Does anyone here have any experience with ball milling glazes after mixing? Do you do it wet or dry? I have heard very good things about doing so, but haven't talked to anyone who actually does this. I've noticed that my raw materials come in all sorts of conditions from super-fine particles in clays and kaolins to mixed size materials like strontium carbonate, zinc oxide, and tin oxide, where a minority of particles won't go through my glaze sieve. I've had a number of test glazes that came out with obvious undissolved particles in the glaze melt. Professional porcelain jug ball mills can be more expensive than potters wheels, so my inclination is to build one myself.

Thanks to Tony Hansen at digital fire there is good info at http://digitalfire.com/4sight/education/ball_milling_glazes_204.html and more on a DIY design at http://digitalfire.com/4sight/education/make_your_own_ball_mill_sta.... If you don't have the welding skills to make the frame for your mill from steel, there are a lot of designs online made mainly of wood.  Interestingly most of them are designed to mill charcoal and other materials to make black powder and pyrotechnics. 

If you prefer buying your equipment new, Shimpo makes ball mills: http://www.shimpoceramics.com/ballmilling_equipment.html

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There is absolutely no problem with posting external links that lead to solutions for our members questions. ceramicartsdaily.org is a great source of information and services to the ceramic arts community at large. We have many links to articles and videos on their Website. We think they are a terrific organization with similar interests to our own, though larger, more commercial, and more top-down in their presentation and control of information, which is not a bad thing for a commercial enterprise. 

Tony Hansen's homemade ball milling rack is very nice but pretty complicated and expensive. I built one inspired by the Shimpo wheel attachment. the rollers are from a scrapped out USPS package conveyor With mountain bike innertube stretched over them.

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