Technique guide
How to use dipping glazes
Dipping is the fastest way to a smooth, even, professional coat of glaze. It is also the fastest way to wreck a bucket that a few hundred other people are counting on. This page teaches both halves: the exact method we use at The Clay Hole, and the way the rest of the pottery world does it, with every place the two disagree marked and explained.
Everything you actually need to dip a pot properly, in about two minutes of reading. Wax, rinse, mix, dip, drain, dry, touch up, clean up.
Jump to a section
Why this page exists
Reading it and watching it do two different jobs
How to use this page
Watch the video in a section once, all the way through, before you touch anything. Then keep the checklist near the bottom open on your phone and work off that. Trying to do both at once is how a half-glazed pot sits on a table drying unevenly while you scrub back to find the bit you missed.
Nobody has ever read a sentence about wrist angle and then had a good wrist angle. Video gives you the things sentences are bad at: how fast a hand actually moves, how much glaze comes off a rim, what draining looks like when it is finished rather than when you got bored of holding the pot.
Words are better at the other half. Order. Numbers. The one step you forgot. You cannot scrub back to 4:12 with glaze on both hands, and video is genuinely terrible at telling you what comes third.
There is also a plain memory reason to do both. Information that arrives through two channels gets stored twice, in two different forms, and each one gives you a separate route back to the same idea a week later. Watch it once and you know what it should look like. Read it once and you know what order to do it in. Do both and you can repeat it, which is the only kind of learning that survives contact with a real pot.
So that is how this is built. Videos from potters who are better at this than most of us, and short lists you can hold in one hand.
The whole idea
A dipped pot is a thirsty pot
Bisque is dry and porous. When you dunk it, the pot drinks the water out of the glaze and the solids left behind stiffen and stay exactly where they landed. That is the whole mechanism, and every rule below comes out of it.
Which is why the piece has to be clean before it goes in, because whatever is on it gets pulled into a bucket hundreds of people share. Why the bucket has to be properly stirred, because the heavy solids sink and a lazy swirl gives you thin, patchy, wrong-colored coverage. And why the timer matters, because the longer the pot drinks, the thicker the coat, and thick coats run onto kiln shelves.
Get those three right and dipping is close to foolproof. It is genuinely the easiest way to a flawless, even finish, and it takes seconds per piece once the bucket is open.
Start here
What a dipping glaze actually is
A dipping glaze is the same family of material as the bottled glaze you brush on, mixed thin, kept in a bucket, and designed to go on in one pass instead of three. It works because bisque is thirsty. The pot pulls the water out of the glaze, the solids stiffen in place, and you get an even coat in about the time it takes to say the word.
Brush-on glaze is thickened on purpose
Bottled brush-on glazes carry gums and suspenders so they hold a brush stroke and do not sag. That is what lets you paint detail, and it is also why you need two or three careful coats to get proper coverage.
Dipping glaze is thinned on purpose
Thin enough to flow into every dip and undercut, and to leave a coat of exactly the right thickness in a few seconds. The trade is that it is nearly impossible to paint with and it will not stay where you put it on a vertical surface.
Dipping is the right call when
- +You want a flat, even, factory-clean coat with no brush marks anywhere.
- +You have a batch. Six mugs go faster than one mug does, because setup is most of the work.
- +The shape is full of nooks, carving, texture or handles that a brush cannot reach evenly.
- +You want the glaze to behave the same way it did last month. A bucket is far more repeatable than a brush.
Reach for a brush instead when
- −You have one or two pieces. Mixing, dipping and cleanup take real time no matter how small the job is.
- −You want more than one color on the piece, or any kind of pattern, line or edge.
- −You want a specific color from the 650+ glaze wall. There are seven dipping buckets and hundreds of bottles.
- −The piece is too big or too heavy to hold steady over an open bucket with one hand.
Required at The Clay Hole
Members get certified before their first dip
Every bucket in the dipping room is shared by the whole studio, so everyone learns it the same way before touching one. Watch the video, agree to the rules, take a short quiz, sign the agreement. About 25 minutes, most of it the video, done once for as long as you are a member.
At the end you save a certification card to your phone. Show that card to an instructor wearing pink before your first dip and they will get you started at the buckets. After that you never have to find anybody first.
Seven buckets
Dan’s Secret Sauce, Bronzealot, Blue Hole, Clear, Creamed Ice, Sunny Charcoal and Tamjoda. These are not cheap homemade buckets. They are high-end commercial glazes altered specifically for our members.
