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 …
Category: Wild Clay
Wild Clay aka local or dug clay post related to finding, processing and testing
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 …
Well some progress…and some disappointment…
Yesterday, I completed a cone 6 firing with mixed results. The clay from the big tub, which tested at 1.5% absorption but looked shiny, slumped badly. I had been afraid of that. I conducted a …
Moving back to cone 6
After trying working with my deep red clay at cone 9/10, I am moving back to cone 6. At least for the time being. I knew when I moved to cone 9/10 that I might …
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. …