How To Wet Process Wild Clay
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- There are 2 primary ways to process wild clay, wet or dry. I usually prefer dry processing my clay but it doesn't work for all clays, for different reasons, sometimes you need to wet process your clay. This video illustrates in detail how to wet process clay that you have dug from nature.
To learn all about finding, collecting and processing wild clay, check out my online masterclass, Wild Clay 101 - ancientpottery...
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If you like wet processing clay, that's great, I happen to think dry processing has many advantages. I spent years wet processing clay so I do have experience with both methods. Yes, it depends on the quality of the clay you dig, on your local weather and humidity and personal preference. If you would like to hear what advantages I think that dry processing has then check out my latest video about dry processing clay here - ua-cam.com/video/u6RlHSG4cY4/v-deo.html
Hi, I'm planning a project for my kids as part of a homeschooling lesson. We have heavy clay soil in an area of our backyard. My question is: why do you need ground up pottery to mix in? How does the final product suffer without it?
@@myriamvalentin4 Without temper your clay will likely crack while drying or in firing. Here is a video about temper ua-cam.com/video/uZZdLLCO8Iw/v-deo.html
I have a couple suggestions!
You probably work the clay with the same moisture content more or less so you could probably take the weight of the clay before adding water and subtract it from the weight of the clay with water to get how much water mass was added. Then you could probably use the dry ratio once you account for that variable.
You might also get a roller machine of some kind, much like the heavy industrial ones they use to add colors to silicon but on a smaller scale. Maybe something meant for pastries if there's nothing specifically for clay. That would save you so much manual labor.
I like your videos, you put out good information!
measuring the temper is still an issue i have no great solution for, but cant you mix the temper in with the slurry before drying it in the pillow case? maybe weight the bucket filled with water before adding the clay, than weigh the bucket with the slurry and subtract the water weight?
Try putting the clay in a basin and stomping on it. Using your hands for repetitive work like that is very strenuous.
Back in India, my ceramist parents used fine Ganges clay for their terracotta studio pieces. It was very malleable, very fine, low firing clay. We used to dry the wet clay on plaster bats before kneading by hand and throwing on the wheel. One thing about clay, is if you let it sit wet in a bucket, some fermentation process happens slowly and it becomes more and more workable/ flexible. Nature takes its course. You might just want to soak it in buckets for a few months ahead of time and have a rotating cycle of Tub Soak, Plaster Bat dry, Knead, Use. Adding a bacteria called 'bacillus subtilus' ferments the clay and makes it more plastic with a stronger bond and smoother to knead. This is probably why clay along pond edges is so soft and slimy. Nicely broken down by the bacteria.
Mine's been sitting in the water in a plastic tote for half a year. The water has gone from green to beautifully clear. My cat likes to place her paw in it, and lick the water from it
What is a plaster bat?
Interesting 🤔
@@diogenesstudent5585 Potters use plaster specifically formulated for this use (not sure how it's different from regular plaster) and they pour it into a mold or a flat bottomed tub (coated with a mold release agent, like vaseline). Then the plaster is de-molded, and allowed a few days to set up firmly. At that point, the wet clay is placed (or poured) onto the plaster in an even layer a few inches thick. This mass is turned every so often, to allow it to dry relatively evenly. Then you have to knead it as he showed.
Ganges clay is %95 human fecies shit 💩
I remember add a kid watching a video about native American communities in the South West processing clay themselves. They did it while the clay still has the texture of thick mud. In a cotton drop cloth, and mixed in the temper by kneading with their feet (think wine stomping) then allowed it to dry further in the drop cloth. It was a really significant batch of clay, enough to make pottery for the whole community.
Press your clay down to a cookie shape. Cut it like a pizza into four equal slices. Remove one slice and use it to make a sort of dam around the outside of the slice you removed. Fill that empty slice with your temper. That will give you a 4 to 1 ratio of temper to clay which is suppose to be just right.
Brilliant, thanks!
if you want 20% use five slices, one removed
@@AncientPottery five slices , one removed = 20%
@@MarkStadsklev 4 + 1 = 5, which is 20%
5 + 1 = 6, not 20%
@@wiredvibe1678 Is it supposed to be 20% of the total mass? Or 20% of the pure clay mass? Your formula is for total mass, Mark's is for pure clay mass.
I got a metal strainer, the oblong kind made to rest on the edges of your sink whilst you hull strawberries, wash potatoes, whatever. The mesh is heavy, but about the same size as window screen, maybe a little larger. I'll pour the clay (dry, if it's friable enough) through that to get out the larger pebbles and so forth. Bigger chunks I can then soak and run through the sieve, too. That sort of saves the first step in the levigation process. Then the process is pretty similar to yours, though the pillowcase is genius.
You can probably save a lot of work by doing a few things...one, once you get it out of the pillowcase, put it in a plastic bag or covered bucket overnight. Osmosis and all that other stuff you learned in high school means that the water will migrate from the wetter parts to the drier, so that you aren't trying to work in those crumbles of dry clay. It gives you a nice, evenly moist clay body to wedge. Let the clay do the work, so you don't have to! Also, Andy, you are trying to wedge *way* too much clay at the same time. About the size of a loaf or a loaf and a half of bread is a good size, but if you have let the clay sit to even out the moisture you may even be able to skip that first wedging more than a shove or two to gauge how it is doing. It may seem like more work to break it up, but you aren't having to wrestle with all that weight. Give your arms a break!
