatible mix" of ceramic materials. Crazing is an incompatibility in thermal expansions of glaze and body, almost always a result of excessive levels of high-expansion K2O and Na2O in the chemistry of the glaze. The solution is reducing them in favor of other fluxes (the amount per the degree of COE mismatch). #2 is wrong, firing changes don't fix the incompatibility of thermal expansions. #3 is wrong, refiring makes the crazing go away but not the stress of the mismatch, it will for sure return. #4 is completely wrong. Firing higher takes more quartz grains into solution in the melt and should reduce the COE (and mature the body more which often improves fit). And melt fluidity has nothing to do with crazing. Furthermore, if a glaze does not run off the ware, it is not overfired.
URLs |
https://insight-live.com/insight/share.php?z=CEavKR6Gye
Insight-live share showing how to fix crazing with cone 6 Leach's Clear |
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Troubles |
Glaze Crazing
Ask the right questions to analyse the real cause of glaze crazing. Do not just treat the symptoms, the real cause is thermal expansion mismatch with the body. |
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