Who pays what
Dipping is included for Purple Level and Black Level Members. Green Level and Yellow Level Members are welcome to dip by paying the per-piece up-charge. Certification is identical for everybody.
Contamination is quiet
Nothing looks wrong at the bucket. Nothing looks wrong on the ware tray. It turns up weeks later in the kiln, on work somebody else spent a month on. That is the entire reason the rules are strict.
The one rule everything else hangs off
Protect the glazes. There are no strikes on the dipping rules, and a member who ruins a bucket by breaking one is financially responsible for replacing it. A bucket can run to $2,400. Nobody has ever been annoyed by a question, and everybody has been annoyed by a ruined glaze.
Not a member yet? Everything below still applies at any studio with dipping buckets. The rules that are ours rather than universal are marked as ours throughout.
Step one
Before your piece touches glaze
Almost every dipping disaster is a preparation problem wearing a technique costume. Five minutes here decides how the piece comes out of the kiln, and whether the bucket is still good for the next person.
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1
It has to be bisque-fired
Greenware falls apart in a bucket. Ours are bisqued to cone 05, which leaves the pot porous enough to drink properly. A pot bisqued much hotter than that drinks slowly and takes a thin coat, which is worth knowing if you ever glaze somewhere else and your usual dip time suddenly gives you a different result.
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2
Nothing unfired goes in the bucket
No unfired underglaze. No brushed-on glaze already applied. Dipping glaze is its own closed system, and anything wet or unfired dissolves into it and never comes back out. If you want underglaze under a dipped clear, it has to be fired on first.
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3
Wax the bottom while the piece is dry
Wax resist wherever you do not want glaze: the foot, the bottom, anywhere that touches a kiln shelf. Do this on the dry pot, before any rinsing, because wax does not adhere well to wet bisqueware.
Then let it dry completely. Not mostly. Not probably. Wet wax slides off in the bucket and contaminates the whole thing.
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4
Then rinse and rub it with cold water
Once the wax is dry, rinse the whole piece under cold water and rub it with your hand. Bisque collects dust, sanding grit, shelf debris and whatever else has landed on it since it came out of the kiln, and all of that goes straight into a shared bucket otherwise.
A rinsed pot also takes a visibly smoother coat. Dust under glaze is one of the quiet causes of pinholing.
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5
Look it over one more time
Sharp edges, burrs from trimming and rough spots all read through glaze. Sand them at the bisque stage, wet, then rinse again. It is the last easy moment to fix anything.
Where we differ from most instructors
Look at almost any glazing tutorial and the order is reversed: sponge or wash the pot first, let it dry, then wax. Both orders are defensible. Washing first gives you a clean surface to wax onto, which some people find gives a crisper wax line.
We wax first for a simple reason: wax does not stick well to damp bisque, and a wax line that has not properly bonded is the exact failure that drops wax into a bucket. Rinsing afterward does not lift dry wax. So we take the cleaner wax bond and rinse second, and it has to be fully dry before the rinse or you get the worst of both.
Step two
Mixing is not a formality
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that most changes how a piece comes out. Glaze is heavy mineral powder held in water. Left alone, it separates, and the good stuff is at the bottom.
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1
Blow the dust off the closed lid first
A few quick blows across the top of the lid before you lift it. Everything that has settled on that lid drops straight into the glaze the second you open it. Aim away from any bucket that is already open.
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2
Use the whisk or paddle assigned to that glaze
Each bucket has its own tool and they do not travel. One whisk in the wrong bucket contaminates both of them at once, which is a two-bucket mistake made in one second. If a tool ever has to move between glazes it gets washed thoroughly first.
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3
Mix for at least 120 seconds
Two full minutes. Time it, because everybody underestimates it. Reach the bottom and the corners, and lift the settled layer up rather than just spinning the top.
An under-mixed bucket gives you a thin, patchy, washed-out coat and leaves the bucket wrong for the next person, who now gets an over-thick one. Both of you blame the glaze.
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4
Stir again every few pieces
It starts settling again the moment you stop. If you are working through a batch, a quick restir every three or four pieces keeps piece six looking like piece one.
Specific gravity, and why it is not your job here
Watch enough glaze videos and you will hit specific gravity: a number for how much water is in a glaze, measured by weighing a fixed volume of it. Studio potters use it because consistent water content means consistent coat thickness means consistent results, and they adjust their buckets with it constantly.
