I tried this today using a clay that normally can't even form a coil, much less wrap around a finger without cracking. The results are borderline magical. Texture is very different than what an inherently good clay would feel like but its very workable and forgiving especially for beginners. Gonna see how the clay behaves as it dries and fires. Thanks again for the video
Thats what I like to hear! Im glad others are trying it! I couldnt believe it when I first tried. in my experience over the past year working with it is that the main drawback is the slight elasticity it gives the clay. the starch pulls back on the clay a little, and I've found it can make stuff like bonding handles a little trickier, I find i have to really work the pieces in a bit to get a good bond, but otherwise it hasnt let me down.
@@fraserbuilds indeed i faced the same issues. I also noticed that as the clay dries it kinda reverts back into its rather brittle nature. I'd say this is an excellent way to salvage a bad clay if no other options are available but i still recommend everyone look for better clays, they're much more abundant than you'd think and sometimes clays a mere 100 meters apart have widely different qualities so you're bound to find something workable sooner or later
you should try 糯米， i dont know the english word, but it's this really sticker type of rice in china. Actually, 糯米seems to be a pretty well known part of pottery in china, according to my quick inquiry on baidu, it kinda just looks like a regular part of the procedure when making clay
This sounds like the premise in some anime where the MC is some young happy go lucky villager guy who wants to go his own way by learning the dark arts of pottery, but then somehow along the way he ends up conquering the world.
@@GrandmasterLixPottery student learns that magic is real and pottery is powerful, strifes to become the best Harry (Wizard + Potter). Here it can go many ways, hero of the world, ruler of the world or horny harem anime
Fantastic, and well-said! And, with some modern materials science, we can up that Alchemy (Al-Kemet) a bit more: Instead of charcoal, rice flour, and hair as temper and fiber - use pyrolyzed fibers from coconut or flax, bamboo, various tree barks; by heating the fibers over a camp fire, trapped inside a sealed container, you form carbon fiber - and THAT will act as temper AND structural binder, while also helping to WICK moisture from the core, for even drying... and yes, keep adding the boiled starch, but you can help that process of starch extraction and chemical de-naturing if you just go buy plain old starch, itself... heck, corn starch would be best, because it's hyper-fine powder already, for faster absorption and dissolution...AND add BAKING SODA to the water, to boost pH (just like when you want to de-nature wool fibers, to make felted wool!) I would love to see what you get when you add bone-powder, too... that's how they imitated porcelain in the UK a few centuries ago, and it turns out to help in some ways, workability-wise...
@@poopsiepop4179 You'll want a big fire in the open air, big enough that it's not smothered when you place a large clay jar (or steel drum) over it. Within that jar, you'll want the rinsed and dried long fibers from any of the plants I mentioned - they will get HOT within the jar, but the rim is loosely-sealed with fresh clay, so that gas can escape, while NO new AIR enters - that is KEY! Do NOT open the lid until the jar is cooled enough to handle, or else *embers* will form in the remaining hot spots, and they eat-up your carbon-fibers! The heat is pushing the volatiles out of the plant-fibers, and the remaining carbon becomes bonded to itself as rough graphitic material; if you penetrate those fibers with a slurry (very wet clay) then they will lock-in, and *transfer* their tension-strength into the clay-body. When only 4% carbon fiber is added to Silicon Carbide, then the fracture toughness goes up 3x higher! So, it should help ceramics a lot, too - that area of materials science is called "Ceramic Matrix Composite"... you can imagine "Carbon Fiber plus Epoxy... except replace the Epoxy with Porcelain!" It's wicked crack-resistant; some blends are 6x harder to fracture, as thin-shell ceramic!
I would also try adding some concentrated liquid SOAP to the clay-slurry, just before pouring it over the pile of carbon fibers and stirring them gently together. The soap will help align and bond the hydrophobic clay-platelets along the hydrophobic carbon-fibers, especially as they begin to dry and WANT to crack!
Just an advice, during rainy season and when the soil is wet, I like to dig deep into the ground. Water and fine clay will migrate into that hole and leave you with more quantity of the clay you're looking for. I hope you try this out
I absolutely love your videos I'm a chemist myself from Iran aka Persia I love the fact that you mentioned Razi we know about him but other people from other countries don't. it's amazing how his recipe worked flawlessly he also has discovered sulfuric acid and alcohol and much more stuff and I really appreciate you mentioning him in your beautiful videos. Keep it going! Love to USA!
Well, to be fair, Razi demonstrated the power of writing things down that people want to keep and protect. He didn't actually come up with these recipes and techniques in his book, rather gathered what was 'protected knowledge' by tradesmen and craftsmen and took the time to write it down. There were similar breakthroughs in metallurgy in Europe during this time, but it wasn't recorded and even to this day we don't know the process for making an 'Ulfberht' sword for example even though we can do high tech chemical analysis of the metals.
I know about al-Razi thanks to the 90's Microprose game Darklands. al Razi, Avicenna, Geber, Flammel, etc all lend their names to alchemical formulas. Man, that was a great game.
@@fortusvictus8297 Their culture was that of memorizing. If you see the arabs especially memorized whole poems and stuff without writing it down necessarely. When the last revelation of Islam came down, it was recommended and instructed by God to write down contracts and stuff, and also in general in conflict that there were with polytheists who didn't want to lose their business of selling idols, some of them entered as prisoners of war, and they taught the believers to write as an expiation and then they were freed. So it was all a revolution of reading and writting down. Also many cultures that were enemies before became one in purpose, and that formed a good basis for exchange of ideas. That is at least what i heard. History is a bit tricky since we assume based on limited information of that time anyways. And incomplete knowledge will always fail us in one way or another. Peace,
The Chinese used rice similarly in the mortar of The Great Wall. Burnt mussel shells were ued by Native Americans along with flint chips and my best experimenting was using finely powdered goat dung, which burns off in firing and leaves a strong ,resilient clay that can be used for cooking over an open fire.
@@dennismitchell5276clay has sawdust, parmesan has sawdust, bread has sawdust, cake mix has sawdust... Next you'll tell me that steel has sawdust in it.
@@Voidi-Void Not directly, but a lot of steel has some carbon in it and when you burn saw dust in the right conditions, you get carbon. But what you really want to add to steel, is highly crystalline carbon (vs amorphous carbon, which is what most burnt things convert to).
My dude. You literally saved my life for the next 3 terms and possibly even my graduation project and pet projects. I study sculpture (full round) and I'm in my 4th year, just a year left to go but damn it would've been amazing to have known this since freshman year
@@fraserbuilds update, it took some time but the clay is finished and I got done kneading it yesterday. It's insane how much it can stretch, while regular water based clay cracks as soon as I start to bend a coil of it, I could make a coil with this new clay and wrap it around a single finger from bottom to top, and showed no signs of cracking or drying whatsoever. It was tricky to knead though both because of the new unfamiliar texture and because it's winter, but I'm sure it'll be a pleasure to work with now that it doesn't crumble.
Rice water and rice flour works wonders for mortars and concrete too. I made some years ago to lay a small wall in the garden. The mortar is really tough and hard, and grabbed onto the blue damp-proof bricks I used really well. Apparently, this technique was used in Asia in antiquity, to strengthen the ash clay mortars used to bond stone buildings. Some sources say that the Great Wall of China used it too. Amazing stuff. A lot cheaper than those nasty chemical ‘plasticisers’ too.
I heard a story that when ferns castle in wexford ireland was constructed there were thousands of small animals killed (poultry) so that their blood could be used in the mortar. don't know if it's true as it seems like the kind of thing you would hear to scare children, but i guess it makes sense.
@@allanturmaine5496 No, nothing like that. Honestly, I thought it might cause algae or bacteria to grow on it, but no, nothing. Probably because the cement is quite alkaline so any exposed carbohydrate is so caustic that nothing can live on it anyway. Also, the amount you need to use is not a lot - for rice flour, about 2 to 3% by weight (of the whole mix, sand aggregate and cement) is enough.
@@allanturmaine5496 There is a stone bridge in my hometown. Its mortar is made of lime, glutinous rice, brown sugar, and castor oil. It has been there for two hundred years. I think the technology of using rice as an additive to mortar has been common in Asia for a very long time, and it was probably the most practical recipe until the advent of modern chemistry.
