From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 6
In the previous part, I showed how the clay is dewatered after sieving. Now we move on to mixing and testing. First, the water content of the clay is determined by drying a small sample …
Tag: dug clay
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 …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 4
This is the silty material after it has been sieved and most of the clay has been poured off. It hasn’t been fully washed yet, so there’s still some clay mixed in. At this stage, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …