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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.
The fired glaze exhibits a network of fine cracks. These may be plainly visible after firing or may need enhancement with ink. Crazing may also appear after a period of time or after ware has been exposed to thermal shock. Fired strength (and thus functional ware quality) are directly related to crazing since ware strength is enhanced by having the glaze under slight compression whereas it is severely reduced (up to four times less) when the glaze is under tension. If the underlying clay matrix is porous and soaks up water then safety could be a concern with crazed ware since the cracks could be wide enough to provide a friendly breeding ground for colonies of bacteria. Containers used to store food are a special concern since a small colony in a crack can become a large culture in the food. If you have any doubt whether this is an important issue ask a commercial food service inspector about the subject.
Fired ceramic expands and contracts as it is heated. If the fired glaze has a significantly higher coefficient of expansion than the body then no amount of careful firing or thin glazing will avoid the inevitable crazing. This is by far the most common cause of crazing and solution strategies are case studies inglaze chemistry. If even only one piece crazes it is often a sign that all the other ware in that kiln will eventually craze. Such glazes usually need drastic changes since crazing is a visible manifestation of a fit problem that has already greatly reduced ware strength. Lower temperatures are far more sensitive in this respect in that there is a much narrower range within which a glaze and body will be compatible.
To improve glaze fit you can adjust the clay body to give it higher expansion and thereby the greater contraction, thus compressing glazes to prevent crazing (i.e. increase silica for high temperature bodies, talc or doloimite at low fire). You can also adjust the glaze to reduce its expansion. For example, if the glaze is melting well and it is not a matte, try increasing the silica by 5 or 10% (this will only likely help if the craze lines are far apart). Even better, use 325 mesh silica, it dissolves into the melt much better (this can be surprisingly effective when the percentage of silica in the recipe is significant e.g. 25-35%). Zirconium opacifiers are also useful in transparent glazes; they have a threshold amount under which they do not normally opacify. Thus it might be possible to add as much as 5% to make the glaze both more durable and reduce its expansion. If the glaze is opaque try using zircon instead of tin oxide or titanium. Perhaps the best non-chemistry option is to transplant the mechanism of the glaze into a base transparent that already works on your clay bodies.
If you can do the chemistry try introducing boron at the expense of some of the flux since B2O3 contributes to both glass development and melting. You can also introduce fluxing oxides of lower expansion at the expense of those with higher expansion in such a way that the fired properties are not changed too much; for example try adding CaO, MgO, or ZnO at the expense of Na2O and K2O (crazing is most serious with sodium and potassium glazes, to demonstrate mix nepheline syenite and water and apply as a glaze and fire at high temperature).
Consider also the elasticity of the glaze as even relatively well fitted ones can craze if exposed to radical temperature changes. High levels of sodium, potassium and calcium can make the glaze more brittle (the former also increase thermal expansion). Boric oxide is known to improve elasticity.
If the body expansion is too low (i.e. ovenware and flameware bodies) it can be very difficult to fit a glaze that has the desired visual characteristics. Lithium can dramatically reduce the thermal expansion of glazes, but its use requires a lot of testing since its contribution is not linear and it introduces other dynamics that must be considered.
If you are cooling your kiln very slowly to prevent ware from crazing it is likely the glaze does not fit. While it may be true that slower firing seems to solve the problem, time will bring out the crazing that the kiln did not. In fact if you must slow cool to prevent crazing it is a virtual certainty that your glaze needs to have its thermal expansion reduced.
Generally increased additions of iron and copper oxide to a glaze will reduce crazing (if they are present in adequate amounts; beyond 1 or 2 percent). Cobalt could have a moderate lowering effect, but since so little is typically used in glazes it will not be significant.
Underfired low temperature bodies may contain uncombined alkali or alkaline earths than can react with water and swell the body. You can test this by putting a glazed sample in a pressure cooker for several hours or put a shard into an autoclave to see if crazing appears. Calcium carbonate is added to talc bodies to minimize moisture expansion.
Normally a glaze/body combination with compatible expansion characteristics will withstand considerable firing and usage abuse without displaying signs of crazing. However, in some cases, a glaze that otherwise 'fits' will craze if applied very thick.
