How to Glaze Pottery! Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

check out that sweet sky this video we're doing some glazing what's up guys I'm John Potter and welcome back to another pottery video today we are talking about glazing people have asked me to do glazing tutorials so I'm gonna go through how I like to glaze things and keep in mind there are tons of different ways you can glaze tons of different temperatures I go kind of medium to high fire cone 6 a lot of elementary schools do low fire glazes a lot of other Potter's go really high fire like cone 10 the hotter you go the more durable and the more depth you can get in the glaze but I find that cone 6 works great for me that's the way I learned in college was with cone 6 glazes and so that's what I use now and I get great results with my glazes so when I glaze I tend to like to load two to three layers on the top of all the back and let it drip down and so everyone has their own style so I'm gonna go through how I do some of my glazing so we'll see in the studio here we are we are in the studio ready to be glazing wait you're not supposed to be in the studio you're supposed to be at auntie's house let's fix that we're teaching Ryder how to operate teleport from place to place so it's going pretty good that was about 20 miles so let's do some glazing so the first thing that I do when I glaze is I wax the bottom and then I waxed any other part that I don't want there to be glaze on so that's we're gonna do first we're gonna wax the bottoms is that make sure that the glaze won't adhere to the clay makes it super easy for cleanup and because you don't want any glaze touching the kiln shelves not good for the pad not good for the kiln shelves so for these mugs we want to wax that Minnesota because we don't want any glaze on there and then we just want to wax the bottom too so I just take my wax paint it on and then I take just the part that I trimmed which is just like this and I just wipe the wax on there if I didn't whack that part then the glaze would have a tendency to just run all the way to the bottom or run off really easily so just having a little bit of wax across the bottom side really helps and then we wax the Minnesota and we'll just let this dry and the wax once it's on is you can't just wipe it off you actually have to sand it off so if you make mistakes so it is important to try your best to not get any wax anywhere that you don't want just saves time in the end all right so we're just gonna wax all this stuff and then we'll start glazing the only other thing that you might have to do before you wax is if you have any glaze that you want apply to the pot before the wax goes on then you have to put that in first mix up this black please take a little bit of black glaze with this sponge put that in like that and then we clean off our sponge so I just dipped in water cleaned off and then we wipe off that excess so that where we stamped it keeps that clay in there and then when that's dry we take our wax wax that so then now when we dip this in the clay in the glaze glaze won't adhere to the Minnesota but will still have that black glaze in there and then it stands out a lot more when it's finished like that we got everything wax and we're getting ready to start glazing so I'm just gonna talk a little bit about my glazes I fire everything to Kohn six I tend to use lots of greens and blues and blacks I switch it up a lot most of my glazes are all commercial glazes that I get from either continental clay in Minneapolis or Minnesota clay also in Plymouth Minnesota I find for the convenience factor and the reliability and consistence I just can buy them there I the reason I don't use like big bigger commercial glazes is like amico is because the ones that are made at my local store are actually quite a bit cheaper and so I can just go pick those up and I've learned a lot of combinations that I really like with just those ones so try out your local pottery stores see what they have because those Amoco glazes like blue rutile and the ones i used in college those can get pretty spendy if you buy them like two to three hundred bucks for like a giant thing where some of these are only like 80 bucks for the same amount I'll show you my glazes so the ones I use a lot are the black which is right here this one is a green one and this is a buttercream glaze and this is a floating blue I probably use these four for 75% of my glazing and then I have a few other ones that I like to use too like this matte white and on Albany Brown but I'm just gonna go through and do some of the glazes that I do like really consistently so what I typically like to do is I dip everything for the most part and what I like to do is I like to load the glaze up on the top like third so I usually will have three two two three glazes on the top and then one glaze on the bottom so I'll take like so say I'm doing a black green and buttercream glaze and I would get the whole thing in black and then I would just do and then I let that dry dip the next color into green like two here and then dip another buttercream like - the same as the green and I like that a lot because it creates a lot of depth up on the top of the rim and it kind of starts to drip but since you only have one glaze at the bottom of the mug then it won't drip totally often and the dripping kind of stops somewhere in between there and there so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] kind of hard to do a clear-cut tutorial about glazing because there's so many different ways to glaze and some people paint it on some people dip it like I dip it some people go to cone six some people go to contents of you a cone to cone cone o for so you really