As far as temper goes---Metric-Man To The Rescue! One milliliter (1 ml) is a measure of volume equal to 1 cubic centimeter. (Many American rulers and kitchen measuring cups have both metric and Imperial--if yours don't, you can pick them up inexpensively anywhere that carries that sort of thing). Whack your clay into something as close to a cube as you can. Measure the length, width, and depth in centimeters, and then calculate the volume just like you would in Imperial. Therefore, a cube 10 x 10 x 10 cm = 1000 cubic centimeters. Because 1 cubic centimeter is equal to 1 ml, 1000 cubic cm=1000 ml. If you want to do a 4:1 ratio of clay to temper as Andy often does divide, the size of your clay block (1000) block by 4 (the ratio of clay you want). Result: 250. Use a metric measuring cup to scoop up 250 ml of temper, and you have your 4:1 ratio of clay to temper.
Now for the wedging! Sprinkle some temper on the work surface and roll out your clay (break it into two if you have to to make it more manageable, and just use roughly half the temper on each half). Sprinkle more temper on top and roll it up like a jelly roll. Start at the short end of your roll, and roll it up into a cinnamon bun, and give it a few good wedges. If you split your clay, do the same with the other half. Then tear off softball-ish sized hunks of clay, roll into a ball, and throw them down on your work surface--hard! Throw again--square that thing off into a rough cube. Grab another and keep going. Let physics work for you--the force of the impact helps push the temper through the clay--besides, it's a good way to work off your frustrations! You can also stick a finger in the clay and pour a little temper in the hole, too, before you start lobbing softballs.
Mix up your softball cubes so you have some from each lump of clay (cinnamon bun) you've worked to help even out any inconsistencies in the different batches of clay. Then repeat: give it a few quick wedges, sprinkle, roll out, sprinkle, jelly roll, cinnamon bun, a few quick wedges, softballs, cubes. How many times you have to repeat will depend on your clay, the moisture content, the amount of temper, the size of the temper, etc., but it's more efficient than you would think. When it all seems pretty homogenous, then split it into loaf-sized pieces, give them a good wedging, then combine the whole kit-and-kaboodle. This is the only time you'll have to be manhandling a large amount of clay, and by this time you're just evening out minor inconsistencies between the various loaves and making it even, so it shouldn't take too many shoves. A handful will be plenty. Voila! Lovely moist clay with even temper, ready to play with!
I like to roll the clay into softball-ish sized balls again and store it in Authentic Ancient American Ziplock Bags. That way the moisture content stays consistent throughout, and one ball is a good size for a smaller pot or for a few coils on a larger pot. If the clay seems a little dry when you are sealing them up, sprinkle a few drops of water in before you seal it. Over a day or so (or longer) the clay will absorb it and even out the moisture levels again.
I love your beautiful assistant/supervisor, too, Andy!
Thanks for this Leslie. But I have to say, I am looking to mix a large volume of clay by doing less work, while your process may be superior, it does not appear to be less labor. I'm trying a different method now, stay tuned for future updates.
I've liked every video of yours that I have watched, and here's why.
Not only do you show us the step by steps, 12:00 but you're also using your experience to speculate why things are behaving the way they are and that gives the viewer ideas for improving the overall process.
Like + sub
Thanks, glad you are enjoying my content.
Hello sir thank you for sharing this video Even though you're not professional yet on it and you're willing and open to learn and share. Thank you for sharing your knowledge about identifying clay and how to process it I am not a professional and I am just beginning to learn how to process clay from you and a few others. Your content is helping me a lot
I have an idea I would like to share with you about how you can improve drawing your play without losing so much by dripping through the pillowcase. Instead of hanging the the pillowcase with the clay to drip-dry, I think you would save more clay if you were to use a thick cotton sheet same quality material like what you recommend for us to use for the pillow case. Place thick cotton sheet inside a carton box with enough holes or ventilator to provide lots of air going through to circulate around the sheet with the clay. Make sure you pour the clay evenly. In layer that is not too thick so it will not take too long to. Duplicate the same with other boxes depending on how much clay you are drying.
I use a big piece of plaster of Paris that I molded over a very large stainless steel bowl. The plaster of Paris pulls the water out a lot quicker than draining it through a pillow case and there is no loss of clay.
You should look into planting bags to dry your clay in. They're designed to hold soil in and let moisture out, and I used one when I processed clay and seemed to keep a majority of it, since the water leaking through was barely brown.
Genius. They make those bags in any size too so just buy for the size you need
clay by it's very definition is very fine particles when it's suspended in liquid, it'll seep out of grow bags.
@@stephenx2857 Some, yes, but non-woven bags will basically become a filter as clay fills into the holes. Most will stay inside!