@@martin-vv9lf Animal blood is well referenced as a binding and waterproofing additive in concretes, mortars, and mud brick or cob recipes. It's kind of bizarre that we don't use it today when industrial scale abattoirs could easily produce and sell powdered stabilised animal blood as a byproduct.
I love when ancient techniques hold up! It's hard to connect *then* and *now* when you don't know how they made things back then. Learning these sorts of things makes it all feel just a little bit closer.
Honestly the fact that we stopped calling chemistry alchemy is a tragedy. I'm honestly really in favor of calling things magic & alchemy, because life's more fun that way.
Honestly, alchemy and chemistry is the same thing*. You could start referring to it as alchemy, nobody can stop you. Remember, the "chemist" in England are literally modern alchemists. (*As I understand it, the "Al" prefix means "high", designating it as higher order chemistry. Alchemy is "high chemy", or High Chemistry. We should totally use it for advanced study instead of using the word "advanced")
7:50 You're adding starch. This will act as a binding agent, making your clay more durable. 10:01 The hair does the same thing here as the steel in concrete. It increases tensile strength.
I'd be interested to see how it handles being fired. I know in the middle-ages, they used a clay mixture called daub to fill the walls of their homes, and it would include fibers like hair and hay to increase its tensile strength. But those weren't fired like pottery is. I would think that those fibers will burn away and leave voids throughout the pottery.
Listen, we need more mud alchemists out here. The more I get into pottery the more I'm also drawn to traditional alchemy, not from a spiritual perspective but just from an experimentation and philosophical perspective. I never would have thought about rice water, but it really makes sense! I tried looking for more information about this but mostly just found rice water hair care and clay mud masks lol, do you happen to have any extended reading recommendations?
mud alchemists! I like that! theres a deep and fascinating history to alchemy, it never ceases to amaze me what they were able to with what resources they had access to. Razi's book definitely has some of the best descriptions of alchemists making their own pottery and equipment that ive found, but its not the only one. a manuscript attributed to Albertus Magnus called the "libellus de alchimia" (my version is an edition translated by Virginia Heines) includes very detailed descriptions of making, glazing, and firing alchemical earthen ware along with descriptions of lots of other fascinating alchemical practices. I think the libellus is one of the best sources for seeing what a typical medieval european alchemist's techniques may have actually been like. I also really like the manuscript "On Divers Arts" written by a german monk who called himself 'Theophilus' which covers a variety of crafts from pigment making to glass and metal working, along with (what i think is most interesting) how to make the tools and furnaces required for those crafts. its not an alchemical manuscript per se, and actually dates before alchemy's offical arrival in europe, but it gives a really good account of a wide variety of the craft skills alchemists would have had access to and even has some examples of early alchemical recipes that had made their way to europe before the practice itself became popular. I also always recommend Prof. Lawerence Principes book 'secrets of alchemy' to anyone whose interested, not only is it a really good scholarly treatment on alchemy, but it extensively cites a huge variety of sources for every topic it covers and i constantly find myself coming back to it when im looking for more sources for specific topics.
really cool stuff. Never heard of this technique before and it looks really effective. But one thing i would say to anyone thinking of doing anything with dry and powdered clay is do it outside and wear a commercial dust mask at all times. Clay dust is extremely bad for your lungs and is soo fine it will get everywhere, so if you do it inside you will carry on being exposed to the dust long after you've rehydrated the powder you are working with. Silicosis is no joke
I tried to use your updated method on some wild clay I was processing but didn't find it to improve upon the clay cracking when wrapped in a coil, possibly because my flour to water ratio could have been off. I came back to this video and used rice water instead and it improved my clay substantially! Much appreciated!
Holy shit I litteraly had the same problem. I went through the trouble of refining the clay from my house,but got discouraged when I noticed that it had subpar quality, no matter how much refining I did. Thanks for the trick!
I am seriously intrigued. I have been told repeatedly that the clays found in Western Washington State are unsuitable for pottery crafting. (This is why the various indigenous nations of the region focused on crafting watertight steam-bent boxes for heated-rock boiling, instead of crafting the pottery cooking pots found in other cultures.) Now I'm wondering if, among the various starches natively available, a similar solution could have been found? Unfortunately, grain starches are not native flora to the region. Most of the available native starches were acorns, hazelnuts, and various root species which are full of inulin, which requires long low-temperature baking to convert the indigestible inulin into digestible carbohydrates. (Clover roots, various fern species roots, cattail rhizomes, wapato, purple camas (not to be confused with the white-petaled death camas, *please* don't ever confuse the two!) and other tubers.) Still, they technically are starches, so it could be possible. However, the connection between these two things, inelastic clay bodies and starchy water left over from rice-making, must have been a truly unanticipated discovery, one made by purely serendipitous chance. Most potters that I know are very hesitant about using "used" water for their clay bodies! (Used for non-clay-making purposes; slip water is just fine, lol.) It's quite possible that native root starches could work; I have not had the chance to cook with many, and it's been a few years, so I cannot remember if there was a starch slurry when boiled or not. Unfortunately, not all starches are exactly alike...which any cook will tell you when asked their opinions on which starches they prefer to use for thickening certain sauces, soups, and/or stews.
Absolutely love that someone finally will satisfy my desire for ancient techniques for cool useful stuff with scientific explanations! Keep up the amazing work!
They found that cooling rice overnight changes the simple carbohydrates into more complex carbohydrates that are slower to digest and has a lower glycemic index. I'm curious if the extra step of refrigerating the rice water for 24 hours might change something about the clay when added to it.
I love the chemistry that you include! I feel like a lot of people are intimidated by chemical processes but they're not usually that difficult to understand, I think you gave great explanations!
Reminds me of making ‘cob’ with the hair, and also heard something one time about clay being ‘fermented’ more near lakes and streams, making it more usable. So the rice water kind of makes sense to me in that regard as food for bacteria….very interesting.
If you look around for hilltops or desert environed and stay away from small depressions in the ground, you will have primarily kaolinite in your clay. That stuff does not shrink and swell like other clays
Kaolinite is indicated more by warm, moist regions (Georgia in the U.S., Brazil). Clays with shrink/swell properties like bentonite (smectitic) are volcanic in origin, weathering in seawater and are not indicated by small depressions in the ground.
@jonathanstotz1868 smectite most certainly does form in depressions, what is more it makes them! There is a feature in Australian soils called "gilgais'. These are rows of mounds and depressions that form specifically because of the shrink swell capacity of the smectite. The wheat belt in Australia and the cotton is on vertosols, and while there are exceptions to this, practically none of these are coastal.
@jonathanstotz1868 I'll leave my post up for you to read, but I've also come to the conclusion that you are probably a nice guy, that you have certain experiences and data that have lead you to say what you said.. and basically if we met in person we'd probably get on great and not try to one up each other on the internet. So refute me if you like, but feel free to just accept my acknowledgement of you and your position and leave it at that. Have a great day 😀
Finally YT recommended me a valuable video about making potters clay at home. I'm sure milk, buttermilk or blood would do the same job as the rice water (via protein, not starch). It's supposed the Low German redbrick architecture was built with blood-enhanced clay. They had a lot of cattle and a lot of bad clay, but that way it resists the salty coastal weather for ages. You can also enhance lime, mortar and concrete mixtures with dissolved protein or starch.
from now on when I use starchy water to thicken a sauce or use it for whatever else in cooking, when asked about it I will just say it's an ancient alchemist technique.
I have that same red clay here in Georgia, we're kinda known for it, and I'm just beginning an interest in this pottery situation after learning how to make kudzu vine baskets and what not. Loved your video and the awesome tips! I see in another comment I can skip the rice water and add flour to boiling water ( I needed an easier way) so I'll be trying that. Failure around every corner it looks like until you really figure this stuff out, I always loved a good challenge! Thank you friend and another sub today for you!
thank you! my most recent video is about my refined process for this recipe using just flour. best of luck! pottery has to be one of my favorite mediums to experiment with! it can be tricky but very rewarding and lots of fun!