It is genuinely useful knowledge and worth understanding. It is also not something members do to our buckets. Nobody adds water, adjusts, or thins a shared glaze. When one person tunes a bucket to their own hand, everybody else’s tested dip time becomes wrong. We maintain the seven buckets so that the time printed on the lid keeps meaning what it says.
Step three
The dip itself
The part everyone is nervous about is the part that takes four seconds. Grip it well, put it in like a ladle, count, come straight out.
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1
Get a grip you trust
Tongs or clean fingers, both are fine. Whichever you use, hold the strongest part of the piece, not a rim or a handle join. Tongs go on firmly but gently, because tong points concentrate a lot of force on very little bisque.
Fingers leave two or three broad marks that are easy to fix. Tongs leave three small sharp ones that are also easy to fix. Neither is cheating.
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2
Enter like a ladle, not like a cannonball
Tip the piece and slide it in on an angle so air can escape as it fills. Dropping a cup in mouth-first traps a bubble, and wherever that bubble sits you get a bald patch. Go in smoothly and do not bang the sides of the bucket.
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3
Dip for the time printed on that glaze’s lid
Every bucket has its own number and we tested all seven to get them. Use the one on the lid in front of you, not a number you remember from a different glaze last month.
Longer is not better. Longer is thicker, and thicker is runs, crawling, and a piece welded to a kiln shelf.
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4
One piece, one dipping glaze
A pot that has just come out of one bucket is carrying that glaze on every surface. Take it to a second bucket and you have just seeded bucket two with bucket one. This is the rule people most want to bend and the one that costs the most when it breaks.
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5
If you drop something, do not reach in
Ever. Arms carry oils, lotion, sunscreen and skin into a glaze that can cost up to $2,400 to replace. Find an instructor wearing pink. They have a way to get it out and you do not.
The three-second rule, and why we do not use it
Most tutorials will tell you to count to three, or dip for “as long as it takes to say crikey that’s cold.” That is a perfectly good default for a bucket you mixed yourself and know intimately, and it exists because most glaze recipes land in the same rough range.
Our seven buckets do not all land in that range. They were altered specifically for this studio and we tested dip times for each one, which is why the number lives on the lid rather than in a general rule. If you take one habit from here to another studio, take the habit of asking what the number is.
The method
Eight steps, in order
This is our method at The Clay Hole. Two of these are ours specifically and are marked. The rest is how dipping works anywhere.
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1
Wax the bottom, dry piece, let it dry 100%
Wax before rinsing, because wax does not adhere well to wet bisqueware. Wet wax comes off in the bucket. Most tutorials do this the other way round; we do not.
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2
Rinse and rub with cold water
Bisque holds dust and sanding grit. Rinse it or all of that goes in the bucket. No unfired underglaze and no brushed-on glaze anywhere on the piece.
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3
Blow the dust off the closed lid, then mix 120+ seconds
Use the whisk assigned to that glaze and only that glaze. Two full minutes, reaching the bottom. Stir again every few pieces. This is the step that most changes your result.
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4
Dip for the time on that glaze’s lid
Tongs or clean fingers, gripping the strongest part. In on an angle like a ladle so no air gets trapped. Every bucket has its own tested time. Longer is not better, it is just thicker.
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5
Drain fully back into the bucket
Hold it over the bucket until it genuinely stops dripping. Do not shake it. Squeegee the bottom if you need to. One piece, one dipping glaze, always.
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6
Onto the correct ware tray, then leave it alone
Handle it as little as possible while it is wet. An optional one-second dip in the water bucket smooths the surface; opinions are split and both are fine.
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7
Once bone dry, touch up with a finger
Dab glaze into tong marks and bare spots. Gently rub down ridges and thick patches. Dry glaze fixes cleanly; wet glaze smears. Do not sand.
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8
Wash your tools and clean every drip
Tools go in The Wash Pit. Floor, trays, platform, bucket sides, walls. Dried glaze becomes dust and dust travels into other buckets. This part is the job, not a bonus.
Step four
The minute after the dip
The optional water dip
After draining, one second or less in the water bucket smooths the surface slightly. Feelings about this are genuinely split, here and online. Some members swear by it, others never touch it. Try it on one piece of a batch and judge for yourself. Do not soak it.
Drain it properly. Hold the piece over the bucket until it has genuinely stopped dripping, not until you feel awkward standing there. Ten seconds of patience keeps the glaze in the bucket, off the floor, and off the outside of the bucket where it dries into dust.