Love your videos, Andy. I haven’t looked through all 851 comments, but I’ve read many, and no one yet has mentioned stack and slam wedging. You take your mass of clay and cut it in half with a wire (vertically- top to bottom). Then throw the first half down, followed by the second half directly on top of it. Repeat that cut/throw/throw process several times and the clay will be very well mixed. If you add the temper in between the layers the first few times you throw the second half on the first, it will be mixed in easily. Also this method will save you a lot of work!!
Thanks for all of the inspiration!
Something I did with the liquid slop after straining that really helped with the workload after. I kept it in the original plastic bucket and allowed it to settle. I kept rope or paper towel over the edge siphoning off the water that separated out until the leftover clay way ready.
I was able to mix when it was close to ready to prevent as much separation.
Greetings, I just completed this process from a pdf I came across. I had never did this before. I like the feeling of the wet silky clay. I did put my wet clay pillow case into a generic clay flower pot and set it over a bucket. I got clear water minuscule clay. I also worked my blob as it dried. "Any who" I came across your youtube looking for pit firing. What a blessing, thank you Lord for leading me to Andy...I hope all is well at Ancient Pottery.
I would have never thought of doing that. We used that for grinding sausage on the farm, but I would have never thought of that. Wonderful. Andy thank you so much.
You're welcome
I prefer the wet method only because I believe the result is much purer clay, while many impurities float to the top, however, I don’t use the pillow case because 1. You lose clay, 2. Uneven drying, 3. Harder to knead the clay with temper, 4. I find it easier and quicker allowing the clay to dry in the sun at the bottom of the bucket simultaneously removing the top portion of water while it being easier to eyeball and mix temper while the clay is sludgy
Just discovered a nice light redish-orange clay pocket in my backyard and going to try the wet process. It's been a year now and im pretty sure you've probably improved the labours process. As a suggestion, running the clay through mechanical rollers should cut down the labor process significantly. Thanks for the content. 💯💚💯
Couple ideas. I actually prefer wet processing because even though it's time consuming I don't find it very labor intensive. The first thing that I think will help you is ditching the pillowcase method and using a plaster bat instead. My clay isn't that liquid when I move it to the plaster, so I have a flat slab of plaster, but I bet you could make a plaster bowl or tray so you could pour the liquid clay in it. This wicks moisture out evenly from the clay, so it drys pretty evenly, and you don't loose any clay through the plaster. Second I wonder if you could weigh the dry clay before beginning processing and estimate the amount of temper needed. Then mix it in after straining out the rocks but but while the clay is still liquid, using the drill mixer. That way wedging is less labor intensive. Hope that helps!
Yes, I have been thinking long and hard about the plaster bat, that pillowcase is kind of my nemesis. I appreciate the suggestions above. I am going to absorb these things and make another video in a few weeks showing how this process can be improved.
I am also very curious about using a plaster bowl. There are a couple large water balloons in my closet that I have always thought would make great, very smooth molds for this purpose.
years ago i had a big plaster block. I just bought the bagged plaster and cast it in lumber. it was over 100# and would rapidly dry a bunch of rubbish from the wheel to recover.
I pretty much have to use the wet processing method because my clay comes out of the ground wet and in our humid rainy climate, it takes forever to dry. I dry out the chunks just enough to break up and screen out the roots and rocks, then mix it up into a slurry and sieve it through another finer screen. I let it settle, drain off the water, then pour the clay out until the silt at the bottom (darker color) starts to show, then allow the clay to settle again and pour off the water until it's a gel-like mass at the bottom of the bucket. That's what I pour onto plaster bats and it results in a pure clay that I can then add temper to, and maybe some ball clay if the wild clay is a little short.
@@drakekoefoed1642 explain this whole temper thing. What is it, why do you do it, what effect does it have, how much do you use? This is the first that I have heard of this.
My favoured method for working temper into a plastic mass of clay was to roughly work the clay into many thin pancakes and then pound the temper in; later recombining the pancakes.
This was quite effective for quickly adding large amounts of temper when making crucibles for my friend/colleagues proto-metallurgy experiments and demonstrations. We ended up with some vessels that looked like they where more temper than they where clay, and they held up amazingly well in the smelting process. Though one did get a bit glassy.
Great tip, thanks!
Andy, I have found that letting the clay settle and pouring off the clear water more than once helps reduce that clay loss through the pillowcase. The drips I get tend to be pretty clear (might also have to do with my pillowcase). It does take a little longer of course.
Great tip, thanks
Hi Andy, I love your channel, great information! I decided to comment on this video because of my experience with plaster and slip casting. I have done slip casting from plaster molds for some 30 odd years.
In my opinion, the easiest way to turn "slip" into malleable clay is to pour the slip into a "mold" that has a shape that will be easy to work once it is in clay format.
A plaster bowl will not work as well, it should be a large, flat rectangle shape and the plaster thickness on all sides and bottom should be the same thickness.
