Firescale doesn't stick to a magnet - Iron and Steel do
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- Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies
- Category: Technical Articles 2008
Dorothy Cockrell
Tidying up after a weeks teaching, I spent an afternoon tipping each of my transparent enamels in turn onto clean sheets of paper and drawing a small magnet through them. Some, especially the really old ones, were perfectly clean and clear of all contamination. Others gave up tiny silvery dots of steel and minute shards and crumbs of black stuff which had to be iron as it stuck to the magnet.
This exercise was prompted by the discovery by one of my students that the transparent bronze enamel she had fired onto a bowl seemed pitted with tiny rough white opaque spots. Could it be from the roof of the kiln, or something in the air of the workshop? It couldn’t be white enamel as that would have fired smooth like the rest of the enamel. When rubbed down it appeared to be embedded deeply into the surface – right down to the underlying flux, so clearly not a chance contamination.