Do not shake it. Shaking throws glaze around the room and leaves streaky, uneven ridges where the wet coat slides. Let gravity do it. If a fat drop is hanging off the foot, squeegee the bottom against the rim of the bucket or wipe it with a finger.
Onto the correct ware tray. Not the table, not a random shelf. Set it down once and handle it as little as you can while the glaze is still wet, because every touch now is a mark you have to fix later.
Then walk away. Dipping glaze usually dries fast, and everything about touching up goes better on dry glaze. Go wash your tools while you wait. That is the whole trick to this step: the waiting is not wasted time if you spend it on the cleanup you owe anyway.
Step five
Tong marks, bare spots and tidy edges
Every dipped pot comes out with marks on it. That is not a mistake, it is physics. The fixing is easy as long as you wait for the glaze to be completely dry first.
Wait until it is bone dry
Touching wet glaze smears it and drags the coat thin around the smear. Dry glaze behaves like chalk: it takes a dab, it takes a rub, and it stays where you put it.
Dab, do not paint
Dip a fingertip in the glaze and dab it into tong marks, finger marks and small bare spots. A gentle dab that sits slightly proud is right; the surrounding coat will pull it level in the fire.
Rub down what is too thick
Raised ridges, runs and heavy patches come down with a light finger rub. Aim for level with the surface around it, not for bare clay.
Check the foot last
Wax resists glaze but it does not repel every last bead. Wipe the waxed area with a barely damp sponge so nothing is left to weld the piece to a kiln shelf.
Mind the rim
Rims collect a slightly heavier coat because glaze drains toward them. Run a finger around the lip if it looks fat. It is the first place a glaze shows a run.
Do not sand it
Aggressive sanding or scraping of dry glaze makes fine airborne dust, and that dust travels into other buckets and into lungs. Finger-rub instead. If a piece needs more than that, it needs a rethink, not sandpaper.
Beyond the straight dip
Other people’s methods, and which ones work here
A straight full submersion is not the only way to get glaze out of a bucket and onto a pot. Some of these are standard practice everywhere and welcome here. A couple are not, and we have said which.
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1
Pouring the inside
Ladle or pour glaze into the piece, swirl it once so it wets everything, and pour it straight back out. Speed matters more than people expect: pour slowly and the glaze sits on the surface for the whole pour, which gives you a much thicker interior than you wanted.
Useful for anything too deep or too narrow to submerge cleanly, and for vases where you cannot see inside anyway. Fine here, as long as it goes back into its own bucket.
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2
Inside and outside in one movement
Scoop glaze into the piece as you push it under, so the inside and outside coat in a single pass. It looks like a magic trick and it saves a step. It takes practice to get the timing right, and it is easiest on open forms.
Fine here. Same glaze, same bucket, one motion.
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3
Dipping a big piece in two halves
For anything too tall for the bucket: dip one end, let it dry completely, then dip the other end, overlapping slightly in the middle. The overlap band is double thickness, so keep it narrow and keep it high on the piece rather than near the foot where a run would reach the shelf.
Fine here with one glaze. Our guide to glazing big pieces goes deeper on this.
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4
Tongs versus bare fingers
Purely preference, and potters argue about it happily forever. Tongs keep your hands clean and give you reach on deep buckets. Fingers give you far better feel for a piece that might slip, and the marks are broader and easier to blend.
Both fine here. Whichever you pick, the tool has to be clean, and it does not go on the floor and back in a bucket.
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5
Layering, double dipping and two-color overlaps
This is the great celebrated technique of the dipping world: dip in one glaze, then dip part of the piece in a second so the overlap does something neither glaze does alone. The results can be spectacular and there are thousands of videos about it.
Not possible with our dipping buckets. A wet dipped piece carries glaze one into glaze two, and there is no version of that which does not contaminate a bucket the whole studio shares. If you want layered effects, the 650+ brush-on glaze wall is built for exactly that, and the flux glazes exist to make other glazes move.
Inside first, outside second
Whichever method you use, glaze the inside before the outside whenever you do them separately. The inside is the part nobody sees until the piece is finished, and it is the part that has to be watertight, so it deserves the pass you take while your hands are steady and the bucket is freshly stirred.
It also lets the interior stiffen while you work on the exterior, which means fewer drips running back out of the mouth of the piece and onto the coat you just laid down. Doing it the other way round is the most common reason a good outside ends up with a streak down it.