You can easily make a form (size and shape of the volume of clay you wish to process), then build a 4 sided box that is 3 inches wider than the form on all 4 sides, and it should be taller than your form by 3 inches as well. Seal the form to a flat surface (I use clay to seal a wooden form to a sheet of acrylic that is sitting in a table), place the 4 sided box around your form and seal the 4 sides of the box to the acrylic (again, clay sealant for wooden box). Generally I am 50/50 mix plaster and water. Mix then, pour in liquid plaster to the top of your box and let it set. It would be best to not remove the box or form until the next day, but at least wait for it to go though it's heat cycle + 1 hr. Do not use any mold release of any kind (on the form or on the box) as this will inhibit the plaster's ability to wick away the water. Once set, the plaster will not stick very hard to the wooden form or box since the wood is malleable somewhat. I use wood screws to hold the box sides together so it is easy to remove. The form can be trickier to remove but it shouldn't be too hard (again no, none, nada mold release.
it will take a long time for this mold to completely 100% dry but it is worth it's weight in gold once that has happened. Sitting out in the sun in your dry climate especially if it is windy, it should go a lot faster than most (maybe a week or 2). Do not use it before it has completely dried from the molding process. If you do, it will dramatically reduce the results.
Once you have this, you should be able to pour your slip in where the form was and have usable, homogenously moist clay in a few hours at most.
Add dry temper to dry clay at the % you want. It is clay, not rocket fuel. In my opinion the % precision is negligible. Mix with water with a drill, let it settle and drain off the clear water as you showed, strain into bucket then you should be good to go, I have hundreds of molds that I have done this way. Fast and easy clay processing once you get it set up, and if you truly wait for the mold to dry 100% first, drying out the mold after that will go much faster than the original water did, but I'm not completely sure why. LOL best of luck!
Thanks for the paint strainer Idea, I Love it!
Hi Andy, My suggestion would be simply to measure the weight of clay and tamper on a scale to make it in the ratio of 10:2, or whatever the ratio you wish.
Thanks for the tip!
I love how intuitive the whole process is. Before I happens upon your channel I had already processed my first batch of clay . After wet processing it was still too wet and I was out of patience. So thinking I was taking a short cut I split my pile of clay into quarters and added sand off our road till I was happy with the feel. I’m working on my second batch now and I’m so antsy to get working again! I’ll have to add vinegar next time, after a full 24 hours of my watery clay sitting I had less than an inch of water at the top 😅
I slice up the wet clay with a wire, then press the slices into the grog, slap the slices together, then knead
I see a few comments here with that suggestion, thanks for the great tip.
I’ve tried both for two years now, and I find wet processing works well for me. I go through so much clay and find I’m able to achieve a consistent product while not slacking on productivity. I have one caveat however and that is my clay production is a byproduct of my sand washing (making concrete but don’t want to truck sand in from off site) and as such I’m making 20-50 lbs a day when washing sand for my house construction.
I always found that when doing the wet process, when it comes time to begin the drying step to lay out the slurry in a shallow trough I welded from old sheet metal. The more surface area exposed allows it to dry much faster. But that requires a long shallow trough and probably isn't very feasible.
Thanks, I am making plans for making something like this.
Is it possible to marry the two methods and avoid the labor at the end of the wet process? Could you add the temper to the clay after it's been strained, but before it's been through the draining/drying process?
I think if I add the temper too soon it will all sink to the bottom of the clay and will need to be kneaded through thoroughly in the end, so it won't actually save me any labor.
@@AncientPottery I wet processed some clay from my back yard a few months back and noticed that once it settled out to a certain point, grit stopped settling completely. It was sort of a very thick latex paint consistency and the grit (already present in the clay) was very small but noticeable by touch.
Use a plaster wedging table to remove water form the clay: done in minutes
Use the cutting and slaming wedging to incorporate your temper: save a lot of work and strain on your wrists
For the settling down part you could use a milk seperator centrifuge. The pillow case could probably exchanged for one of these apple presses with clothbags and the tamper part could be nn electric pasta machine that you then turn the rollout strip 90° and make it feed back into itself. I think this could have a lot of throughput.
Great tips, I will need to hit the swap meet next weekend and look for those items.
@sourand jaded There is a dry process for making clay that seems easier. You can use a grain grinder to do it and its less steps. ua-cam.com/video/u6RlHSG4cY4/v-deo.html
Thank you for sharing. You taught me a couple tricks and I want to share my thoughts with you. Mixing the clay with water, using a strainer, let the refined clay to settle, remove the excess water and poor it into a pillow is a fairly easy (Labor free), acceptably short process. The drying can take a long time and the mixing with temper can be problematic.
Here is what I would do:
Instead of placing the clay into the pillow and let it dry naturally, I would place them into a solar distiller. That will favors evaporation and would speed up the whole process esponentially with no labor nor, at 0 cost (No power required) and with the possibility to reuse the water (If you distill it, you can also collect it!).
You don't put the the pillow in the distiller, you use a set of frames to form clay ingots that can fit your grinder. Once those ingots will be dried, you'll be able to grid them easily with minimal effort. Same thing for mixing them up.
My suggestion is to take the wet process all the way back to dry. After straining pour the whole bucket into a concrete mixing tray sitting in the sun. Once dry enough to grind try a rough grind with a rock and add the temper then.
