After trying several cone 6 matte glaze recipes, I've decided to narrow it down to this one that I got off of the Digitalfire website
I'm loving the glaze. It mixes well and goes on very easily. It also has great colour response. I'm currently looking for a dark, slate gray. My first tests gave me this:
The surface is incredible! There is so much depth to the color, it's fantastic! HOWEVER, see those runs? The next few tests made a mess of my kiln shelf. NOT GOOD.
Soooooooo, a few more tests:
The first picture, confusingly marked '2', is the above mentioned glaze recipe with twice the colorants as the original test piece. I was hoping that if the glaze was darker, I could apply it thinner and get the effect I was looking for. Aparently, I was wrong. (surprise, surprise!) The glaze has a distinctly green tinge to it. The second picture is that original recipe, from the first test above. I wanted to see if I could repeat the results. The answer is sort of. Oh boy. More testing in my future...As you can see, I still have the problem of the running, and in defense of the glaze, I AM overfiring it by about a cone.
Soooo, back to the testing. I can increase the alumina in the glaze to help with the running but that will also make the glaze more matte, which is not what I want. If I want to keep the current matteness then I could increase the silica along with the alumina which would also raise the firing temp a bit, which would probably help me out anyways, so that's most likely the route I'll go.
As for the feltware, it's coming.
I'm really enjoying felting. I've been working on a series of tiles:
This roving I bought at Romni Wools in Toronto.This particular colour, eggplant, came in a bag with red and black roving. I LOVE this color. And ordered more along with some complimentary colors from A Childs Dream
These tiles will look very different by the time I'm done with them. I'll just have to be patient and check the mail.
