[Clayart] Replacing bentonite

[David Woof]

Hi Jeremy,
You asked for a replacement for Bentonite.  Perhaps we assumed you knew the mineral qualities of the materials you have available to know you could not just whip up a batch of what Bentonite could be replaced with.  So our answers asked you to discern that there is no simple one material substitute.
Macaloid and Bentonites are unique materials that cannot be substituted singly or in combinations of raw materials you would likely have.  This also requires understanding the intrinsic characters of each mineral and the combination effects involved.

We could have no doubt wasted your time telling you to take a high plasticity synthesized Ball clay, reduce the original recipe amounts of feldspar and silica and adjust the recipe ratios to accommodate these additions back to the original Empirical.

Then add enough CMC gum as a physical "mechanical" suspender, adequate Hopefulness, and Sodium Silicate to deflocculate the glaze slop.    Then if you've worked the Math correctly to arrive at a workable materials ratio... you would still have to learn how to apply a deflocculated glaze slop because the slop rheology will be way off of what most potters who use flocculated glaze slops are familiar with.
And no doubt you would lose the Kuan Crackle glaze effect because you have created a new Glaze. which might be an attractive glaze but not Kuan you'd hoped for.
So If I gave you the adjusted amounts for this substitution most likely the results wouldn't please.

********So back to Bentonite or Macaloid.

Misneach,

David Woof.....................................................................................................................................................................
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________________________________
From: Clayart <clayart-bounces at lists.clayartforum.com> on behalf of Jeremy Keala Ceramics via Clayart <clayart at lists.clayartforum.com>
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2024 10:17 AM
To: clayart at lists.clayartforum.com <clayart at lists.clayartforum.com>
Cc: Jeremy Keala Ceramics <jeremy.keala.ceramics at gmail.com>
Subject: [Clayart] Replacing bentonite

Hello,

I’m starting to work on creating a Kuan crackle glaze. My starting recipes
have bentonite in them and I don’t currently don’t have bentonite in my
workshop and would like to keep it that way otherwise I just keep adding
new materials all the time to my list of raw materials.
Would you have any suggestions how to go about replacing bentonite in a
glaze ?
Thanks and all the best,
Jeremy


--
*Jeremy Keala Ceramics*
www.jeremykeala.com<http://www.jeremykeala.com>
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