Honestly, I've never understood the whole pouring off the clear water and putting it in a pillow case part - the sun will do a much more efficient job separating the water from the clay and mixing trays are cheap. A light weight sheet over the tray would keep it clean while allowing evaporation - I'll let you know if it works when I can try it.
Alternatively, I wonder if it could be resaturated after you can estimate the amount of temper and use a bread hook on a stand mixer to incorporate. Still going to take longer since it would have to be really wet for a mixer..
Anyway, those are my armchair quarterback suggestions.
Well if I could grind it easily I wouldn't even bother with slaking and straining, I would just grind it up from the start. Which is probably what I will end up doing anyway.
@@AncientPottery I am curious if it would grind differently after being (wet) strained to pure clay and then fully dried?
I love your idea for processing clay
The primary purpose of temper, whether it be ground-up pottery shards, sand, or clamshells, is to reduce shrinkage. First you have to establish how much your untempered native clay shrinks from the workable plastic state to the bone dry state. If a ten-inch clay bar shrinks to nine inches, it is one-tenth shorter, or has ten per cent shrinkage, which is usually acceptable. If it shrinks to eight inches, it has shrunk two-tenths (1/5, or 20 per cent), which is too much (too prone to cracking as it dries) so you should add temper.
The other purposes of temper are to add stiffness to a clay which slumps easily, and to "open" the clay particles allowing moisture and steam to cook out more easily in the fire. Tempers always reduce the dry strength of pottery, whereas the microscopic clay particles are what knit together all the other minerals you find in native clays. If you are outdoor-firing with wood and/or brush, you may need more temper than with an electric kiln, because an "open" clay can better withstand expansion stresses caused when one side of the pot is closer to the flames/coals and gets much hotter than another side.
One more important purpose of temper. Open up the clay body to allow more even drying and to allow water vapor to more easily escape. Thanks for this.
@Sonja Christofferson The word "short" does not apply here - that word is used to describe clay that is too inflexible - even when it is well-moistened, it cracks when bent. Clay that shrinks 20% is described simply as "has too much shrinkage," which is most often due to an excess of very fine clay particles. Fine-particle clays absorb more water and swell up more (shrinking more when dry) than clay that consists of larger particles. There are several ways of correcting too much shrinkage, but the most common is adding tempers like grog (ground up pre-fired clay) or sand. Because clays differ so much, there is no standard per cent of addition, so try 10% temper and test. Be sure to thoroughly mix the temper into wet or dry clay so it is evenly dispersed, either by wedging or by pounding with a mallet or other implement (I sometimes use a rolling pin). Moisten the mixture to what you consider a workable state and test for shrinkage. Repeat with smaller additions of temper as necessary.
@Potter I would advise against pumice. It is cheap and widely available as a gardening additive, but none of the ceramic suppliers I use offer it, and two pottery books with extensive materials lists don't mention it. Two main reasons: first, it comes from so many sources that there is wide variation in chemical composition; second, it is a glassy volcanic product that is full of tiny gas bubbles, and potters have enough issues with gasses cooking out of clay and glaze materials.
@@peterwood8421 Several primitive potters I know use pumice without issue. The fact that it is not listed in your books means nothing.
My dude getting up without grunting is what I strive for.
LOL
I reduce the amount of kneading to add temper to wet clay by cutting it into slabs about an inch thick, then layer the temper between slabs before kneading. If that doesn't get all the temper in at first, I just stack/slam wedge a bit and then repeat the layering process followed by more kneading/wedging. If you lay the temper on the table and knead *onto* it, then the clay surface area in contact with the temper is literally the minimum possible. By layering, you can increase the surface area exposed to allow more temper to be incorporated into the clay body.
I was going to suggest the slice, stack, slam method of wedging also. I think it would be a whole lot less work than using the regular method of wedging to integrate the temper throughout. There's a video on stack slam wedging somewhere on youtube. The guy in the video is using this method to reclaim clay but I'm sure it would work great for adding temper also.
Great tip, thanks.
There’s is so much to learn about this stuff. I’ve just been using the wet method so that’s all I know at this point. Some people are talking about adding bacteria and Vaseline etc etc. I’m gonna keep it as simple as possible until spring.
You might want to lean in to the clay leaking through the pillowcase and get an even looser filter and catch the drippings in a shallow pan to be dried out in the sun.
Also the quickest shape for drying/moisturising something is to form it into a toilet-roll or doughnut shape, the through-hole is key.
Just a couple of thoughts.... If you have the clay dripping into the pan then why not just let that air dry to tacky (while still in the pan) and then reincorporate it to the bagged portion during the drying process? also would it make sense to add a base amount of temper to the the clay mixture while it is still wet. I'm thinking after you have poured off the clear water but before you put it into the pillow case. I realize you will not know the exact amount that you will need, but you have enough experience that I believe you will know a starting point of how much should be incorporated. I've also been interested in other clay uses such as a building material and I am thinking that it might actually be easier to process it in larger amounts, like they do for cob. Then you can work it when it is a little sloppier. Probably in a concrete mixing pan and foot tred it instead of doing it on your work bench. You can also foot mix it on a tarp if you can't find a concrete mixing pan. You'd be able to get enough for a class that way. I need to know more about your temper.