@@fraserbuilds Yes it just popped up after I subbed, awesome, left another comment. This is so appreciated! I'm an old man that's not too proud to admit, I need all the help I can get! I will definitely let you know how I'm doing with this new crazy wild hobby!
"So despite wanting to listen to the advice of my betters, I turned to the dark arts!" And that line alone is a subscribe. Even if the rest of the video wasn't exactly the sort of thing that I'm into. Occasionally youtube succeeds in giving me the things I like. Expect me to binge, my apologies. Where do you even get these ideas???
Your video is a great example of the meme "I was today years old when I learned....) I absolutely loved this. Simple and straightforward info about a subject I've always wanted to know more about. This is more fulfilling than a wake n bake at a mountain lake. Bravo Zulu.
This little video of yours answered a lot of questions I had about "garden" clay, thankyou very much for sharing your "dark art" (I actually got here through the automata videos)
How is the result once fired? I'd like to see that. I'm thinking of trying to make fired clay artifacts for future people to see! sort of like a time capsule but in the form of written tablets and figurines. I really liked your works and subbed immediately! I'd really like to know if clay prepared this way fares well in the firing process especially in pit firing that I can try to replicate.
I love that idea! pottery is such a beautiful record for future people to have of us. as for this recipe, it fires great! ive been using the recipe in all my pottery since making this video, i feel like my most recent blow torch is the best example of it but its in most my videos. and im always impressed by how well it holds up to the kiln, ive refined the process a bit and will hopefully have a video out about my new process sometime sooner or later. my advice is that if you have 20% temper of any kind, sand, charcoal dust, broken old pottery powder, etc to 80% clay powder, it will stand up to just about ANYTHING as far as fire goes.
Ah! Starch! When you mentioned rice water I immediately thought of that. It makes sense! Very cool to see this old world knowledge coming back to aid us in the present.
This was such an amazing watch! Growing up we were surrounded by clay and used to play in it as kids, of course we tried to make shapes and pots, but it was never very successful. It warms my heart seeing something that was often cursed as poor soil being given a second life, and I'm inspired to take a trip home and give it a go myself! You've definitely earned a subscriber here, keep up the great work!
I use paper as my fiber, as do many potters. If you let your clay, rice water, and paper mix ferment, so the bacteria can create more slime, it may get even better. Colour changes also happen as the bacteria often reduce sulphate to sulphide instead of using oxygen. Fun !
Al Razi might have found this method from ancient people around his area. In the olden days the native American use cactus juice to mixed in with their clay to make it more plastic, its the same principal with using rice water, in some culture they use cow dung like in India and in china they did used rice as a form of mortar even for building walls and city, so i guess it will works wonder when using in clay to make pottery.
thats very interesting! that could really help explain where the recipe came from, many of al razi's recipes are things he collected and compiled from a tradition of alchemists and artisans, so it would make sense for the recipe to have some basis in longer traditions like that. i'll certainly look more into this
@@fraserbuilds Except Al Razi being in the Middle East, he *was* ancient people for that region. It's not a region structured around a dominant coloniser population from the other side of the world and a suppressed indigenous population with local knowledge the colonisers are too arrogant to learn.
I am totally new to making clay. It's warming up in southern Colorado , so I dug some dirt in my yard and then also went to the river and collected some. Going to process it tomorrow. I have been reading different ways to make clay. So excited I found you! I do have clay soil, but I am not sure where I should dig exactly. In the past I have had to use a pick ax before planting flowers. But I will learn. So excited to learn how to do this and you have valuable information! Happy Early Springtime!
I'm Persian myself and randomly clicked on this video out of well, curiosity! and of course my love for clay and artsy things, I wasn't really familiar with your channel before this and I rarely comment on videos but imagine my shock when I realized this "alchemist" was the famous Muhammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi. it's funny to me because they teach us in school about this guy and talk about how influential he is. so seeing it in action through a modern youtube video really makes me appreciate old muslim history more despite how outdated it is, so thank you for that pft
Sometimes the algorithm just comes up with the best small channel to recommend me haha. Subscribed, now I really want to see what you do next. Good luck, claybender.
Superb video, I watched it all the way through at normal speed. I normally watch at double speed and often only get halfway through videos at most. Yours was superb. Well done 😊
I love things like this, using old manuscripts and experimenting with recipies, I did a lot of this when I first started black smithing, trying to recreate hamon clay from Japanese smiths. I came up with a cool mixture of clay, charcoal, ground stone and such. Cool video bro.
I also made clay from processed dirt and it wasn't very good, but i found that cracking really isn't that much of a problem. With the right technique you can make beautiful things out of it. Andy Wards channel has good videos and with his technique i didn't find cracking to be much of an issue. Just use rounded scraper to go over the cracks if they appear and add a little water if necessary.
This is super interesting. I've got a couple of questions: 1. What kind of fumes / smoke does the alchemized (sp?) clay give off when it's fired?2 2. Does the rice-fortified clay take a glaze in the usual way after it's been bisqued? 3. What happens when you do this with factory-made clays, does it still help? Science!
the starch will burn just like any other carbohydrate to release co2 and water however if you include the hair, it will release sulfur fumes, if you dont include the hair no worries there. I havent actually tried glazing my terracotta, I dont think it would glaze any differently than normal bisque ware though, as its fired texture is identical to regular pottery. I have slipped it and that works fine. It should help with factory clays, but Ive never tried incorporating the starch water into wet clay, as I always store my clay as a dry powder!
That's super weird. I made this 'artists clay' when i was a little kid. As kids, we played in the mud all the time, and started sculpting with it (as any kid would). We found by adding certain things to the mud it held its shape better and was more workable. We had these 'sediment ponds' in an area of the property. The mud in them was particularly workable, and left to settle was fairly pure. We didn't boil rice, but we did mash in water from another certain sediment hole full of decayed dried grass. I wonder if it had dissolved plant starch. We also mixed in mashed up dry grass. The result was clay so workable, we made child life size statues of ourselves that remained standing as it dried in the sun. (And later destroyed by an angry brother wanting to get revenge.)
I have limitless Shale, and alot of wild clay, so i will be experimenting with this Alchemical method, as well as some ancient Mexican knowledge i discovered in another video ( Talc ). Ideally, i want to separate the silt from the clay in the Shale, and use it as an additive to the standard Arkansas wild clay i have all about.
I wonder if this technique could be modernized by using a nut milk back to just make rice milk and use that instead of the time consuming collection method for used rice water. Could possibly be a video series, modernizing ancient alchemical recipes....
thats a really cool idea! ive got a video in the works about updating the recipe replacing the rice water with a mixture based on white flour, but id definitely like to experiment with lots of sources for the starch. thats also a really cool idea for a video series! ive got a few other videos about old alchemical recipes planned, i hadnt even thought about modernizing them though! that could be really fun! thanks for the advice :)
@Fraser Builds I wonder if some of the sap from wild lettuce would be great to mix. It's abundant in the stalks and grows everywhere on the planet. It is a biological latex that transports thru the plant as water does. When concentrated and dried, it forms a rather rubbery paste. I don't know the chemical science behind it enough to say whether it would be beneficial to a clay mixture but my brain seems to link it as so. More of a feeling than anything else. Also would higher acidic ash affect the mix? How about ground Rockwool fibers?
My main concern would be that unless you fire it, all that organic material - the starch and the untreated hairs - would make for an absolutely wonderful fungal substrate.