Also, if the kiln is cooled very quickly or unevenly, especially if ware is thicker, the severe stresses can produce crazing. However remember that a glaze's ability to withstand normal or even quick kiln cooling is an indicator of its ability to resist crazing in normal use.
If pieces must survive considerable thermal shock during use, then both ware and glaze need to have a low and linear thermal expansion curve and they must be compatible. This is difficult to achieve in low fire ware because little mullite or other low-expansion silicate minerals develop during firing. If your low fire body contains significant talc, reduce or eliminate it (also adjust glazes to have a lower expansion so they continue to fit the body). If your high fire body develops non-linear expanding cristobalite during firing, find a way to reduce this.
High temperature firing is by far the best for the production of low-expansion ware. Many more minerals are available for both body and glaze mixes and higher temperatures produce low-expansion silicates and aluminates that give tough glaze and body matrixes capable of withstanding forces that might otherwise cause crazing.
If ceramic ware is porous it can soak up water that causes the ware to expand, thereby putting tension on the glaze and crazing it.
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 in accordance with 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 thus improve the fit. And melt fluidity has nothing to do with crazing. Furthermore, if a glaze does not run off the ware, it is not overfired.
This liner glaze is 10% calcium carbonate added to Ravenscrag slip. Ravenscrag Slip does not craze when used by itself as a glaze at cone 10R on this body, so why would adding a relatively low expansion flux like CaO make it craze? It does not craze when adding 10% talc. This is an excellent example of the value to looking at the chemistry (the three are shown side-by-side in my account at Insight-live.com). The added CaO pushes the very-low-expansion Al2O3 and SiO2 down by 30% (in the unity formula), so the much higher expansion of all the others drives the expansion of the whole way up. And talc? It contains SiO2, so the SiO2 is not driven down nearly as much. In addition, MgO has a much lower expansion than CaO does.
This reduction celadon is crazing. Why? High feldspar. Feldspar supplies the oxides K2O and Na2O, they contribute to brilliant gloss and great color (at all temperatures) but the price is very high thermal expansion. Any glaze having 40% or more feldspar should turn on a red light! Thousands of recipes being traded online are high-feldspar, some more than 50%! There are ways to tolerate the high expansion of KNaO, but the vast majority are crazing on all but high quartz bodies. Crazing is a plague for potters. Ware strength suffers dramatically, pieces leak, the glaze harbours bacteria, crazing invites customers to return pieces. The simplest fix is to transplant the color and opacity mechanism into a better transparent, one that fits your ware (in this glaze, for example, the mechanism is simply an iron addition). Fixing the recipe may also be practical. A 2:1 mix of silica:kaolin has the same Si:Al ratio as most glossy glazes, this glaze could likely tolerate a 20% addition of that quite easily. That would reduce running, improve fit and increase durability. If the crazing does not stop the next step is to substitute some of the high-expansion KNaO, the flux, for the low-expansion MgO, that requires doing some chemistry in your insight-live.com account.
This mug is pinging loudly and literally self-destructing in front of my eyes! Why? The glaze is under so much compression (the inside is pushing outward, the outside inward). Spiral cracks are developing all the way up the side. Small razor-sharp flakes are shivering off convex contours. Why? I accidentally fired a low-temperate talc body at cone 6 (the glaze is the Alberta Slip base cone 6 glossy). The clay body is not overly mature, but it just has an extremely high thermal expansion (talc is added to increase the expansion to fit low fire commercial glazes, they would craze without it). Shivering is serious, it is a mismatch of thermal expansion between body and glaze. It can happen at any temperature.
A cone 10R grey stoneware mug that has begun to craze on the inside. The greyer coloration around the craze lines indicates that water is soaking into the slightly porous body. This mug has lost the ring it had when it was new (it is only about a year old). It could be refired to be as good as new but would soon return to this condition. The only real solution is to reformulate this glaze to reduce its thermal expansion.