Interesting ideas. Tony Soares, who will be featured in next week's video, processes large quantities of clay using a cement mixer. ua-cam.com/video/UIDGm51q4hc/v-deo.html
If you want suggestions, you could weigh the dry clay you start with, maybe subtract the sticks and rocks, and measure the temper by weight. Then, you could probably mix the temper in the settled clay after pouring the extra water out and right before you strain it through the pillowcase. Also, actually hanging the pillowcase would increase the water column height in the lump of clay which would drain some of the water out sooner
great video...
I love it when people in the south west say "i will just put it out in the sun for an hour to dry".... Doesnt work quite so well in the south east..
Just processed my first batch of found clay.
What an adventure!!! Fully enjoyed it.
⭐️Here’s a tip on the drying phase…..
I used a shallow 2’x2’ plastic tub
-lined the bottom with scrap sheet rock
-later out an old bed sheet over that
Then poured the clay slurry on to the sheet.
-folded sheet back over slurry
The sheet rock pulled the water out sooooo fast!
(I did take the paper off the sheet rock. What your left with is a flat piece of plaster.)
Note-the slurry was not poured directly on the plaster, the bed sheet was used in-between.)
Wish I could add photos of this
I think I prefer a hybrid method. Wet process to the pillowcase step, but let it all dry out until it’s solid. Then break it up mortar and pestle style into a nice powder and let it dry further. Then mix your temper and you won’t need to do so much kneading. Perfect blend of both worlds.
As someone who has never process clay my first thought is after you strain it to put it in a pan and put the pan out in the sun and let that dry and then as it starts getting dry occasionally kneed. That would eliminate the inconsistent areas of dry and wet clay that you get from the pillowcase method but I don't know if it would really work I'm just speculating
i'm sure theres something out there like a big version of a pasta machine, you could run the clay through the rollers to make flat sheets then sprinkle the agrigate over and fold the sheet, feed it back in and repeat until its up to standard .
I prefer the water process, that was the only way I found that efficiently separates the dirt and clay. My fly came out perfect! Took 4 days almost but worked!
1st things 1st I don't know anything about clay but a friend of mine borrows my cement mixer to agitate the wet clay for hours sometimes. Also I had to make her a proofing cart with ten trays so she can air dry what she calls a sludge and stirs it every hour by hand until it gets to cream cheese consistency that's when she ads her temper while it's stil quite soft
What a beautiful dog!❤❤❤
Thanks
Here's a possible idea, after you remove ot from the pillow case. Put the clay into a large Tupperware container and leave it outside for a couple of day's.
Also, when tempering, make slabs of clay.
This is what you do.
1.) take a chuck of clay that you can easily flatten into a manageable slab
2.) Sprinkle some grog down to cover the bottom and then cover the top with an even coverage.
3.) Set aside the slab and repeat step 1 and 2 making a grog embedded clay slab pile. Or kneed the small slab, set aside and repeat 1 and 2 and keep making a pile of tempered clay.
Then kneed the hole pile.
You sound like you have some experience with this. Thanks for the tips.
another solid video, also andy's shirt game is always on point
Ha Ha. Thanks
LOVE the overalls! Excellent choice.
Prevents plumbers butt when bending over.
Try using an old washing hand crank wringer to help process the clay. You can adjust the space between the rollers. Just like making pasta sheets:)
Thanks for sharing.
I watched a couple of your videos and was inspired to go out and bag some wild clay/dirt. Our area here in Nayarit Mexico has a lot of rich clay deposits. I did both dry process and wet. It’s been fun but I see your issue with volume. My idea is a 20 qt Hobart mixer with a dough hook. It essentially does the needing that you’re doing by hand. That’s of course after the clay has cured.
Thanks so much again
Thank you for this video. My property has a lot of clay, but I need to use water to separate clay from rocks and the little bit of floaties.
You're welcome
I did some wet processing and found out spreading the clay thin and letting it dry makes it easy to process as dry. It doesn't need grinding since thin dry clay breaks as soon as it touches water, and you can add the temper before adding water.
After you pour off the water from the settled clay, use a sheet of plaster drywall that you frame with wood and seal the joins with silicone. Put frame on concrete or paving
Mix clay in bucket evenly and then pour out onto the plaster . The clay will dry evenly and peel off.
I use an old wringer/mangle from a washing machine to roll and temper the clay in bulk. But a pasta roller works for small batches.
Great tips, thanks!
Idea for how to figure how much temper to add:
Get a chunk of clay to a workable consistency. Cut it into four equal parts(weigh them if you want to be precise). Bag up three of them and let the other one dry out completely. Grind it up and see what volume you have. Compare that volume to one of the three wet chunks. You'll see the difference in volume that accounts for the water loss. You'll be able to better judge how much temper to add. You're estimates are likely pretty close to a true 25 percent, given how long you've been doing this.
I'm not suggesting doing this for every batch of clay but if you did this a few times, maybe for different clays, you would be able to 'eyeball' 25 percent with more confidence.
Have you considered cutting the clay into several (10 or so) small sleeves on a wire, grogging the clay masses and then wedging each smaller mass. Combine, wedge, cut combine etc etc?
