This clay comes from the banks of our red clay ditch that started out as a cattle trail 50 or so years ago. It’s what I call my “non-sandy” deposit. It’s still sandy, just not as sandy as the rest of my clay.
Last year I did some testing on this and then decided to processes out all the sand. With the sand it needed 14% nepheline syenite to flux it down to cone 6. If I removed the sand and added a bit of my silty material, I could get away with only using 7% neph sye. Plus, I was not happy with how gritty it was. Well, processing is alot of work and over the last year I’ve gotten used to more grit in my clay. I’ve decided to revisit using it with the sand.
I’m seriously considering converting my larger electric kiln to gas. If I could fire to cone 8-9 I believe I can use this clay without additions. A friend test fired a piece for me to cone 8 reduction, and it was a gorgeous burgundy color. At cone 6 oxidation (with the neph sye added to bring down the porosity) it will fire to a very similar color of the wet clay, a really nice bright red.
This is just the clay as is, no additions. I just rough sieved it through window screen, and it does have a bit of trash in it, but that will burn out.
The bowl was thrown with 3lb 4oz clay and that is a 12″ bat for reference. The clay is highly plastic and the bowl was just to check throwing and drying on a larger piece. Hopefully, it will dry without cracking.
After sieving 
3lbs 4 oz clay 
inside bowl 
Raw clay right out of the ground
