From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 5
This is my large clay dewatering setup made from livestock mineral tubs (the kind that hold 200 lbs). I use it after wet sieving my wild (dug) clays, allowing the clay to settle before siphoning …
Category: processing clay
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 3
This is how I sieve local clay. My McCurtain County might be showing a bit. Feel free to make fun of my accent. Sieving is necessary to remove organic material (roots, leaves, etc.) and rocks …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 2
In part 1, I showed where this material came from. Here’s what it becomes after washing away the clay, sieving it, and drying it. What started as a bucket of muddy silt turns into a …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 1
If you had walked by me on this day, you probably would have wondered why I was filling a bucket with mud. I originally hoped this would become a clay body. It didn’t—but it ended …
Processing the Black Water Trough of clay
Some of you may remember me posting about a huge water trough full of clay I got when we did the foundation for our shop. I’ve used this clay for years by processing out more …
Reclaim Test and adding 5% EPK to black tub clay
Adding 5% EPK to the bucket of the black tub clay that already had 22% neph sye added did indeed jump the absorption from 1.5% to over 3%. The test tile was less shiny after …
Updates
I know it probably seems like I haven’t been working because I haven’t been posting. I have been working—it’s just the boring behind-the-scenes stuff. Since the disaster in April, where my clay got contaminated, I’ve …
More working with the silty clay
This is the batch I dug a few days ago and processed half of it to see if I can recreate the accidental perfect batch. I posted a few days ago. I kept it a …
Digging Clay
In my last post (the clay with 0.3% absorption at cone 9 oxidation), I mentioned it comes from a low spot on top of a hill. Well, here it is.
100% Local Clay Body
This clay comes from an odd low spot, on top of a hill on our land. Right out of the ground, it’s very silty and not plastic enough to throw, fires to above cone 8. …