Read this before you copy a video
Where our way and the internet’s way part company
Nearly every glazing video you will find was made by somebody working with their own glaze, in their own studio, with nobody else’s pots downstream of their decisions. That is a completely different problem to ours, and it is why some excellent advice out there is advice we cannot follow. Here is every place they diverge, and the reason on our side.
| Common advice out there | What we do at The Clay Hole | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Layer glazes, double dip, overlap two colors for effects | One piece, one dipping glaze. Every time | A wet dipped pot carries glaze one into glaze two. It is the single fastest way to ruin two shared buckets at once |
| Sponge or wash the pot first, then wax the foot | Wax the dry piece first, then rinse | Wax does not adhere well to wet bisqueware, and wax that has not bonded is exactly what comes off in the bucket |
| Dip a bone-dry pot so it takes a good thick coat | Rinse and rub with cold water first | Dust, sanding grit and shelf debris go into a shared bucket otherwise. It also gives a smoother finish |
| Count to three, or dip for about three to five seconds | Dip for the time printed on that glaze’s lid | All seven of our buckets were altered for this studio and tested individually. Their times are not all the same |
| Check specific gravity and add water to correct the bucket | Members never add anything to a bucket | One person tuning a shared glaze to their own hand makes every other member’s tested dip time wrong |
| Brush a second glaze over a dipped piece for decoration | Dipping glaze and brush-on glaze never meet | The gums in dipping glaze can react badly with brush-on glazes, and none of those combinations has been tested for food safety |
| Just reach in and fish it out if you drop something | Never. Find an instructor wearing pink | Arms carry oils, lotion and skin into a bucket that costs up to $2,400 to replace. They have a tool for this |
| Shake the excess glaze off before setting it down | Hold it over the bucket and let it drain | Shaking throws glaze on the floor and leaves streaky ridges. Glaze on the floor is glaze nobody gets to use |
| Sand or scrape down thick spots and drips once dry | Gentle finger-rubbing only | Sanding dry glaze makes airborne silica dust, which travels into other buckets and into lungs |
| Dip over unfired underglaze to seal the design | Underglaze gets fired on before anything is dipped | Unfired underglaze dissolves off the piece and into the bucket, and it never comes back out |
| Use whatever stick or whisk is handy to stir | The whisk and paddle assigned to that glaze only | One tool in the wrong bucket contaminates both of them in a single second |
| A quick swirl is enough if the glaze was used recently | 120 seconds minimum, then again every few pieces | These settle hard. An under-mixed dip is thin and patchy for you and over-thick for the next person |
None of this means the videos are wrong. A potter with one bucket of clear that only they touch can double dip all day and adjust the water in it every morning, and they should. The difference is not skill, it is that our buckets have several hundred owners.
Two beautiful techniques we cannot do here
Both of these are worth watching anyway, because seeing what layering does explains why the flux glazes and the brush-on wall exist.
Troubleshooting
When it goes wrong, and what it was
Almost every dipping fault traces back to one of three things: coat thickness, a dirty surface, or handling the piece while it was wet. Here is how each one shows up.
It ran onto the shelf
Coat was too thick. Dipped longer than the lid said, or dipped twice, or the bucket had been left unstirred and was heavy at the bottom.
Before firing, rub the low areas thinner and clear the bottom half inch completely. If it already fired on, see fixing fused and sharp pottery.
Bald patches and thin spots
Air, or something on the surface. A trapped bubble on the way in, a fingerprint of oil, dust, or a spot that was still damp from a previous handling.
Fix it dry with a dab. Next time, enter on an angle and rinse the whole piece rather than most of it.
Pinholes all over
Usually dust, sometimes speed. Fine particles under the glaze burn out and leave a hole behind. A pot that went in dusty pinholes far more than a pot that went in clean.
Very absorbent bisque taking glaze too fast can do it too, which is one more argument for the rinse.
Crawling, where glaze pulls away
The glaze could not hold onto the surface. Wax where wax should not have been, oil from hands, dust, or a coat so thick it shrank away from itself on drying.
Handle bisque by the foot, and keep the wax where you meant it.
Streaks and ridges
The piece moved while it was wet. Shaking it, setting it down and picking it back up, or a hand steadying a rim thirty seconds after the dip.
Set it down once and leave it. Everything gets easier once it is dry.
The color is nothing like the sample
Thickness, nine times out of ten. Most glazes read very differently thin than thick, and a swirled rather than mixed bucket delivers a different mix of solids than the tile on the wall was made with.
Mix properly, time the dip, and check the sample tile is on the same clay body as your piece.