Very cool video, man! I'm familiar with most of these procedures from making clay plasters for walls and floors. The starch water, the hair, etc. Interesting that while this is pretty common knowledge in the natural building scene, it seems rather unknown among potters! Also, I've got to give a thumbs up for anyone who turns to medieval alchemy for advice. Doesn't happen often enough at all :D
This is great work, excellent job describing the theory behind your experiment and documenting each step. Thats quality science! (especially when it gets you messy)
Alchemy has fascinated me since childhood, as has pottery. This has completely captivated my attention! I look forward to seeing further experimentation with this “alchemists clay”. Well done. ❤😊
Amazing video. I'm lucky to have multiple possible clay sources but the best always seem harder to get to and process. I'm gonna experiment with rice water with am abundant clay body i have close to my home. If anyone has experience with this, can cornstarch be used instead, accumulating rice water seems to be a very roundabout way of doing things compared to mixing up a starchy solution on demand
thanks! ive found basically any starch will work, lately ive been using a spoonfull or two of regular white flour boiled into water for a few cups of clay powder. im hoping to have an updated video on the clay process out sooner or later
i'm assuming if one starch works, any starch would. Native americans had access to several starchy tubers, being potato, sweet potato, and a wild, relativly unknown, called green briar. Someone above mentioned cactus sap, which was probably more the current Arizona to central american tribes, though mexican clays are usually grey in color due to being 'tempered' with volcanic ash, while north american clay is typically red due to iron oxides. And like the commentor here mentioned pasta water. could likely look at freezing starchy water from pasta, rice, or potato cooking to have a ready supply on hand.
I believe alchemy got a bad name for the same reason snake oil did. Snake oil was originally made from a snake native to China, and was used by immigrants from China who worked on the first railroads in America. It was highly effective at curing muscle fatigue, and American entrepreneurs saw this and tried making their own. They didn't have the snakes that the Chinese immigrants used so they opted to use rattlesnakes, making an ointment that barely worked if at all. The term "Snake Oil" became associated with fake medicine. Alchemy probably became known as a fake science for a similar reason.
Amazing. I like how rice water changed the clay perfectly. I read ancient Arabic books of Ibnsena and Ibnrushd but was surprised elrazi was alchemist, these books are definitely a treasure as well as your channel.
The experiment was carried out incorrectly! You did not take into account the amount of water in the samples. The first sample was much drier than the second, this can be seen even through the camera.
They were actually similarly wet, I think the starchy clay is just sorta shiny compared to the regular clay. I totally agree moisture is crucial! But I later tried an experiment with five side by side tests all hydrated with the same amount of water (one just clay powder, one with raw flour, one with boiled flour, another with vinegar and one with both vinegar and boiled flour) The boiled flour was by far more plastic than the regular clay and the clay with raw flour, but was similarly plastic to the vinegar sample and the sample with both vinegar and boiled flour. That said I think there is something to be said for the fact that the starchy clay is actually workable at a higher hydration than untreated clay. clay will be more flexible at higher hydration, but also weaker. Often times novice potters will wet their clay too much because it makes it easier to work with, but ultimately it doesent help because the clay body falls apart as soon as it starts to be built up. I think the starchy clay might increase the cohesion of clay particles enough to make the clay workable at a slightly higher hydration than normal clay, making it more flexible. Ive continued working with starch clay quite a bit, but im still not sure if I can attribute the increased flexibility or moreso to just the cohesion of the starch gel itself
It's amazing how things can only be wrong or right for some people. Seems to be knowledge is everywhere, even in the wrong things. Questions further us along especially when asked from the perspective of wanting to hear an answer, showing our ignorance/nakedness/enthusiasm
@@theviewbot show me an example of correctness and I'll show you an example where it isn't so. Still on the high horse I guess. Binary is excellent word choice, as in a binary system it is all right or wrong. I praise trinary, shame binary, yes I do
"Too many people make the mistake of assuming objective truth doesn't exist merely because subjective truth also exists in some scenarios." -Tigorious the Victorious Tiger 🐅
Idk about the translation of the book since it says "Lord bless our lord Muhammed" which is NOT something anyone says in islam, in fact, saying that would be "كفر" (kuffur) meaning whoever says such a thing is renouncing their religion.
this is a very good point! the translation i have is actually a translation of multiple earlier german translations of the original manuscript (to my knowledge the original manuscript is not extant, though id have to check if thats the case) so likely that mistake is due to the early german translators disregarding islamic customs in favor of their own christian versions
neat stuff. you definitely taught me a few things. i live close to Red Clay National Park. maybe i'll give this a try. atleast the purifying part just to see how it turns out
😊 about to start making an oven out of clay from the river bed here in brazil and looking for instructional videos for ideas on home pottery. Thank you for making and sharing this video. 👍
We do owe modern chemistry to alchemy, tho ancient alchemists lacked a lot of knowledge about atoms, particles and elements not to mention they lacked access to modern refined materials/reagents so you have to read between the lines by intended use and desired effect of an ingredient and optimize and substitute as needed for the best result.
I never thought of it like that in relationships. I thought of it as "trust"- i didn't trust my partner to go to them directly with whatever it was. This is a very different perspective. Thankyou for the insight. I spent years 'reprogramming' from a lie of what "respect" was. (From someone who didn't understand it and was abusive.) You just clarified so much . I cannot trust those i don't respect.
I tried this today using a clay that normally can't even form a coil, much less wrap around a finger without cracking. The results are borderline magical. Texture is very different than what an inherently good clay would feel like but its very workable and forgiving especially for beginners. Gonna see how the clay behaves as it dries and fires. Thanks again for the video
Thats what I like to hear! Im glad others are trying it! I couldnt believe it when I first tried. in my experience over the past year working with it is that the main drawback is the slight elasticity it gives the clay. the starch pulls back on the clay a little, and I've found it can make stuff like bonding handles a little trickier, I find i have to really work the pieces in a bit to get a good bond, but otherwise it hasnt let me down.
@@fraserbuilds indeed i faced the same issues. I also noticed that as the clay dries it kinda reverts back into its rather brittle nature. I'd say this is an excellent way to salvage a bad clay if no other options are available but i still recommend everyone look for better clays, they're much more abundant than you'd think and sometimes clays a mere 100 meters apart have widely different qualities so you're bound to find something workable sooner or later
@@a-man2246 Agreed! there's no replacement for the real deal! nature is far better at formulating clays than even the alchemists
you should try 糯米， i dont know the english word, but it's this really sticker type of rice in china. Actually, 糯米seems to be a pretty well known part of pottery in china, according to my quick inquiry on baidu, it kinda just looks like a regular part of the procedure when making clay
糯米 is glutinous rice.
"Its too hard to find a different source of clay. I'll just take the easy way out and become a wizard"
I love the commentary, keep up the good work!
thanks :)
@@fraserbuilds
No transmutation circle! You're a powerful alchemist. You must have seen the truth...
haha 0:57 "so despite wanting to listen to the advice of my betters, I turned to the dark arts" subscribed
This sounds like the premise in some anime where the MC is some young happy go lucky villager guy who wants to go his own way by learning the dark arts of pottery, but then somehow along the way he ends up conquering the world.
9:56 adding a piece of human is surely a dark art...
Try using blood instead of rice water...😂
@@GrandmasterLixPottery student learns that magic is real and pottery is powerful, strifes to become the best Harry (Wizard + Potter). Here it can go many ways, hero of the world, ruler of the world or horny harem anime
@@frandurrieu6477 Well, he's a little less harry (or was it hairy?) now...
Fantastic, and well-said! And, with some modern materials science, we can up that Alchemy (Al-Kemet) a bit more:
Instead of charcoal, rice flour, and hair as temper and fiber - use pyrolyzed fibers from coconut or flax, bamboo, various tree barks; by heating the fibers over a camp fire, trapped inside a sealed container, you form carbon fiber - and THAT will act as temper AND structural binder, while also helping to WICK moisture from the core, for even drying... and yes, keep adding the boiled starch, but you can help that process of starch extraction and chemical de-naturing if you just go buy plain old starch, itself... heck, corn starch would be best, because it's hyper-fine powder already, for faster absorption and dissolution...AND add BAKING SODA to the water, to boost pH (just like when you want to de-nature wool fibers, to make felted wool!)
I would love to see what you get when you add bone-powder, too... that's how they imitated porcelain in the UK a few centuries ago, and it turns out to help in some ways, workability-wise...
Saving this comment, I've always wanted to make bonsai pots but I don't think cement would be good.
Nah that's not modern science it's just how a higher level arch alchemist makes his clay. His alchemy is just superior to other alchemical amateurs
when you saw a sealed chamber, you mean like cook the wood in a pot or seal the wood with th eborning material in a pot?
