Woodtiki here are my best HINTS FOR GLAZING

1. always do glaze tests on a bisque strip of clay with smooth and indentation surfaces. This is how I do them (Babalu showed me how). The first strip on the bottom is three layers the second strip two layers and the top strip is one layer. Along the side I've made indentations so I can see how the glaze fills in the carving.
   

@. Some glaze is made to move and some will stay put. So if it has streaks then you need to only fire once because if you do it a second time it will continue to move do to the pull of gravity. Then the bottom of your mug becomes a mess and also it accumulates on any ledges. Crystal glazes with spots stay put.

3. Underglazes such as Duncan's Cover Coat stay put. They must be dry before you put the clear coat on top or they can smear and you won't even know it until the piece is out of the kiln. Only use Duncan's Brilliance clear gloss. All the others I have bought ran the underglaze and ruined my mugs.

4. Concepts underglaze stays put and it doesn't need a clear coat, it's built in. I don't trust it yet for very tiny detail. I need to test it more. So far it works for areas like Tiki Bob's eyes and mouth.

5. For crystal glazes like Mayco's Jungle Jems scrape the bottom of the jar because those crystals stick. You can shake it do a first and second coat and then scrap and add the last coat with the crystals placing them where you want them.

6. The metal glazes say to fire them at a higher temperature than the 06 glazes. So far they have looked fine when using 06. Good to test your own kiln.

I hope this helps.

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hang10tiki is that because we only re-run Tiki Bob's???

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TikiVato your mug will be more green and brown when it fires. I love the name cocktail "Cactus Cooler" for the drink. Very cool.

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lunavideogames thank you. RVICTOR came up with a fun mug to match the book. The cactus was my idea because it was such a surprise to see cactus in Hawaii.

The Space ceramic is all out of the kiln and waiting to be glazed. It's in three pieces that I'll fuse together with glaze. I'll show it when the Wish List ends and I start on Dan's projects. I'm so happy you are interested.

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LoriLovesTiki the way this glaze works is that it fills in the indentations. The Huge word Jeff will not do that except at the bottom of each big letter. I can either add some of the blue crystals that I put on the inside into those letters now or after its fired I can use enamel paint in some way but then the mug can only be washed in cold water. Let me know ASAP.
Personally I think it would look good with the crystals in the letters.

I sure do enjoy your enthusiasm, I'm smiling right now.

hang10tiki oh how I wish we had been there. So many of my tiki buddies in one place. Even the Creepy Creeps! We are considering going to Tiki Oasis after all. I don't want to miss out on all the hugs! Thank you for wearing my Tiki Bob necklace. You look so handsome.

Tyber Tiki I stopped for a moment and up you popped. Good thing because I need to know the color for your small Bob statue.

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Progress Report on Wish List #5

This mug is for Vance and Jenae Klinke who live near us. This is an instance of having a glaze choice that didn't work for the mug unless I did some extra fancy glazing with additional colors. Here's the journey of this HONU mug.

The glaze choice was one with many crystals. Crystals fill in carved detail making it invisible.

So after some thought I started by adding black inside all the carved indentations.

The side shows the fins are tiki heads.

Back.

Now I took a break while this dried and filled the mug with the requested crystal glaze for 10 seconds then poured out.

Now the black is dry and I'm wiping off the excess.

Wiping it off colors the rest of the mug grey.

So to fix the grey face I did three layers of Cover Coat white and black.

Now that this has dried I

have covered it with 2 coats of Brilliant Clear Gloss by Duncan.

Now I have changed over to Concepts glaze by Duncan. First a Caribbean Blue that matches the crystal glaze.

Nest to keep the crystal glaze away from the Honu I am adding this glaze around the Honu and inside the design.

All done and drying.

Now to further tie it in with the crystal glaze I'm adding a second color of dark green.

Trim is done.

Next I've done it to the Honu.
Done and drying.

The black I used was Cover Coat which needs a gloss cover or it will be flat like a buff peanut mug. So I painted in the gloss over the black.

Done and drying. I bet you can tell this mug was done over a few days.

Now it was time to fulfil the Wish using the color requested. This shows the crystals.

I did three layers placing the crystals where I wanted them to be.

This will either work or not. This one is different from most I've glazed. Fingers crossed. Cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2015-04-23 08:07 ]