Shrinky Dinky

I've been needing to do this for my cone 6 casting slip for a long time, but since I have cone 6 clay (and I need to screen/blunge my casting slip), I decided to go ahead and make a shrinkage test with what I have. Very simply, all you have to do is take a wet slab of clay and draw a 10 cm line.  Measure the line once it's bone dry, then after it's been fired in a bisque and glaze.  You will be able to determine how much your clay shrinks at each stage.  So if your clay shrinks to 9.5cm between wet and bone dry you will know that your clay almost shrinks 5%. See below.

10cm-9.5cm=.05cm
.05cm*100=5%

The Formula
Where x is the measured distance in centimeters at any given stage of dryness/firedness, and z is the percent of shrinkage for your clay:

10-x=y
y*100=z

Clay at wet stage.

On another note, I may be leaving Blogger for Wordpress.  Don't worry, I'll still be blogging, but I am revamping my website because I don't like my current host and Wordpress is a blog site.  I'm pretty excited about the new website, but it's taken a bit longer than expected because I need to sit down and concentrate on rewording my artist statement and about page.  Here is a little sneak peek:

Enjoy!