@@poopsiepop4179 You'll want a big fire in the open air, big enough that it's not smothered when you place a large clay jar (or steel drum) over it. Within that jar, you'll want the rinsed and dried long fibers from any of the plants I mentioned - they will get HOT within the jar, but the rim is loosely-sealed with fresh clay, so that gas can escape, while NO new AIR enters - that is KEY! Do NOT open the lid until the jar is cooled enough to handle, or else *embers* will form in the remaining hot spots, and they eat-up your carbon-fibers! The heat is pushing the volatiles out of the plant-fibers, and the remaining carbon becomes bonded to itself as rough graphitic material; if you penetrate those fibers with a slurry (very wet clay) then they will lock-in, and *transfer* their tension-strength into the clay-body. When only 4% carbon fiber is added to Silicon Carbide, then the fracture toughness goes up 3x higher! So, it should help ceramics a lot, too - that area of materials science is called "Ceramic Matrix Composite"... you can imagine "Carbon Fiber plus Epoxy... except replace the Epoxy with Porcelain!" It's wicked crack-resistant; some blends are 6x harder to fracture, as thin-shell ceramic!
I would also try adding some concentrated liquid SOAP to the clay-slurry, just before pouring it over the pile of carbon fibers and stirring them gently together. The soap will help align and bond the hydrophobic clay-platelets along the hydrophobic carbon-fibers, especially as they begin to dry and WANT to crack!
Just an advice, during rainy season and when the soil is wet, I like to dig deep into the ground. Water and fine clay will migrate into that hole and leave you with more quantity of the clay you're looking for. I hope you try this out
The method he showed works much better, been doing it for decades and learned it from my great grandparents.
Slurry. Perfect 💓
it would be cool to try that method! it doesn't rain much where i live (the mojave desert) but it might work on an odd rainy week
Try both
@@vescenti Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
Instructions unclear, accidently turned all the lead in my house into gold at the cost my soul. Please send he
Instructions unclear, sent hell instead of help
instructional unclear sent him instead of help or hell
instructions clear, but rejected, helium prices too high to send to fools.
Instructions unclear. Merged my daughter with a dog. Whoops.
instructions nuclear, i turned my car into uranium!
Big Clay: "DELETE THIS"
Big clay 😂
@Tokmurok Youd be surprised. people get pretty upset when you step in the way of their capitalist agenda
@@Tokmurok It sounds funny now but once clay was the first huge industry ever. Millions probably got killed over some dirt.
“Clay companies hate this one simple trick!”
@@Asatru55 and it can happen again
This is the extremely niche UA-cam channel I've always dreamed of.
Extremely niche UA-cam channels like this are the best thing about UA-cam.
Me too, definitely illuminated some areas that where dark for me
I absolutely love your videos I'm a chemist myself from Iran aka Persia I love the fact that you mentioned Razi we know about him but other people from other countries don't. it's amazing how his recipe worked flawlessly he also has discovered sulfuric acid and alcohol and much more stuff and I really appreciate you mentioning him in your beautiful videos. Keep it going! Love to USA!
Well, to be fair, Razi demonstrated the power of writing things down that people want to keep and protect. He didn't actually come up with these recipes and techniques in his book, rather gathered what was 'protected knowledge' by tradesmen and craftsmen and took the time to write it down.
There were similar breakthroughs in metallurgy in Europe during this time, but it wasn't recorded and even to this day we don't know the process for making an 'Ulfberht' sword for example even though we can do high tech chemical analysis of the metals.
I know about al-Razi thanks to the 90's Microprose game Darklands. al Razi, Avicenna, Geber, Flammel, etc all lend their names to alchemical formulas.
Man, that was a great game.
Yes! PERSIA!
@@fortusvictus8297 Their culture was that of memorizing. If you see the arabs especially memorized whole poems and stuff without writing it down necessarely.
When the last revelation of Islam came down, it was recommended and instructed by God to write down contracts and stuff, and also in general in conflict that there were with polytheists who didn't want to lose their business of selling idols, some of them entered as prisoners of war, and they taught the believers to write as an expiation and then they were freed.
So it was all a revolution of reading and writting down.
Also many cultures that were enemies before became one in purpose, and that formed a good basis for exchange of ideas.
That is at least what i heard.
History is a bit tricky since we assume based on limited information of that time anyways.
And incomplete knowledge will always fail us in one way or another.
Peace,
The Chinese used rice similarly in the mortar of The Great Wall. Burnt mussel shells were ued by Native Americans along with flint chips and my best experimenting was using finely powdered goat dung, which burns off in firing and leaves a strong ,resilient clay that can be used for cooking over an open fire.
I've heard about saw dust mixed with clay to form fire bricks for stoves, fireplaces, and kilns.
@@dennismitchell5276clay has sawdust, parmesan has sawdust, bread has sawdust, cake mix has sawdust...
Next you'll tell me that steel has sawdust in it.
@@Voidi-Void Not directly, but a lot of steel has some carbon in it and when you burn saw dust in the right conditions, you get carbon. But what you really want to add to steel, is highly crystalline carbon (vs amorphous carbon, which is what most burnt things convert to).
@@Voidi-VoidI’m both interested and not to have various genetics tests on me, too see if I’m partly made of sawdust
My dude. You literally saved my life for the next 3 terms and possibly even my graduation project and pet projects. I study sculpture (full round) and I'm in my 4th year, just a year left to go but damn it would've been amazing to have known this since freshman year
Best of luck with your last year! I hope Al-Razi's recipe helps!!
@@fraserbuilds update, it took some time but the clay is finished and I got done kneading it yesterday. It's insane how much it can stretch, while regular water based clay cracks as soon as I start to bend a coil of it, I could make a coil with this new clay and wrap it around a single finger from bottom to top, and showed no signs of cracking or drying whatsoever. It was tricky to knead though both because of the new unfamiliar texture and because it's winter, but I'm sure it'll be a pleasure to work with now that it doesn't crumble.
I loved this. I know NOTHING ABOUT CLAY, but this knowledge about making Alchemist Clay will now be forever engrained into my long-term memory.
Rice water and rice flour works wonders for mortars and concrete too. I made some years ago to lay a small wall in the garden. The mortar is really tough and hard, and grabbed onto the blue damp-proof bricks I used really well. Apparently, this technique was used in Asia in antiquity, to strengthen the ash clay mortars used to bond stone buildings. Some sources say that the Great Wall of China used it too. Amazing stuff. A lot cheaper than those nasty chemical ‘plasticisers’ too.
I heard a story that when ferns castle in wexford ireland was constructed there were thousands of small animals killed (poultry) so that their blood could be used in the mortar. don't know if it's true as it seems like the kind of thing you would hear to scare children, but i guess it makes sense.
Did you experience any rotting or anything? This is interesting.
@@allanturmaine5496 No, nothing like that. Honestly, I thought it might cause algae or bacteria to grow on it, but no, nothing. Probably because the cement is quite alkaline so any exposed carbohydrate is so caustic that nothing can live on it anyway. Also, the amount you need to use is not a lot - for rice flour, about 2 to 3% by weight (of the whole mix, sand aggregate and cement) is enough.
@@allanturmaine5496 There is a stone bridge in my hometown. Its mortar is made of lime, glutinous rice, brown sugar, and castor oil. It has been there for two hundred years. I think the technology of using rice as an additive to mortar has been common in Asia for a very long time, and it was probably the most practical recipe until the advent of modern chemistry.
@@martin-vv9lf Animal blood is well referenced as a binding and waterproofing additive in concretes, mortars, and mud brick or cob recipes. It's kind of bizarre that we don't use it today when industrial scale abattoirs could easily produce and sell powdered stabilised animal blood as a byproduct.
I love when ancient techniques hold up! It's hard to connect *then* and *now* when you don't know how they made things back then. Learning these sorts of things makes it all feel just a little bit closer.
Honestly the fact that we stopped calling chemistry alchemy is a tragedy. I'm honestly really in favor of calling things magic & alchemy, because life's more fun that way.
Honestly, alchemy and chemistry is the same thing*. You could start referring to it as alchemy, nobody can stop you.
Remember, the "chemist" in England are literally modern alchemists.