Troubleshooting
Three things that actually go wrong
It ran onto the shelf
The coat was too thick. Dipped too long, or the bucket was not stirred and you got the heavy layer off the bottom. Rub the low areas thinner before it fires, and clear the bottom half inch completely.
Bald patches or pinholes
Air or dust. A bubble trapped on the way in, or a piece that went into the bucket dirty. Enter on an angle, rinse the whole piece, and dab bare spots once the glaze is dry.
Streaks and finger drags
The piece got handled while it was wet. Set it down once on the ware tray and leave it there. Every fix is easier on dry glaze anyway.
Keep this open
The whole thing on one screen
Built for a phone propped against a bucket. Tap a line to cross it off. Nothing is saved, so it starts clean every time you come back.
Unsure about anything at all? Stop and ask an instructor wearing pink. One question costs nothing.
Questions we get asked
The ones that come up at the buckets
How long does the dipping certification take?
About 25 minutes, and most of that is the video. You do it once and you are certified for as long as you are a member. There is a secret password said out loud in the video, so it is worth actually watching rather than skipping to the end.
Can I dip if I am on Green Level or Yellow Level?
Yes. Get certified the same as everybody else, then pay the dipping glaze up-charge per piece. The price depends on your Level, the glaze and the size of the piece.
If you are dipping regularly, do the arithmetic on upgrading to Purple Level. A lot of members find the upgrade cheaper than the up-charges, and it opens most of the rest of the building at the same time.
Can I put underglaze under a dipping glaze?
Only if the underglaze has already been fired onto the piece. Unfired underglaze dissolves into the bucket and it does not come back out. Fire it on first, then dip as normal. Our underglaze guide covers the firing schedule for that.
Why can I not layer two dipping glazes when everyone online does?
Because a pot that has just been dipped is coated in wet glaze, and taking it to a second bucket puts glaze one into glaze two. When both buckets belong to one person, that is their problem and their creative decision. When they belong to several hundred people, it is not.
For layered effects, the brush-on wall is built for it and the four flux glazes exist specifically to make glazes move and interact.
Do I really need to mix for two whole minutes?
Yes, and it is the most commonly skipped step in the building. Glaze is heavy mineral powder suspended in water and it settles hard between sessions. The heavy solids that do most of the coloring sit at the bottom.
A quick swirl gives you a thin, patchy, oddly colored coat and leaves the bucket unbalanced for the next person, who then gets an over-thick one. Two people get bad results from one skipped step.
Tongs or fingers?
Whichever you are more confident with. Tongs keep your hands clean and reach deeper. Fingers give you much better feel for a heavy piece and leave broader marks that blend more easily. Both leave marks, both are fine, and both get touched up the same way once the glaze is dry.
What temperature does the studio fire glaze to?
Cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve-minute hold, so between cone 5 and cone 6. Bisque goes to cone 05 and bisque firings are free. Glaze firings are five cents per cubic inch with a $4.80 minimum, and you can work yours out on the calculators page.
I dropped my sponge in the bucket. Now what?
Leave it and find an instructor wearing pink. Do not reach in, do not fish for it with something else, and do not feel bad about it. It happens, they have a way to get it out, and the only version of this that becomes a real problem is the one where somebody puts an arm in.
Can I dip a piece that already has brushed-on glaze on part of it?
No. Dipping glaze is a closed system here. Brush-on glaze carries gums and suspenders that can react badly with dipping glaze, none of those combinations has been lab tested for food safety, and the brushed material can come off in the bucket. Pick one system per piece.
How do I know which of the seven buckets to use?
Look at the fired test tiles on the shelf beside them, and check the tile is on the same clay body you used, because the same glaze on Berlin Gray and on porcelain are two different-looking glazes. The Glaze Bible and the Glaze Finder are both worth a look before you commit a piece you care about.
Where to go next
The rest of the glaze shelf
One last thing
These glazes only stay this good if we all protect them
That is the whole thing
Almost nothing on this page is difficult. Wax, rinse, mix, dip, drain, dry, tidy, clean up. The reason it is written this carefully is that a community studio only gets to own glazes like these if the people using them treat every bucket as theirs, because in every practical sense it is.
Wax, rinse, mix, dip, drain, dry, tidy, clean up. There is a much longer version of this page with thirteen videos, every method other potters use, and a full table of where our rules differ from theirs. The toggle at the top switches to it any time.
Videos on this page belong to their creators and are linked with credit. None of them are ours, none of them are sponsored, and nothing plays until you press it.
Which version would you like to print?
Videos come out as a labelled box with the title and channel to search for, since paper does not play them.