Test Tile Rack Mold for Ceramic Glaze Testing

This print is a tool for creating test tile stands for glaze testing in the ceramic process.

I make the actual test tile stands by rolling out a slab with a thickness somewhere between 0.5cm to 1cm out of cone 10 hand building clay (since I fire my clay bodies to cone 6) and cut it into strips about the thickness of my test tiles.

Then I mold these strips carefully around the ridges of this rack and then slide it off. After some clean up with a wet finger, they can be set to dry, and then bisque fired. For glaze testing, it's best to coat them with kiln wash before a glaze firing.

These take up a little more kiln space than one which is hand built with joined slabs but they are quick and easy to pound out, and they are reversible, in case one side gets messy or unusable due to dripping glaze.

You can make these to hold 1-4 test tiles per rack, and you can push a bunch together to get a bunch per row.