$8.06
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Kaolin is an pure white primary clay which comes directly from the mineral kaolinite. A major use is in ceramics. Another major use is for coated papers for whiteness and gloss. It can be off-white when the kaolinite contains impurities. An alternate name for it is "China clay". It's usually combined with other clays because of low plasticity. Kaolins are the primary ingredient in porcelains. Grolleg kaolin (or just "grolleg") is very common among ceramists because it has good translucency and whiteness. It's one of the more expensive kaolins.
The ceramics database Digital Fire says this about grolleg { https://digitalfire.com/4sight/material/grolleg_kaolin_831.html } :
"A blended English china clay, combining moderate plasticity, low titania content and relatively high flux content, low shrinkage and blue-white fired color. The low TiO2 content is a key factor for the usefulness of Grolleg. It is excellent for making translucent throwing or casting porcelains. The pottery community uses many Grolleg based porcelains.
Its chemistry is different from a typical North American kaolin, it contains some fluxing oxides (e.g. it has almost 2% K2O). Thus porcelain bodies employing it require quite less feldspar to vitrify (5-10% at cone 10, for example)...."
The Digital Fire article goes on to discuss the need to add a plasticizer to grolleg to increase workability. Typical ways to do so are to add small amounts of bentonites. But the reason you pay more for grolleg is its whiteness and translucency. By adding bentonite (which fires very dark), you're defeating the reason the use grolleg. Whiter plasticisers than bentonite should be used, such as VeeGum or Bentone.
A Wikipedia article { https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolinite } :
"Kaolinite or Kaolin is a clay mineral....It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina....
The name is after Kao-Ling, a village near Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China. The name entered English in 1727 from the French kaolin, used in a Jesuit priest's reports from Jingdezhen. In Africa, kaolin is sometimes known as kalaba or calaba.
Kaolinite is a soft, earthy, usually white mineral....It is produced by the chemical weathering of aluminium silicate minerals like feldspar. In many parts of the world, it is colored pink-orange-red by iron oxide, giving it a distinct rust hue. Lighter concentrations yield white, yellow or light orange colors. Alternating layers are sometimes found, as at Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia, United States. Commercial grades of kaolin are supplied and transported as dry powder, semi-dry noodle or as liquid slurry.
Kaolinite is said to have a low shrink-swell capacity and a low cation-exchange capacity, which makes it ideal for various industrial applications.
Kaolin is a main ingredient in making porcelain. Its main industrial use now is in manufacturing paper, especially whiter high-gloss papers. It is also used in toothpastes, make-up and paint."
Calcined kaolins also find use as pozzolanic materials, partly because of their very small particle size and their chemical composition as aluminosilicates (aluminum disilicates). A pozzolan is something that makes a concrete more flowable (which means it can also be made thick and stronger) with less water used, making it less porous, densifying, strengthening, and reducing its cost.-
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Jun 13, 2022
Ashley Cheyenne
Dec 11, 2019
Exactly what I needed. Thank you.
Melissa Gillespie