This Cone 10 matte mug has been refired to attach decals. The fired matrix of the body is now brittle and dense and contains millions of quartz grains of many sizes. During the refire up through quartz and cristobalite inversions each of them experiences sudden volume increases. This does not happen in the glaze because its quartz particles were dissolved in the melt and converted to silicates during the previous glaze firing. The suddenness of the expansion depends on the rate of temperature increase and its extent depends on the size of the quartz particles. The body's passage through these two zones stretched the glaze and cracked it. Had the glaze fit been better (under some compression) it would likely have been able to survive.
This is an example of serious crazing in a glaze. The lines have gotten darker with use of the bowl! That means the color is organic, from food. This cannot be healthy.
Cone 6 transparent glaze testing to fit Plainsman M370: Left and right: Perkins Studio Clear. The far left one is a very thick application. Center: Kittens Clear. The porcelain for all is Plainsman P300. Why? Because P300 is much more likely to craze the glaze because it has a lower silica content (about 17% and only kaolin whereas M370 has 24% silica plus the free quartz that comes with the 20% ball clay it also contains). If a thick layer works on P300 it is a shoe-in to fit M370. If it also passes the oven:icewater test.
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Demonstrating Glaze Fit Issues to Students
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Are Your Glazes Food Safe or are They Leachable?
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Is Your Fired Ware Safe?
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G1916M Cone 06-04 transparent glaze
This is a frit based boron glaze that is easily adjustable in thermal expansion, a good base for color and a starting point to go on to more specialized glazes. |
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The Effect of Glaze Fit on Fired Ware Strength
The fit between body and glaze is like a marriage, if is is strong the marriage can survive problems. Likewise ceramic ware with well fitting glaze is much stronger than you think it might be, and vice versa. |
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Adjusting Glaze Expansion by Calculation to Solve Shivering
This page demonstrates how you might use INSIGHT software to do calculations that will help you increase the thermal expansion of a glaze while having minimal impact on other properties. |
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Understanding Thermal Expansion in Ceramic Glazes
Understanding thermal expansion is the key to dealing with crazing or shivering. There is a rich mans and poor mans way to fit glazes, the latter might be better. |
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Crazing in Stoneware Glazes: Treating the Causes, Not the Symptoms
Band-aid solutions to crazing are often recommended by authors, but these do not get at the root cause of the problem, a thermal expansion mismatch between glaze and body. |
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Desktop Insight 3 - Dealing With Crazing
Learn what crazing is, how it is related to glaze chemistry, how INSIGHT calculates thermal expansion and how to substitute high expansion oxides (e.g. Na2O, K2O) with lower expansion ones (e.g. MgO, Li2O, B2O3). |
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A Broken Glaze Meets Insight-Live and a Magic Material
Use Insight-Live.com to do major surgery on a feldspar saturated cone 10R glaze recipe with multiple issues: blistering, pinholing, crazing, settling, dusting and possibly leaching! |
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Analysing a Crazing, Cutlery-marking Glaze Using Insight-Live
A high-nepheline, zero-silica cone 8 silky matte pottery glaze is cutlery marking and crazing. Let's take a closer look and determine why? |
Glossary |
Crazing
Crazed ceramic glazes have a network of cracks. Understanding the causes is the most practical way to solve it. 95% of the time the solution is to adjust the thermal expansion of the glaze. |
Glossary |
Co-efficient of Thermal Expansion
Ceramics are brittle and many types will crack if subjected to sudden heating or cooling. Some do not. Why? Differences in their co-efficients of thermal expansion. |
Glossary |
Shivering
Shivering is a ceramic glaze defect that results in tiny flakes of glaze peeling off edges of ceramic ware. It happens because the thermal expansion of the body is too much higher than the glaze. |
Glossary |
Calculated Thermal Expansion
The thermal expansion of a glaze can be predicted (relatively) and adjusted using simple glaze chemistry. Body expansion cannot be calculated. |
Troubles |
Glaze Shivering
Ask the right questions to analyse the real cause of glaze shivering. Do not just treat the symptoms, the real cause is thermal expansion mismatch with the body. |
Materials |
Feldspar
In ceramics, feldspars are used in glazes and clay bodies. They vitrify stonewares and porcelains. They supply KNaO flux to glazes to help them melt. |
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