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January 25, 2008

Tip of the Week: Consistent Wadding

by Linda C. Klaus | Read Comments (0)

When wadding a stack of plates for wood firing, use a template and pencil eraser to neatly facilitate glaze removal and stacking. As shown in the diagram below, make a triangular template to mark a consistent configuration for the wads on the foot. After a plate is glazed, use this template and a pencil to transfer the markings to the top of the plate.

Remove a 1/2-inch area of the dry glaze at each wad mark with the pencil eraser. Knock down the edge of the glaze around these areas with a damp sponge and proceed to wadding. Although I have stacked as many as six small plates together, three or four works best, with minimal warping. When making and trimming plates, always make sure that the foot is the same size. The more variation in size, the more warping you will have. Thanks, Linda!  

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Other great tips you can use
1. Ever have a problem with clay sticking to canvas on a slabroller? Slab production usually must stop until the canvas dries out. Solution: place a piece of 1.5-mil plastic, cut to fit, over the canvas. Slabs are then rolled out over the plastic. They are easily lifted off, while still adhering to the plastic, and transferred to worktables. The plastic is then peeled off and returned to the slab roller table.

2. Over time, kiln shelves may warp, which limits their usefulness. You can overcome this problem by throwing disks of clay in various diameters, coating them with kiln wash and placing them under any pots that need to span uneven junctures between shelves. Mix wash from equal parts Edgar Plastic Kaolin and mullite (35 to 100 mesh). It has a texture, but doesn't flake, and when old, scrapes off easily.

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You can find definitions and explanations for more than 500 ceramic terms, from agateware to zirconium, in the Ceramic Arts Daily Glossary.