just have to kind of experiment what so what I like to do is just have lots drips and I like to dip everything for the ease of it and the consistency across the board [Music] so we got our two glazes on the top here so it's on blue on the bottom now we're just gonna add that third glaze around the top because it's close to dry so you mix up that buttercream then we put that laughs glaze around the top and then we'll just let that dry and that will be done the same thing with this one so we got the black on the whole thing and then the green around the top and then we're gonna add one more glaze around the top just like that and then that'll be good to go so we'll wipe off make sure we wipe off the bottom so that that glaze doesn't stick to the bottom of the kiln shelf wipe that off with a clean sponge just like that and then we're ready to load when I'm thinking about glazing things like bowls where the inside shows a lot and it can't drip off I really like to load plays on in the middle because obviously it has nowhere to drip so it's just gonna be on the inside so then like right now we have a black glaze that's in the middle and then a little bit of green around the edge then I'll take another one and I'll coat the whole inside with glaze so I'm just pouring that glaze all inside and then I'll roll the glaze around and then pour the excess out and then this one since it'll fit in here I'll actually just take it and dip the top edge around a little bit so that it does get a little bit on the end but that it won't be enough to totally drip off the side just like that ooh as I get pieces done then I'll start to kind of load the kiln so this piece is all done it's got a black glaze around the top and then a green on the whole thing and then the buttercream around the rim which is kind of my pattern is just having three across the top and so now we'll load this into the kiln we'll just start in slowly loading until we get to the till we get it full okay so I've realized while I'm filming this why I haven't done a glazing tutorial yet because it's like so complicated and there's so much to it and so I think that I'll do this video these are just kind of some glazing tips and thoughts and how I think about it but then in a future video I'll like dive deeper into like this is why I do this one glaze or like this is what to think about like loading the kiln but this video is good like I kind of think about glazing this way you know I like to have drips and I like to have lots of glaze colors and blues and greens and but you might like other things and so this is just kind of how I do it you know if you want a glazing tips from John the Potter number one wax the bottom make sure there's no glaze that's touching the kiln shelves number two load the glazes on top two to three layers on the top and leave only one layer on the bottom two-thirds so that the glaze has room to drip number three keep experimenting just try something new every time and eventually you'll get something you love three tips from John the Potter stop glazing I just came up with those were right now so I hope they're good [Music] always make sure your bottoms are clean it's just a good life motto clean or clean [Music] all fall got ins killing awful it's all ready to go you saw me glaze some mugs there's a few bowls in there some vases everything's kind of under the same philosophy where we have the three glazes on top just different combinations of those things now I do a lot of different stuff but that's kind of just what I wanted to stick with for the first one so to program the kiln what I do is I fire it two cone six stop whatever it was doing cone fire now it's asked me if I want to preheat it I'll just say enter cuz I don't want to preheat it hone six enter then I'll do it on medium speed and then it's gonna ask me if I want to hold it at all which I don't hold it at all if you a zero hold so I'll say enter at zero don't press Start now it's on and then the last thing we do is we start the vent so that's what this big giant boxes that you always see so this is just a fan that will vent it so I open that thing turn that fan on so that it just sucks all the fumes out it's also super annoying when it's running it it's loud but that's okay I will close it now we're gonna hit the lake [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey thanks for watching this video how to glaze I know this video is kind of all over the place a little bit so I'm definitely to do more glazing tutorials in the future but I thought this cable a good start so if you haven't already hit that subscribe button like this video if you haven't liked that already see you in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jonthepotter

Views: 410,565

Keywords: Pottery, Ceramics, Clay, Studio, How to throw pots, how to be a potter, Ceramic Arts, Pottery Studio, How to center clay, handmade, functional pottery, functional, How to glaze pottery, glazing tutorial, glaze pots, glazed pottery, cone 6 glazes, jonthpotter, making things out of clay, centering clay on the wheel, kiln unloading, loading kiln, glaze ideas, glaze pottery ideas, glaze tutorial, how to glaze

Id: 9y12CCHq74s

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/jonthepotter]

Thanks for the feedback, I guess I need to have the music be more in the background ! good thing that's an easy fix:)

[u/Meat_Bingo]

Great tips thanks

[u/Lemonhead33]

great video, thank you! didn't have the same issue as others with the music.

[u/brownsun]

Couldn't finish this video cause the music was just too obnoxious

[u/SnitchBear1]

Yeah, the music was a little loud, great video nonetheless :)

[u/pringle_street]

Jon you are great! Keep the videos coming!