(*As I understand it, the "Al" prefix means "high", designating it as higher order chemistry. Alchemy is "high chemy", or High Chemistry. We should totally use it for advanced study instead of using the word "advanced")
@@chrismanuel9768 where is the petition? you got my sign
I think if we called it alchemy, it wouldn't feel magical anymore
7:50 You're adding starch. This will act as a binding agent, making your clay more durable.
10:01 The hair does the same thing here as the steel in concrete. It increases tensile strength.
It’s closer to hemp fibers that are added to concrete, it is far more effective than steel.
@@christianwelker7751it is not, but still is effective.
on some wizard shi
I'd be interested to see how it handles being fired. I know in the middle-ages, they used a clay mixture called daub to fill the walls of their homes, and it would include fibers like hair and hay to increase its tensile strength. But those weren't fired like pottery is. I would think that those fibers will burn away and leave voids throughout the pottery.
Listen, we need more mud alchemists out here. The more I get into pottery the more I'm also drawn to traditional alchemy, not from a spiritual perspective but just from an experimentation and philosophical perspective.
I never would have thought about rice water, but it really makes sense! I tried looking for more information about this but mostly just found rice water hair care and clay mud masks lol, do you happen to have any extended reading recommendations?
mud alchemists! I like that! theres a deep and fascinating history to alchemy, it never ceases to amaze me what they were able to with what resources they had access to. Razi's book definitely has some of the best descriptions of alchemists making their own pottery and equipment that ive found, but its not the only one. a manuscript attributed to Albertus Magnus called the "libellus de alchimia" (my version is an edition translated by Virginia Heines) includes very detailed descriptions of making, glazing, and firing alchemical earthen ware along with descriptions of lots of other fascinating alchemical practices. I think the libellus is one of the best sources for seeing what a typical medieval european alchemist's techniques may have actually been like. I also really like the manuscript "On Divers Arts" written by a german monk who called himself 'Theophilus' which covers a variety of crafts from pigment making to glass and metal working, along with (what i think is most interesting) how to make the tools and furnaces required for those crafts. its not an alchemical manuscript per se, and actually dates before alchemy's offical arrival in europe, but it gives a really good account of a wide variety of the craft skills alchemists would have had access to and even has some examples of early alchemical recipes that had made their way to europe before the practice itself became popular. I also always recommend Prof. Lawerence Principes book 'secrets of alchemy' to anyone whose interested, not only is it a really good scholarly treatment on alchemy, but it extensively cites a huge variety of sources for every topic it covers and i constantly find myself coming back to it when im looking for more sources for specific topics.
@@fraserbuilds bro, you are a legend, thank you! Guess I gotta grab all these books asap! Thank you so much!
Potato water probably works, too. Maybe even heated corn starch.
@@dezmodium potato water would probably work much better because the starch concentration is a lot higher comparative to rice
really cool stuff. Never heard of this technique before and it looks really effective. But one thing i would say to anyone thinking of doing anything with dry and powdered clay is do it outside and wear a commercial dust mask at all times. Clay dust is extremely bad for your lungs and is soo fine it will get everywhere, so if you do it inside you will carry on being exposed to the dust long after you've rehydrated the powder you are working with. Silicosis is no joke
I tried to use your updated method on some wild clay I was processing but didn't find it to improve upon the clay cracking when wrapped in a coil, possibly because my flour to water ratio could have been off. I came back to this video and used rice water instead and it improved my clay substantially! Much appreciated!
Holy shit I litteraly had the same problem. I went through the trouble of refining the clay from my house,but got discouraged when I noticed that it had subpar quality, no matter how much refining I did. Thanks for the trick!
as a biochemist..... Beautifully done video and great explanations of the practices and why we undertake them.
Thank you :)
I am seriously intrigued. I have been told repeatedly that the clays found in Western Washington State are unsuitable for pottery crafting. (This is why the various indigenous nations of the region focused on crafting watertight steam-bent boxes for heated-rock boiling, instead of crafting the pottery cooking pots found in other cultures.) Now I'm wondering if, among the various starches natively available, a similar solution could have been found? Unfortunately, grain starches are not native flora to the region.
Most of the available native starches were acorns, hazelnuts, and various root species which are full of inulin, which requires long low-temperature baking to convert the indigestible inulin into digestible carbohydrates. (Clover roots, various fern species roots, cattail rhizomes, wapato, purple camas (not to be confused with the white-petaled death camas, *please* don't ever confuse the two!) and other tubers.) Still, they technically are starches, so it could be possible. However, the connection between these two things, inelastic clay bodies and starchy water left over from rice-making, must have been a truly unanticipated discovery, one made by purely serendipitous chance. Most potters that I know are very hesitant about using "used" water for their clay bodies! (Used for non-clay-making purposes; slip water is just fine, lol.)
It's quite possible that native root starches could work; I have not had the chance to cook with many, and it's been a few years, so I cannot remember if there was a starch slurry when boiled or not. Unfortunately, not all starches are exactly alike...which any cook will tell you when asked their opinions on which starches they prefer to use for thickening certain sauces, soups, and/or stews.
The term "alchemist clay" is insane and I love it. The title in the thumbnail is light novel worthy and rest assured I'd absolutely read it xD
Why is it "insane"? get off your high horse, tyrant.
Thanks that helped me write a Doctor Stone fanfic
Pretty sure if you add your own hair it'll turn into a golem
Semen or blood works too.
Yes, go golem fetch my soup 🗿
Like a matzah ball?@@turdferguson2982
Pubes
Absolutely love that someone finally will satisfy my desire for ancient techniques for cool useful stuff with scientific explanations! Keep up the amazing work!
They found that cooling rice overnight changes the simple carbohydrates into more complex carbohydrates that are slower to digest and has a lower glycemic index.
I'm curious if the extra step of refrigerating the rice water for 24 hours might change something about the clay when added to it.
I can't stress how much information i get from this 12 minutes video! thank you!
I love the chemistry that you include! I feel like a lot of people are intimidated by chemical processes but they're not usually that difficult to understand, I think you gave great explanations!
Reminds me of making ‘cob’ with the hair, and also heard something one time about clay being ‘fermented’ more near lakes and streams, making it more usable. So the rice water kind of makes sense to me in that regard as food for bacteria….very interesting.
You must mean formented. 😂
If you look around for hilltops or desert environed and stay away from small depressions in the ground, you will have primarily kaolinite in your clay. That stuff does not shrink and swell like other clays
Kaolinite is indicated more by warm, moist regions (Georgia in the U.S., Brazil). Clays with shrink/swell properties like bentonite (smectitic) are volcanic in origin, weathering in seawater and are not indicated by small depressions in the ground.
@jonathanstotz1868 smectite most certainly does form in depressions, what is more it makes them! There is a feature in Australian soils called "gilgais'. These are rows of mounds and depressions that form specifically because of the shrink swell capacity of the smectite. The wheat belt in Australia and the cotton is on vertosols, and while there are exceptions to this, practically none of these are coastal.
@jonathanstotz1868 I'll leave my post up for you to read, but I've also come to the conclusion that you are probably a nice guy, that you have certain experiences and data that have lead you to say what you said.. and basically if we met in person we'd probably get on great and not try to one up each other on the internet. So refute me if you like, but feel free to just accept my acknowledgement of you and your position and leave it at that. Have a great day 😀
Finally YT recommended me a valuable video about making potters clay at home. I'm sure milk, buttermilk or blood would do the same job as the rice water (via protein, not starch). It's supposed the Low German redbrick architecture was built with blood-enhanced clay. They had a lot of cattle and a lot of bad clay, but that way it resists the salty coastal weather for ages. You can also enhance lime, mortar and concrete mixtures with dissolved protein or starch.
from now on when I use starchy water to thicken a sauce or use it for whatever else in cooking, when asked about it I will just say it's an ancient alchemist technique.
I have that same red clay here in Georgia, we're kinda known for it, and I'm just beginning an interest in this pottery situation after learning how to make kudzu vine baskets and what not. Loved your video and the awesome tips! I see in another comment I can skip the rice water and add flour to boiling water ( I needed an easier way) so I'll be trying that. Failure around every corner it looks like until you really figure this stuff out, I always loved a good challenge! Thank you friend and another sub today for you!
thank you! my most recent video is about my refined process for this recipe using just flour. best of luck! pottery has to be one of my favorite mediums to experiment with! it can be tricky but very rewarding and lots of fun!