Where I used to live we had clay rich too soils but no source of the parent clay nearby. Using a wet method I could process massive amounts of too soil. Fast mixing pulls the clay into suspension allowing it to be poured off the just. If you wanted to add temper after it could easily be mixed in to the desired amounts. I wish UA-cam had been a thing back then. But what an enjoyable experience the experimenting was.
I used to boil the water always stirring, and when the water is about to evaporate (Still with more water than needed) and let it dry to get the consistency I want it to have. So far it has never affected the clay.
Love the paisley :)
Thanks
What about running it through some rollers? With the right setup, it would roll it out into a thinner sheet...kind of like the old laundry wringer machines that were hand-cranked.
Using something like that would let you fold the tempering material between a couple of layers of clay between passes through the rollers. Then after you have the temper added, keep folding it over and rolling it out until it's mixed as much as you want it to be.
Why is this video so satisfying to watch?
At our studio we do wet into an open bag suspended by a frame over a tray. We keep everything wet because of the dust. Any time things get dusty, everyone masks up
This video and its comments are so useful! Thank you!
Wet processing has advantages as you can use rain water to remove by leaching any chemical contamination of the clay. You can use ALUM to settle fine particles quickly.
For both kneading and tempering, I’d chop the mass into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Sure a potter needs to use a lump that is manageable to them.
Hello ! Thanks for the video, really interested in all your videos ! I got an idea if you want to try it out, to add the temper in the wet process. Make sure you let your mix clay+water to rest in a bucket that is translucid or semi transparent, and calculate quickly the surface of the bottom of the bucket : S = Pi*r². Then when it is rested, you mesure the heigth of the clay rested at the botom. You can now estimate the volume of wet clay : V = S*h . Put everything back in the same units to simplify the calculus. Then you know you have to add, maybe not 25% because it is not a volume of dry clay, maybe more like 15%, of that volume in Temper. And you put the temper directly in the wet clay in the bucket just after you remove the excess water. It will be very easy to mix. And then the pillow case step can begin. And maybe do not dry it to much to make it easier to make it homogeneous afterward. That's just something i would try, but you got the experience, tell me if that sounds doable :) ! Maybe with this method, with some try and error, you can make some marks and mesure on your bucket that will tell : this height of clay needs 3 bowls of temper, something like a kitchen mesuring glass, but big and for water+clay :) !
Just to let you know, here in the UK we use large tin pans around 2inc deep 2mx1m in greenhouses we leave it there for around 2-3days then we tip and then use cement mixers to need the clay.
Creative caring hands
Thanks
Do you have to add temper before storing the clay?
Your videos are the best. Thank you.
Thanks, no, you can add temper whenever. I add it before I store it because I want it ready to use,
Maybe a very high thread count pillow case in cotton. As for volume to volume you could do a .mm measure of that square block and figure the volume total of clay to add 20% temper to.
As a kid making adobe we stomped it in a shallow depression. An adult would occasionally check it and add more sand or clay. Later we used a cement mixer.
That's cool
Thanks for the time and effort
To help with the kneading process you could take a page from bread and noodle making which is to use a pole on a swivel to get a whole lot of mechanical advantage. The chinese use it to knead bamboo noodles and the Jews use it to knead Matzah.
For the separation process you could look at centrifuge of some kind to speed the process. Putting the pillow case into an old washing machine would help. You could always catch that water and reprocess. I would always take the chance to decant the material and process the two separately.
In waste water if you want to separate a suspended solid you use what is called a floculant which is something that the suspended solid can stick (agglomerate) to which greatly improves its separation. I would bet you that adding some temper to the the clay slurry would act as a floculant and dramatically improve separation.
I am no potter or ceramicist but I am an engineer that has seen these processes used in other areas that have similar issues. Let me know if any of that helps.
Someone may have mentioned this before. But, build yourself a barrel and ball mill. Using a plywood frame, some small wheels, a banned top 55 gallon barrel, and various size carbon steel ball bearings, one could dump a considerable amount of clay in there and roll the barrel on the wheels such that the ball bearings pulverize the dry clay thoroughly. One could even setup a belt system and rive it with an electric motor or an old exercise bike.
Or a press down lever lower or even on the floor, just add a small resistance spring.
Get an old fashioned sausage grinder. Same style as the grain grinder that you are using.
After the first pillow case straining it should blend up pretty nicely while running it through that.
You could try a vacuum chamber and/or some kind of desiccant to speed up the drying process, and not lose the clay in a filter?
I really enjoy your videos and mostly watch for fun, so I do not have any practical experience in any of this but would think that a cement mixing tray would be easier than a pillow case for drying clay. Especially if you get the kinds of tools that are meant to be used with the tray to mix cement. Also, can you not establish the ratio of needed temper to clay before you start the wet processing? Oh, and hit that wet clay lump with a stick! Thanks for all the hard work you do!
best advice i could consider is for kneading the clay/temper together using a Class II lever. Like a giant garlic press. Could be efficiently done with two people. One to operate the press and the other work the clay into a pressable pile. Pressing plate could be a two foot square board reinforced with a two foot square diamond-plate sheet of steel. Scale it out from there with the pressing plate a foot or two from the falcrum with a lever arm extrending six feet from the plate.
