New green glaze in development (Gargomon)
Along with a good phase seperation green I have thrown my hat in to making a Semi Matt green glaze, Code name : Gargomon.
That’s right, Another Digimon name.
This was surprisingly an easy glaze to start off with. I took one of my recently developed Semi matt bases and dumped 4% black copper oxide in. This is what we got.
Gargomon test 1. Semi matt base + 4% black copper oxide.
SG: 1.5
temp ^6 ox
clay: b-mix with grog
Application : 5 second dip on top/ 3 second tip on bottom
It seems I have been playing with iron for way too long. Iron oxide as a material soaks up a lot of water, for some reason; So the water content had to be on the low side. With most other materials I do not have to use so much water. This was all too apparent when I tried to make my phase separation copper glaze. A five second dip at 1.5 Sg is kinda thick. This tile told me two things.
I do not need to put it so thick as to dip it for five seconds.
I have to lower the amount of copper. I am going for a lighter green than this.
The thing I noticed most is the weird teal color i’m getting. Does….. does black copper oxide look blue green all the time? I will use les nect test but I do not like this type of green. Of course I did the generic lemon test on it to see if any color would leach aaaaaaaaaaaand.
Same test tile
Ok, well…. We can’t have this. 20 hours with a little lemon slice on top. Not good. I have never had this happen before throughout all of the glazes. I assume amount of copper is too much. Next test we lower the copper to 3%. Once we get within acceptable ranges we are going to start playing with the color.
The glaze itself is good. Flux ratio 03:07, easy to work with, no lithium carb or gerstly borate, fully melts at cone 6, and is a good semi matter texture to is. First test was a very good shot at making a base color. It just needs to be tuned for leaching and color.
Update: Forget everything I just said. Matt green glazes and I are no longer friends. I don’t know what’s going on with them but any amount of copper I use in a glaze leaches. Why? I don’t know. I do know however that i changed directions after about 4 leach tests ( Some of which were as low as 1% copper) and made a phase separation glaze chrome glaze that has taken up the mantle of Gargomon. Lets take a look.
Donte’s phase base + 0.75 chrome ( now renamed Gargomon green)
Application: 4 second dip
Clay: bmix with grog
Sg: 1.45
cone: 6 ox
Viscosity tuning: none needed
Notes: Good thing about this glaze is that is has great phase separation, bad news is it’s thickness sensitive.
To think. it was as simple as less then 1% chrome in a good base…. All that work and leaching for it all to turn in to such a simple recipe.
Copper and I are no longer friends. Chrome oxide and I are now friends.
