Post #794976 by danlovestikis on Mon, May 6, 2019 8:10 PM

Here is the rest of the Mermaid bowl story.

Once the bowl had been drying for a week I

decided to carve around the bowl.

Weeks later the bowl was dry, sanded and bisque fired. Now it was time to glaze it. I emptied all these

half filled jars of glaze to fill the bowl. After 30 seconds I

poured it out and then cleaned off where the glaze was in an undesired area.

I later touched up around the girl and the upper rim of the bowl because the crystals had moved down earlier. I wanted it uniform.

Once the blue glaze was dry I began to glaze the bowl and

then the girl. She was done with 3 layers of a Duncan CN glaze.

The last was her hair. I go very slowly so that I don't drip this black glaze on her body. I actually meant to do the hair first which is safer but I forgot. Once the bowl and mermaid were 100% dry it was added to a load and fired.

This is one reason I'm not making these any longer. There is always a glaze skip someplace no matter how hard I try and these bowls take up too much space in the kiln. So I scrubbed this area and glazed it again and she fired again.

After her second firing I picked up the bowl using the mermaid as a handle. Woops! She came loose.

Oh well Nothing was broken I just needed to glue her in place with glaze and to fire her again. The glaze will melt and all will be good.

Once she was pressed into place I cleaned up the excess glaze. She went back into the kiln with the next load.

When she came out of the third firing all was well. I could also pick her up using the mermaid as a handle. The connection was strong.

All the glaze skips were gone and now all I needed to do was to use enamel to paint on her face.

24 hours after painting her face she was baked in the home oven to "set" the enamel.

When taking photos I like to also take a photo of the bottom. This is when I saw a very long crack.

Once I saw it I then could feel it. The bowl is a total loss.

It could be that I trapped air when I pressed the mermaid into place with the brown glaze. That would make it crack. Or there was some other stress. I do not know if it cracked after the 2nd or 3rd firing. After the first I glazed the bottom and would have seen it then. It's a mystery. It's been years since I had something crack so I'm fine, only a little bit sad.

This is what I am putting in the Bowlarama show. Good thing it doesn't have to be for sale. Cheers, Wendy

PS wish Dan luck that his kidney stone cracks up tomorrow, he is having an ultrasound procedure in out patient surgery, some crack ups are good