Well then….That's acid

For quite some time I've been wondering how to get glazes that are high in heavy metals and make them food safe. Make no mistake I'm very worried about people getting metal, although, it would take an insane amount of actually trying to eat off of something with high amounts of heavy metal in them for multiple days in order to actually get any side effects from eating off of heavy metals ( depending on the percentage) and even then their body would probably naturally rid themselves of those metals after a time because technically we need those metals in our body.

You need zinc, iron, etc. but what you don't need is to be eating off of them all the time. This is a concern of mine because certain levels of pH balance will in fact Leach metals out of a glaze and the person using it will usually drink it. because of this for quite some time I've just been making food safe glazes with non-heavy metals in them or, at most, I will make sure that any heavy metals that make colors in my glazes will not go over a certain percentage so that they do not Leach even with something acidic such as lemon juice or tomato juice in them.

This leads to today where I had a instance with another Potter that told me to …. Well…. For lack of better term “pre leach” the metals out with an acid.

“That works?” I said?

“Yup” he responded “just be careful with the stuff period even though it has the same pH level as lemon juice and will reach much quicker it's still far more dangerous, make sure to neutralize it with some baking soda and water and never put water in the acid, make sure you put little bits of acid in the water if you have to”

I tried this experiment this morning with great success. The raised zinc crystals on my new crystalline glazes had gone away which proved that they were in fact etching or leaching out the metals making them completely food safe. Of course I gave them a good wash afterwards but….. he was right, that acid is no joke. I spilled a little bit on my garage floor and now it's white forever. along with the fact that I smelled a little bit and I swear I burned some of the skin inside my nose.

Now I have two leaders of the stuff sitting in my garage just in case I make more Crystal glaze products and need to Leach out any extra metals to make sure they can be eaten off of. Of course I had to give them a good wash but hey, if I have to burn myself a little bit just to get some good looking stuff in people's hands… I'm gonna.

I'll be putting some pictures up on the patreon page of the after effects and hopefully people can see them because it's more of a texture thing than anything else. Good thing my pseudo wife is a chemist pretty much otherwise I would have had an issue neutralizing it.