how thick should your glaze be sprayed on and how do you tell if it is that thick?

I'm getting tired of the common "hose and hope" strategy.

in Mastering Cone 6 Glazes they point out that one of the most difficult things is controlling your  glaze application thickness. However, they never really discuss how to address this. Most advanced potters who talk about this claim to spray glazes by feel or intuition. Maybe after 40 years of hosing on glazes some magical intuition begins to creep into your soul, but I am far from that and am looking for a better alternative.

Yes, I see the shininess and the ripples as it gets thicker. However, when this happens seems to be dependent on a lot of things other than the thickness of the glaze, such as temperature, specific gravity of the glaze, the type of glaze, the orifice of the gun, how closure you are holding the gun, your air pressure, whether you are spring on raw bisque or over another glaze and probably 10 more variables that I can not think of off the top of my head .I've seen this pattern happen between .09 mm and 1.5 mm.

I've even been admonished by some senior potters for even trying to measure glaze thickness as opposed to learning the intuitive approach. Sure, I'd like to have that level of intuition but I'm just not sure how to get there from here.

Besides, In discussing glaze thickness with senior potters, I'm not even sure quantitatively how thick it should be. I've heard between .5 mm and 1.5 mm. At 1.5 most of my glazes are peeling off like potato chips.

I've developed a precise glaze thickness measuring tool. Using this I have been experimenting with between .20 and 1.2 mm. All I'm still not sure I know what it should be.

So my question is, how have the rest of you successful potters solved this issue?

 

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Arthur on April 14, 2014 at 4:47am

I agree with you. It's certainly no exact science. I always seem to get barely any glaze at the bottom of the pot. Seems like tons are going on but when fired it's obvious that wasn't the case. Very frustrating. Practical advise would be a wonderful thing.

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