Making Slip For Ceramics

Let it slake for 24 hours then mix it by hand a little with a stick figure 2.

Making slip for ceramics.

I always use wet clay to make slip. Every once in a while i spray water in the plastic bag so the clay doesn t get dry. The gravity ratio is measured by the hydrometer and it tells you the amount of water in relationship to the amount of. The mold is opened and the clay object is removed.

Make a batch of slip out of the same clay body and add a small percentage of stain say 2. It s a a lot of fun to do washes of color on textured surfaces leaving concentrations of the glaze or ceramic colorants in the recesses but sometimes when the clay slip or glaze is washed off the color loses its vibrancy. For storing slip i like the 16 oz. Make sure your slip is made from the same clay you re working with.

Then submerging the dry clay in water so that it breaks down and dissolves. A gallon of good ceramic slip should weigh 14 5 pounds plus a smidge. And it should have a gravity ratio of 1 75 to achieve this you should have a hydrometer and a scale. The process of slaking clay to make it into slip is a simple one.

First some basic information about making your slip. I save all of my little scraps of clay put them in a gallon size plastic bag and when i have enough clay i make slip. Once you ve mixed the slip for about 5 minutes use a. Like liked by 1 person.

It may be either solid cast where the form is filled with the new clay object or hollow cast where the new object is deposited around a hollow center from which the remaining slip. You can use an underglaze pencil to write the 2 or scratch it into the leather hard clay. With a screw on lid you can get a tighter seal than you can with snap on lids which means your slip will still be usable the next time you need to use it. I never use bone dry clay.

Step one is to have a 5 gallon bucket filled 60 75 with your bone dry clay then add water until it s a few inches below the rim figure 1. Paint a strip of this slip mixture onto the tile and write on the tile that this is a 2 mixture. The basics of making slip for clay involves breaking pieces of bone dry clay into small parts. The dissolved clay is then blended into the water to make a smooth suspension.