One of my bisques, a bone china HA Maverick, took a header off the shelf last month. I know I should have had him laying on his side but such is life. Anyway both of his hind legs broke off, cleanly, about hock level. I put him aside and asked advice from some very talented firing artists. Since he was toast anyway I decided to try to repair him.
The catch is this little piece is bone china, which is NOT absorbent, i.e. the glue doesn't have a surface with "tooth". I've repaired a lot of low fire earthenware bisque (no, I didn't break it all, some of it came that way to me) and that's pretty straightforward. Usually you end up with a finished piece where the repair is invisible. Of course if such a piece ends up being sold I always declare the repair and where it is.So bone china and porcelain are a bit tricky. I took some Elmer's Glue, and attached one leg at a time, and held it for about 15 min (luckily the Winter Olympics were on TV). I let the glue dry overnight and then glazed the entire piece, adding more glaze to the breakage areas (top photo). I let that dry well and then popped him into the kiln, using a bisque 4 x 4 tile for him to stand on in case he fell over. I did not need to have him permanently attached to my kiln shelf LOL.
After firing to cone 06 (1828F) I left the kiln untouched until it was back to studio temperature and only then did I look inside. The repairs held! He was stuck to the tile, so I decided to test the repair and wiggled him loose. The repairs didn't give way (middle photo). So the next step is to china paint him. I'll take photos of that progress.
I'm also working on three Breyer SM porcelains that I first air-erased and then glazed (bottom photo). They will be china painted now as well. Hopefully those will be up for sale in the next week.
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