Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
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Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
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Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#2> These days, some hobbyists opt for modern epoxy instead of the traditional and expensive Urushi lacquer. Epoxy probably yields a more robust bond and certainly allows for quicker repairs, but I question its safety for food-related use, especially at the temperatures found in a steaming cup of coffee.
People opt for epoxy because Urushi lacquer is traditionally made from poison oak sap and is a potent skin irritant to most people (it's where urushiol gets its name). It's really tough to do Kintsugi without smearing trace amounts of it all over the place, especially if you're doing it with kids, and cleaning it off is a pain since it's a hydrophobic sap. Even trace amounts can cause a reaction, especially if someone has sensitive skin or is severely allergic. People who do a lot of kintsugi develop a tolerance for it but it's an annoyance that most hobbyists just don't need.
Epoxies can be perfectly food safe and the FDA has a database [1] although it's not particularly user friendly. You can get MAX CLR or similar from Amazon. I wouldn't use it in an oven above 300F but it's fine for boiling temps. These FDA approved two part epoxies are used all over the place in hospitals and food manufacturing facilities where they're used to coat rough surfaces that would otherwise harbor bacteria.
[1] https://www.cfsanappsexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/?set=Indi...
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#3I recently broke a piece of glassware that had been with me for over a decade. I have all the pieces and I'm wondering if it's possible to stick it in a kiln and run a heat cycle that will cause all the cracks to flow together without deforming the shape, and barring that if there's a thin gold glue I could use to do some approximation of this technique but with cracks that are essentially zero width.
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#4For those of you in the Bay Area there’s a great Kintsugi workshop that’s run out of the SF zen center almost weekly https://stonegoldcrafts.com/
I got into Kintsugi when my toilet needed repair. It’s a rewarding craft https://thingsilearned.com/things/my-kintsugi-toilet/
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#5I recently broke a piece of glassware that had been with me for over a decade. I have all the pieces and I'm wondering if it's possible to stick it in a kiln and run a heat cycle that will cause all the cracks to flow together without deforming the shape, and barring that if there's a thin gold glue I could use to do some approximation of this technique but with cracks that are essentially zero width.
A very skilled glassmaker might be able to fuse the pieces together by heating the edges and pushing them together if the piece is simple enough but in general, no. That's why it's called glass blowing: the air pressure is what gives the glass form while it cools and vitrifies.
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#6This is super inspiring and the end result is amazing, congratulations!
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#7For those of you in the Bay Area there’s a great Kintsugi workshop that’s run out of the SF zen center almost weekly https://stonegoldcrafts.com/ I got into Kintsugi when my toilet needed repair. It’s a rewarding craft https://thingsilearned.com/things/my-kintsugi-toilet/
For those in Toronto :) https://introjapan.ca/inperson-classes/
No affiliation. I gifted my partner an intro workshop pass and she's been returning for more classes since then.
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#8> I knocked it off the kitchen counter and, giving into the idiotic reflex of trying to catch it with my foot, kicked it into the wall instead
Not idiotic! I've saved more things than I've further damaged by doing this.
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#9For those of you in the Bay Area there’s a great Kintsugi workshop that’s run out of the SF zen center almost weekly https://stonegoldcrafts.com/ I got into Kintsugi when my toilet needed repair. It’s a rewarding craft https://thingsilearned.com/things/my-kintsugi-toilet/
I've attended one of those at the Zen Center! My partner took me to one as a birthday present last year. She ended up being kinda frustrated with the process, but I found it soothing and relaxing, and left happy and contented.
The guy running the workshop had us use epoxy and not urushi powder (not surprising; I'm sure all of us would have ended up with severe skin irritation otherwise). The article mentions concerns about food safety; IIRC we were told that the epoxy we were using in the workshop was not food safe, but that it's easy to acquire food-safe versions of it.
We also didn't do this in anywhere near as many steps, with as many different treatments for different sizes/shapes of damage. Ultimately we fully repaired a piece in a couple hours, not the several months that the article author took to do it right. (And the extra care and use of the proper materials shows; the final repaired alligator mug from the article looks orders of magnitude better than my work.)
Re: Repairing my mug with Kintsugi
#10This is really great results for an early project, none of my first few came out anywhere near so good.
I've been doing traditional kintsugi for about twelve years, a couple hundred successful repairs. Though when I started there was very little instruction or english-language resources available. It's become pretty popular for obvious reasons which is great for people getting into it now.
It remains probably the most difficult and frustrating skill I've ever learned. It's really hard to communicate just how meticulous, near-impossible some of the joins can be. There is a huge variety of technique and nuance to learn about different media and lacquer ratios for different kinds of joins & fills and it all needs to be done by intuition and experience.
And then the medium has no holding power until the curing process is well underway. So you need a lot of creativity to come up with a scaffolding system, pretty much completely unique to each project. Any problem after applying lacquer means hours of careful filing and rework, and more days or weeks of curing.
An edge-of-my-skill repair on a complete shatter takes about 100 hours spread out over 2-3 months. Even just an ideal three piece clean break is easily 8-10 hours and a handful of weeks.