@@fraserbuilds Yes it just popped up after I subbed, awesome, left another comment. This is so appreciated! I'm an old man that's not too proud to admit, I need all the help I can get! I will definitely let you know how I'm doing with this new crazy wild hobby!
Which Georgia?
@@h1story643 From what he described, it sounds like Georgia the state in the U.S.
kudzu is a very starchy substance. Maybe you could boil kudzu in water instead of rice since you have kudzu growing there.
"So despite wanting to listen to the advice of my betters, I turned to the dark arts!" And that line alone is a subscribe. Even if the rest of the video wasn't exactly the sort of thing that I'm into. Occasionally youtube succeeds in giving me the things I like. Expect me to binge, my apologies. Where do you even get these ideas???
Cool video! I'm a trained potter, and have never come across this knowledge! I'll happily tell all my colleagues about this!
Your video is a great example of the meme "I was today years old when I learned....)
I absolutely loved this. Simple and straightforward info about a subject I've always wanted to know more about.
This is more fulfilling than a wake n bake at a mountain lake.
Bravo Zulu.
Very good combination of history, chemistry and philosophy.... You mix it well, like a good alchemist!
This little video of yours answered a lot of questions I had about "garden" clay, thankyou very much for sharing your "dark art" (I actually got here through the automata videos)
How is the result once fired? I'd like to see that. I'm thinking of trying to make fired clay artifacts for future people to see! sort of like a time capsule but in the form of written tablets and figurines. I really liked your works and subbed immediately! I'd really like to know if clay prepared this way fares well in the firing process especially in pit firing that I can try to replicate.
I love that idea! pottery is such a beautiful record for future people to have of us. as for this recipe, it fires great! ive been using the recipe in all my pottery since making this video, i feel like my most recent blow torch is the best example of it but its in most my videos. and im always impressed by how well it holds up to the kiln, ive refined the process a bit and will hopefully have a video out about my new process sometime sooner or later. my advice is that if you have 20% temper of any kind, sand, charcoal dust, broken old pottery powder, etc to 80% clay powder, it will stand up to just about ANYTHING as far as fire goes.
Ah! Starch! When you mentioned rice water I immediately thought of that. It makes sense! Very cool to see this old world knowledge coming back to aid us in the present.
This was such an amazing watch! Growing up we were surrounded by clay and used to play in it as kids, of course we tried to make shapes and pots, but it was never very successful. It warms my heart seeing something that was often cursed as poor soil being given a second life, and I'm inspired to take a trip home and give it a go myself! You've definitely earned a subscriber here, keep up the great work!
I use paper as my fiber, as do many potters. If you let your clay, rice water, and paper mix ferment, so the bacteria can create more slime, it may get even better. Colour changes also happen as the bacteria often reduce sulphate to sulphide instead of using oxygen. Fun !
Does smell a bit though.
Al Razi might have found this method from ancient people around his area. In the olden days the native American use cactus juice to mixed in with their clay to make it more plastic, its the same principal with using rice water, in some culture they use cow dung like in India and in china they did used rice as a form of mortar even for building walls and city, so i guess it will works wonder when using in clay to make pottery.
thats very interesting! that could really help explain where the recipe came from, many of al razi's recipes are things he collected and compiled from a tradition of alchemists and artisans, so it would make sense for the recipe to have some basis in longer traditions like that. i'll certainly look more into this
@@fraserbuilds Except Al Razi being in the Middle East, he *was* ancient people for that region. It's not a region structured around a dominant coloniser population from the other side of the world and a suppressed indigenous population with local knowledge the colonisers are too arrogant to learn.
I was not expecting this much information from this video, glad youtube recommended!
This was a super cool, informative video. Great work I don’t take the time to comment very often, but this is superb.
I am totally new to making clay. It's warming up in southern Colorado , so I dug some dirt in my yard and then also went to the river and collected some. Going to process it tomorrow. I have been reading different ways to make clay. So excited I found you! I do have clay soil, but I am not sure where I should dig exactly. In the past I have had to use a pick ax before planting flowers. But I will learn. So excited to learn how to do this and you have valuable information! Happy Early Springtime!
Best of luck!!
I'm Persian myself and randomly clicked on this video out of well, curiosity! and of course my love for clay and artsy things, I wasn't really familiar with your channel before this and I rarely comment on videos but imagine my shock when I realized this "alchemist" was the famous Muhammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi. it's funny to me because they teach us in school about this guy and talk about how influential he is. so seeing it in action through a modern youtube video really makes me appreciate old muslim history more despite how outdated it is, so thank you for that pft
Um wow. That's wild.
Sometimes the algorithm just comes up with the best small channel to recommend me haha. Subscribed, now I really want to see what you do next. Good luck, claybender.
Superb video, I watched it all the way through at normal speed. I normally watch at double speed and often only get halfway through videos at most. Yours was superb. Well done 😊
I love things like this, using old manuscripts and experimenting with recipies, I did a lot of this when I first started black smithing, trying to recreate hamon clay from Japanese smiths. I came up with a cool mixture of clay, charcoal, ground stone and such.
Cool video bro.
This is great! So much good information!
Thanks!
I also made clay from processed dirt and it wasn't very good, but i found that cracking really isn't that much of a problem. With the right technique you can make beautiful things out of it. Andy Wards channel has good videos and with his technique i didn't find cracking to be much of an issue. Just use rounded scraper to go over the cracks if they appear and add a little water if necessary.
paleolithic clickbait
Neolithic actually.
Archaeologist here.
@@meowsaidthecat5338 NERD!!!
Dinosaur pottery
@@lostpony4885 Ask a paleontologist, maybe they know.
Eh, they wouldn't know. They just study fossils.
I'm so happy to see this pottery discussion I've done this for years and I really like to see somebody else do it
Using rice water to improve the consistency of your clay is a really interesting concept!
The technique of using rice starch in clay was also incorporated in building the great wall of china.
I've been excited for this one!
I live on a hill on clay that Ive fired with some success... But it cracks, etc. Im eager to try the rice thing! Thanks!!!
This is super interesting. I've got a couple of questions:
1. What kind of fumes / smoke does the alchemized (sp?) clay give off when it's fired?2
2. Does the rice-fortified clay take a glaze in the usual way after it's been bisqued?
3. What happens when you do this with factory-made clays, does it still help?
Science!
the starch will burn just like any other carbohydrate to release co2 and water however if you include the hair, it will release sulfur fumes, if you dont include the hair no worries there. I havent actually tried glazing my terracotta, I dont think it would glaze any differently than normal bisque ware though, as its fired texture is identical to regular pottery. I have slipped it and that works fine. It should help with factory clays, but Ive never tried incorporating the starch water into wet clay, as I always store my clay as a dry powder!
Awesome video. What a sleeper. You got me wanting to go make my own clay lol
Very exciting! Can’t wait to give this a try!
thanks! best of luck!
That's super weird. I made this 'artists clay' when i was a little kid. As kids, we played in the mud all the time, and started sculpting with it (as any kid would). We found by adding certain things to the mud it held its shape better and was more workable. We had these 'sediment ponds' in an area of the property. The mud in them was particularly workable, and left to settle was fairly pure. We didn't boil rice, but we did mash in water from another certain sediment hole full of decayed dried grass. I wonder if it had dissolved plant starch. We also mixed in mashed up dry grass. The result was clay so workable, we made child life size statues of ourselves that remained standing as it dried in the sun. (And later destroyed by an angry brother wanting to get revenge.)
Alchemy is just chemistry without understanding why
Excellent work, really interesting - reminiscent of cobb as a building material - but hair instead of straw!
Could the rice power be mistaken for quicklime? He’s skirting on the edge of pozzolanic reaction but not actually taking it all the way.
I have limitless Shale, and alot of wild clay, so i will be experimenting with this Alchemical method, as well as some ancient Mexican knowledge i discovered in another video ( Talc ). Ideally, i want to separate the silt from the clay in the Shale, and use it as an additive to the standard Arkansas wild clay i have all about.
