Building a Good Foundation by Making Test Plates

It takes time to do test plates but to redo and redo takes more time in the long run. Do test plates. Try to understand hard firing and medium firing enamels and where to use them. All the enamels we buy from Thompson and Ninoniya or Bovano for enameling in jewelry or wall plaques or vessels are sold as medium firing enamels. But in the category there are enamels that are harder or longer firing than others. If you do test plate of small dots and fire the plate once at 1425 degrees you will see what I mean. Some of the dots are bumpy and some are very smooth. Once you see which of your enamels fire faster than the others you simply know which ones should be on the bottom and which ones are best on the top layers of your process. Hard should be on the bottom and soft on top. Also hard and soft fired next to each other can result in cracking!

HERE IS A TEST PLATE

If I have a project of cloisonne and it will be a deep layering of colors I need an enamel base flux that will hold up for many firings. This is when you need the harder firing flux. Bovano 3# is a hardest firing flux I have found. This will protect my warm colors from mingling with the base metal.