Ceramic and glass
Chip repair
I had a chipped bowl that I still wanted to use and found all the actual repair options (e.g. kitsugi, ) were not food safe. I learned that it's fairly easy to make it usable by smoothing the rough edge and you will end up with a totally safe to use chipped edge.
You will need a few things before you get started:
- Small cylinder (e.g. small dowel, pencil, etc.)
- Wet/dry sandpaper (160 to 400 or 600)
- Water in a container for dipping the sandpaper
- Mask or ventilator
NOTE: This process creates glass/ceramic dust. This is extremely dangerous to inhale, so this should be done outside or another well ventilated area where all dust can be cleaned up afterward.
- Put your ventilator or mask on.
- Starting with lowest grit sandpaper, wrap a piece around your cylinder. Wet it and place it on your chipped edge, rotating back and forth and up and down as necessary to smooth down the sharp edge. Make sure you are covering all axes (e.g. on my bowl I had to make sure I was getting the top of the chip all the way down to the underside of the bowl, so that all surfaces were smoothed out). Ensure your sandpaper is always wet during this process, dipping again whenever it gets dry to ensure it gets the glass dust instead of it going in the air.
- When no sharp edges remain, move one step up in grit and repeat the last step. Repeat this until no higher grit sandpaper remains.
- When you are finished, check it slowly with your finger for any imperfections, repeating the process as necessary until the edge is uniform.
I only cared about the actual safety of mine and not making the actual look uniform. If the goal is a uniform look, starting at a lower grit and going up to an even higher grit sandpaper may be a good idea.
References
Last modified: 202610260245