Glazes and Glaze Recipes - Plainsman

Food Safety

Our base glazes do not contain hazardous ingredients. They are resistant (as bases) to leaching tests in our circumstances. However when you fire them and you add stains, opacifiers, variegators then you are creating something different. Please do your own leaching test.

Before using any of these on a kiln load of ware: Read the documentation. Test first on the clay you intend to use it on. When mixing, screen them to assure a defect-free surface.

About Our Base Glazes

• You can make quality functional surfaces that are resistant to crazing, cutlery marking and leaching.
• If you follow the instructions (about water content, specific gravity and gelling the slurry) they apply without drips, dry quickly, harden to a durable dry layer and do not settle in the bucket.
• Each glaze is well documented, we sell them as powders and you can even get the recipe.
• These are base glazes: use as transparents or add stains and opacifiers (as shown).
• Automatic kilns almost never fire to the correct temperature. It is better to enter programs into your controller manually (based on cones in the kiln adjust the schedule to fire to the correct temperature).
• To avoid surface defects (like blisters) we recommend drop-and-soak manually-programmed firing schedules (approach final temperature at 100F/hr, hold for a short time, drop 100F and soak there (for 30 minutes or more).

Variegating Colored Surfaces

It is usually possible to variegate a colored glaze by adding some rutile or titanium (2-5%). Since the former contains iron, it can muddy lighter colors.