I wonder if this technique could be modernized by using a nut milk back to just make rice milk and use that instead of the time consuming collection method for used rice water. Could possibly be a video series, modernizing ancient alchemical recipes....
thats a really cool idea! ive got a video in the works about updating the recipe replacing the rice water with a mixture based on white flour, but id definitely like to experiment with lots of sources for the starch. thats also a really cool idea for a video series! ive got a few other videos about old alchemical recipes planned, i hadnt even thought about modernizing them though! that could be really fun! thanks for the advice :)
@Fraser Builds I wonder if some of the sap from wild lettuce would be great to mix. It's abundant in the stalks and grows everywhere on the planet. It is a biological latex that transports thru the plant as water does. When concentrated and dried, it forms a rather rubbery paste. I don't know the chemical science behind it enough to say whether it would be beneficial to a clay mixture but my brain seems to link it as so. More of a feeling than anything else.
Also would higher acidic ash affect the mix?
How about ground Rockwool fibers?
My main concern would be that unless you fire it, all that organic material - the starch and the untreated hairs - would make for an absolutely wonderful fungal substrate.
instructions unclear i now have a clay golem following me around
Very cool video, man! I'm familiar with most of these procedures from making clay plasters for walls and floors. The starch water, the hair, etc. Interesting that while this is pretty common knowledge in the natural building scene, it seems rather unknown among potters!
Also, I've got to give a thumbs up for anyone who turns to medieval alchemy for advice. Doesn't happen often enough at all :D
Great video, really useful, thank you. Make more videos, not a demand, just a suggestion :) interesting
This is great work, excellent job describing the theory behind your experiment and documenting each step. Thats quality science! (especially when it gets you messy)
Im looking forward to your forge video
Alchemy has fascinated me since childhood, as has pottery. This has completely captivated my attention! I look forward to seeing further experimentation with this “alchemists clay”. Well done. ❤😊
Amazing video. I'm lucky to have multiple possible clay sources but the best always seem harder to get to and process. I'm gonna experiment with rice water with am abundant clay body i have close to my home. If anyone has experience with this, can cornstarch be used instead, accumulating rice water seems to be a very roundabout way of doing things compared to mixing up a starchy solution on demand
thanks! ive found basically any starch will work, lately ive been using a spoonfull or two of regular white flour boiled into water for a few cups of clay powder. im hoping to have an updated video on the clay process out sooner or later
You could also use pasta water.
i'm assuming if one starch works, any starch would. Native americans had access to several starchy tubers, being potato, sweet potato, and a wild, relativly unknown, called green briar. Someone above mentioned cactus sap, which was probably more the current Arizona to central american tribes, though mexican clays are usually grey in color due to being 'tempered' with volcanic ash, while north american clay is typically red due to iron oxides. And like the commentor here mentioned pasta water. could likely look at freezing starchy water from pasta, rice, or potato cooking to have a ready supply on hand.
I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this. New favorite yt channel
I believe alchemy got a bad name for the same reason snake oil did. Snake oil was originally made from a snake native to China, and was used by immigrants from China who worked on the first railroads in America. It was highly effective at curing muscle fatigue, and American entrepreneurs saw this and tried making their own. They didn't have the snakes that the Chinese immigrants used so they opted to use rattlesnakes, making an ointment that barely worked if at all. The term "Snake Oil" became associated with fake medicine. Alchemy probably became known as a fake science for a similar reason.
However, I like to consider Alchemy as the precursor of modern chemistry.
Amazing. I like how rice water changed the clay perfectly. I read ancient Arabic books of Ibnsena and Ibnrushd but was surprised elrazi was alchemist, these books are definitely a treasure as well as your channel.
The experiment was carried out incorrectly! You did not take into account the amount of water in the samples. The first sample was much drier than the second, this can be seen even through the camera.
They were actually similarly wet, I think the starchy clay is just sorta shiny compared to the regular clay. I totally agree moisture is crucial! But I later tried an experiment with five side by side tests all hydrated with the same amount of water (one just clay powder, one with raw flour, one with boiled flour, another with vinegar and one with both vinegar and boiled flour) The boiled flour was by far more plastic than the regular clay and the clay with raw flour, but was similarly plastic to the vinegar sample and the sample with both vinegar and boiled flour.
That said I think there is something to be said for the fact that the starchy clay is actually workable at a higher hydration than untreated clay. clay will be more flexible at higher hydration, but also weaker. Often times novice potters will wet their clay too much because it makes it easier to work with, but ultimately it doesent help because the clay body falls apart as soon as it starts to be built up. I think the starchy clay might increase the cohesion of clay particles enough to make the clay workable at a slightly higher hydration than normal clay, making it more flexible. Ive continued working with starch clay quite a bit, but im still not sure if I can attribute the increased flexibility or moreso to just the cohesion of the starch gel itself
It's amazing how things can only be wrong or right for some people. Seems to be knowledge is everywhere, even in the wrong things. Questions further us along especially when asked from the perspective of wanting to hear an answer, showing our ignorance/nakedness/enthusiasm
@@theviewbot show me an example of correctness and I'll show you an example where it isn't so. Still on the high horse I guess. Binary is excellent word choice, as in a binary system it is all right or wrong. I praise trinary, shame binary, yes I do
"Too many people make the mistake of assuming objective truth doesn't exist merely because subjective truth also exists in some scenarios." -Tigorious the Victorious Tiger 🐅
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What a wonderful topic and demonstration!
Thank you!
Idk about the translation of the book since it says "Lord bless our lord Muhammed" which is NOT something anyone says in islam, in fact, saying that would be "كفر" (kuffur) meaning whoever says such a thing is renouncing their religion.
this is a very good point! the translation i have is actually a translation of multiple earlier german translations of the original manuscript (to my knowledge the original manuscript is not extant, though id have to check if thats the case) so likely that mistake is due to the early german translators disregarding islamic customs in favor of their own christian versions
@@fraserbuildsThat'd be because it makes Muhammad out to be a god, when he was simply a prophet.
It's so interesting seeing people rediscover these ancient techniques. The results are incredible.
clearly witch craft
Awesome video. I've had to work with similar clay and I thought that salt was bad in clay. Your alchemy proves otherwise. NICE.
Islamic Golden Age clickbait
neat stuff. you definitely taught me a few things. i live close to Red Clay National Park. maybe i'll give this a try. atleast the purifying part just to see how it turns out
You sound like you make lasers
I'm getting Styro Pyro vibes LoL 😂
@@PeterMilanovskiPRETTY COOL RIGHT
@@14zachay14 totally rad!
😊 about to start making an oven out of clay from the river bed here in brazil and looking for instructional videos for ideas on home pottery.
Thank you for making and sharing this video. 👍
Clearly the most helpful information that I can get from a youtube video. 😮
this will be great for my incantation bowl to ward off lilitu
We do owe modern chemistry to alchemy, tho ancient alchemists lacked a lot of knowledge about atoms, particles and elements not to mention they lacked access to modern refined materials/reagents so you have to read between the lines by intended use and desired effect of an ingredient and optimize and substitute as needed for the best result.
I never thought of it like that in relationships. I thought of it as "trust"- i didn't trust my partner to go to them directly with whatever it was.
This is a very different perspective. Thankyou for the insight.
I spent years 'reprogramming' from a lie of what "respect" was. (From someone who didn't understand it and was abusive.)
You just clarified so much .
I cannot trust those i don't respect.
This is so beautiful ! ❤ how you explain everything is satisfying on a whole other level for me ❤Tusen takk ! ❤
depending on how much you want to spend you could use some of the thinner oils instead of water for hydration to keep it from drying out as fast.
This video helped me understand the ratios of clay and sand in cob making better then most I have seen.
Before the advent of technology, this elaborate manufacturing was done in a time of clear minds!
That's a really interesting take on an ancient composite ceramic material
Excellent video! Concise and easy to understand your process. Keep going. I predict you soon have many subscribers.
Thanks! I'm a practicing alchemist and have been trying to concoct a good clay for crucibles
best of luck!