Slate Marmot asked, and Nib — askNib's tutor — drew the answer live at a whiteboard. This is the spoken transcript; enable JavaScript to watch it drawn.
what are the componets of dons rutile glaze
Don's Rutile is a famous stoneware glaze — potters love it for its buttery, mottled, honey-and-cream surface.
Underneath that beautiful surface, it's really just five dry powders, weighed out by percentage and mixed with water.
Custer feldspar is the main flux — it melts in the kiln fire and turns the powder into glass.
Silica is pure ground glass-former — without it the melt would be too runny and thin to hold its shape.
Gerstley borate is a second, lower-temperature flux — it helps the glaze melt smoothly and evenly at cone 6 or 10.
Kaolin, a pure white clay, keeps the glaze suspended in the bucket and stops it from sliding off the pot.
And the star — rutile, a titanium-bearing mineral — is what breaks the glaze into that golden, cratered, mottled pattern.
Five powders — feldspar and gerstley borate to melt it, silica to stiffen it, kaolin to hold it, and rutile to make it glow.