This is the post where I skip straight to the good stuff: my test results and reviews of nine commercial bisque mending products. If you want to see how I got these results, and see photos of my results, check out this post describing my testing process.

Let me start by saying that none of these products are the holy grail of mending ceramics. Mending cracks and breakage at the green and bisque stage is an unpredictable process that does not always yield good results, even with a product that has worked well for you before. What I found in my results is that none of these products are a cure-all for every single issue at every single stage of the process.  I’ve avoided anything like a rating system for these products, because it makes more sense to tell you about each product’s strengths and weaknesses. Read More

If you’ve come over from NCECA Minneapolis, welcome! In this post I’ll be detailing my process of testing nine commercial bisque-mend compounds. This will be a lengthy post describing all nine materials and their performance though each step of testing, with pictures. If you want to skip over the test process and get straight to the results, head to this post.

Before I begin I need to thank my partner in this testing venture, TJ Erdahl. He contacted the manufacturers of these compounds, who were all generous enough to send me free product for this testing project. Naturally, I also want to thank Amaco, Archie Bray, Apt II, Marx, The Ceramic Shop in Philadelphia, Duncan, and Spectrum for sending me their products. Clicking on the links above will take you to the product page for materials I tested. I will also post product links later in this post, since both Marx and The Ceramic Shop sent two mending products.

I set up my test to cover five things: filling a crack at the green stage, re-attachment of breakage at the green stage, filling a crack at the bisque stage, re-attachment of breakage at the bisque stage, and how the product looked when covered with a black underglaze that I use in my work. I did not apply glaze over any of these tests. I bisqued all products to cone 06, and glaze fired to cone 6, with the exception of Duncan, a low fire product. It was fired to cone 04. All firings were done in a Skutt electric kiln using the “slow” speed setting. All tests were done using a homemade white stoneware clay with a 14% shrink rate. If you plan to use any of these products, I recommend doing your own testing to see how the product responds to your clay body, glazes, and firing schedule. I hope you can use my test efforts as a springboard to help decide if any of these products can benefit your own studio practice. Read More