Is there some reason you're not using a rolling pin? Seems like one of the extra long, untapered ones with no handles is the tool you need. Beat the clay flat, roll it thin, then spread the temper across it and knead it in. Betcha it takes a small fraction of the time.
Love your videos. Thanks!
Thanks for the video. My buddies property is filled with red clay. We are trying to level it out. REALLY hard to work this stuff! I got to thinking there has to be a way to use it. So I am trying your wet process to see if I can get clean clay out of it. I will be referring to your video alot!
That's awesome. I hope it turns out to be good clay for pottery, if so you will maybe not hate it so much. I love clay but living on top of it would be hard.
Hi...What is the white clay slip you apply on teracotta ...how to make it?
I love your videos❤
Maybe a dedicated crafts only Stan mixer? For the kneeling part?
I like your videos I think they're great!. Having dry mixed some things, I mean, I have made a few mud pies in my time I like to think the meat grinder/sausage filling techniques might prove fruitful to such a trooper as you. Thanks again!
One really important thing i will say is dry processing clay releases a Lot of dust, specially silica (silicon dioxide), which can actually accumulate in your lungs and cause all kind of problems. So if youre going to dry process, you really should wear a mask (like an actual filter mask, not just a kn95), and do it with proper ventilation or outside.
And to dry wet clay out faster, a plaster slab will do the trick just fine. All you need to make one is one of those disposable aluminum trays, and just pour the plaster in there. Then you can pop the slab out, and once its dry, put your wet clay slurry on it, itll dry out in a day!
Yes, thanks for the tips. My studio is on a porch so has lots of ventilation, defiantly don't grind clay inside.
Vary good job sir ,it is very important helpful video.
Thank you.
Why do you add the temper and what is its purpose? Can be used without it that clay? The last question is how when you go out in the field to pick up some dirt, how do you distinguish if it is good for pottery ? I wonder if where I live there is any…
Temper opens up the clay body so it will dry more evenly and the water can escape when it heats up. It is required, not optional. Learn more about temper here ua-cam.com/video/uZZdLLCO8Iw/v-deo.html
Clay can be distinguished by looking for different characteristics of clay, learn to recognize clay here ua-cam.com/video/nqiJJDzR3vw/v-deo.html
To expand on the solar food dryer, pore the wet clay on cook sheets, it will allow the clay to dry evenly. Maybe even into powder, which then is drily mixed again. If it drys into chucks, try a trip hammer, that's made with a rounded body hammer. If you do not wish to manually crank the hammer attach a geared-down motor to the crank. Then for mixing in the dry state, make two stand towers, with pull-out slide controls into a bole sitting on a scale. this gives you better control over weight for the percentage in mixing.
You might consider making a bucket with a closeable nozzle half way down. Then when your clay has settled you can pour off the clear water through the nozzle without disturbing the settled clay. Finish by pouring off any remainder. You Might get more water out that way.
I use the blinder for my dry clay it works great
I've heard of this, but I think it might be slow for the volumes of clay I mix up.
I think you could use a really wide, shallow, tub/sheet and put that in the sun after letting it concense. You could even do multiple trays to speed it up and leave those in the sun
Do a small project for the start of the class, design, and concept work on details for elaborate artwork and techniques, then make the needing part of the class as prep for the next session? depends on how you do classes I guess...
Would you be able to add it to the bucket of clay right before pouring it into the pillowcase?
Possible, but if I add the temper too soon it will merely sink to the bottom and still need to be kneaded through. So no work saved.
Try using a stone mill to grind the dry clay.
A stone mill? Where do you get one of those?
What is the purpose of temper? What does it do? I don't know anything about pottery other than buying pieces I like. I found video interesting.
Temper aids in more even drying and protects against thermal shock in firing. More info about temper can be found here ua-cam.com/video/uZZdLLCO8Iw/v-deo.html
Is it possible you could add the temper right before dumping it into the pillow? It looks like it'd be pretty easy to just stir in with the more watery consistency, then when you knead to even the wet and dry clay it'll hopefully distribute any temper that settled out at the same time. Not an expert or anything, just an idea I had while watching. I've been enjoying your videos thank you.
Last time I processed wild clay, I used vats made from plaster of Paris to dry the clay. Though the first vat crumbled like a sand castle at high tide because I didn’t make it right. Walls/sides were far to thin.
I use my husband's old jeans for the drying bit. Works great even with the fine clay we have around here.
Hi there! First time in the channel and already hooked. So interesting to see clay extracted from the powder of unassuming soil chunks
Welcome aboard!
roll the clay (plastic like) between two cylinders of wood, adding the temper and fold it in and re roll it trough again and again.
What about rolling/drying flat and letting the filtered clay dry completely? Could you then grind or pulverize the filtered clay and mix the temper? Would that be the best of both methods?
To quicken the drying time try using a solar food dryer. If it works for food it should work for clay!
Thank you, Maestro
Respectfully,
NHG