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wax resist pitting from spraying glaze

updated sat 15 nov 03

 

sabra wood on thu 13 nov 03


well, it's time to ask for help.

i just finished my final project for the quarter...

a hand-built dysfunctional tea pot, in the shape of Rx. (had to make a
tea pot in the shape of an actual letter font.)

it has piercing in the shape of pills... and sprigs from actual pills.

i wanted the pills to be different colors... and the surface of the pot
to be slick & corporate.

so i made spit wads from wet toilet paper & filled in the holes.

then glazed the sprigs with a brush.

then waxed the sprigs.

then sprayed the teapot.

by the time the teapot was dry enough to handle, i tried to get the
beaded glaze off of the sprigs.

wasn't easy, especially since the was had pitted in places.

i sprayed at 40 psi, with was the lowest pressure without flying blobs.

so i futzed around with LOTs of q tips... and gently scraping beads off
of sprigged areas where the wax held.

the good news... the spit wads worked GREAT!

hasn't come out of glaze firing yet... anticipating that i may need to
touch up sprigs & refire. sigh.

so - with perfect hind sight, i'm still not sure what i would have done
differently.. aside from having someone turn the piece while i spray...
so that i could be further away from the piece.

i've had this same problem on other pieces, using a variety of spray
guns, but the same aftosa wax resist.

enough of this!

o learned ones, what should i do next time?

thanks so much.

sabra wood

John K Dellow on fri 14 nov 03


sabra wood wrote:

>
>by the time the teapot was dry enough to handle, i tried to get the
>beaded glaze off of the sprigs.
>
>wasn't easy, especially since the was had pitted in places.
>
>
>
You could try using a brush and water next time to remove the beads off. Just dampen them with the brush loaded with water and wait a little while ,and then wipe off .

John

John Dellow "the flower pot man"
From the land down under
Home Page http://www.welcome.to/jkdellow
http://digitalfire.com/education/people/dellow/

Valice Raffi on fri 14 nov 03


Sabra,

One of my students just turned me on to Duncan's Wax Resist... applies
easily, washes out of the brushes, and totally resisted the glaze. When I
tested it, I painstakingly scraped a few dots of resist, gave up and left
the rest alone. After firing, the only difference I could see was that the
ones I'd scraped looked scraped, the others were perfect dots. This was on
a low-fired piece.

Valice
in Sacramento

>so i futzed around with LOTs of q tips... and gently scraping beads off
>of sprigged areas where the wax held.

John Hesselberth on fri 14 nov 03


Hi Sabra,

Try using latex instead of wax resist. That way you can peel the latex
and the globs of oversprayed glaze off together. You still have to be
very careful not to pull the glaze off the sprigs when you peel off the
latex, but it generally works pretty well. You want to put the latex
on on the thick side and give it plenty of time to dry before you
overspray.

Regards,

John
On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 06:05 PM, sabra wood wrote:

> so - with perfect hind sight, i'm still not sure what i would have done
> differently.. aside from having someone turn the piece while i spray...
> so that i could be further away from the piece.
http://www.frogpondpottery.com
http://www.masteringglazes.com

Snail Scott on fri 14 nov 03


At 06:05 PM 11/13/03 -0500, you wrote:
>...i tried to get the
>beaded glaze off of the sprigs...
>wasn't easy, especially since the wax had pitted in places...


Here is a theory I've been kicking around, but
have not tried, as I haven't done any wax resist
lately: putting silicone lubricant or mold release
over the wax before applying the glaze. I have
brushable silicone release around anyway since I
make rubber molds (Douglas & Sturgess sells it,
as well as others), but there's an inexpensive
candle-mold release available in hobby shops that
might do the trick. (Since that's a spray, you'd
have to spray in into a container and then brush
it from there.)

If you try it, let me know if it works!

-Snail