images courtesy of Ruth Ball.
GRIND and WASH the enamel just prior to use, as follows:
Add about a tablespoon of enamel to a large agate or hard porcelain mortar, just cover with clean water and grind with a moderate pressure for 30-60 seconds.
N.B. The pictures show lump rather than powder enamel. To reduce the lumps to a grindable size cut a hole in a sheet of paper, slip it over the handle of the pestle to stop the enamel from bouncing out of the mortar. Place a folded piece of cloth or similar shock-absorber under the mortar. Rest the business end of the pestle on the enamel lumps and tap firmly but not too hard on the end of the pestle handle with a plastic or rawhide mallet or block of softwood. Move the pestle about until the lumps have been reduced to a grindable size.
Add more water, swirl the contents, pour off the milky water and repeat the grinding/rinsing process until the water is clear. The last couple of rinses can be with deionised or distilled water if you have it *.
Transfer to a clean glass container and either use immediately, or dry and store for later use.
* All groundwaters including those treated by water authorities contain varying amounts of dissolved salts and suspended solids (organic and inorganic, alive and/or dead) which if sufficiently high in concentration can cause `watermarks' or cloudiness in the finished enamel.
However, it has been my personal experience that anything other than gross water mineralisation is not a problem as long as care is taken to blot up as much water as possible from the work prior to drying it out completely. The concentration of contaminants in the trivial amount of moisture that remains on each grain of enamel after effective blotting is vanishingly small and has, to me, no observable effect on the transparency of the finished enamel.
Allan Heywood
Lump enamel
# 1
# 2
# 3
# 4
# 5
# 6
# 7
Finished
Stages
