clay production - cutting off expences

wow.... big request.

what product do you want to make? and a classic business plan is to do what you know, not what other people may tell you to do.

take a community college class for basic exposure to the clay-pottery world. decide what you want to make, and the required materials will become more obvious.

see ya

steve

steve graber

I would recommend finding a ceramic supplier near you and pricing everything out. It is better to buy locally then to deal with expensive shipping rates.

I have no idea, what all you need to process your own clay, but my feeling is that it is not worthwhile to invest in all that. If you have local clay available, it is probably quite cheap and for the money you would spend on the machinery you could probably buy clay for years and years to come. I buy clay locally and it is dirtcheap.

Monika

My clay preparation equipment consists of:

A couple of plastic Bins

a large paint stirrer on an electric drill

And 2 slightly tapered *Trouser legs* made out of non-organic material and the means to hang them up.

Clay material is dried out, mixed with lots of water and a cupful of Cider Vinegar (to speed up souring), sieved if necessary (40 mesh), poured into the Trouser legs and hung up to dry. When the clay feels a bit on the dry side on the outside it is a bit soft on the inside, so wedging it will even it up for use. It will also, thanks to the Cider Vinegar, be VERY plastic and excellent to use.

Total cost: not a lot!

I rest my case!

Steve Bath UK

Thanks Steve, that is exactly what I have on my mind. I will try your approach, and with time perhaps buy some machinery. One more question for you: Where do you find it and what kind is that clay?

In my case, clay is in deposit nearby, but this is a clay used for brick production. I think it will be good enough, but perhaps I will need some good sieve.

Thanks again,

MJ

My process is similar to Steve's, with a couple of minor differences: First, I was never able to simply dry out my garden clay and then add water to get it plastic again. There were always lumps that just never seemed to go away. I found I had to dry it, then smash it up with a hammer and let it dry some more (over the kiln, in my case).

I finally sieved the dry clay bits through an old window screen. This had the added advantage of removing pebbles and twigs. (Wear a mask!) Then it was added to water and reconstituted nicely.

One further point that may or may not affect you: My clay had lots of lime inclusions. Bits small enough to go through a window screen were still plenty big enough to cause lime pops. I ended up putting the slip through an 80 mesh sieve to solve that. (I've heard that a coarser mesh may be OK, but this worked for me.)

After all that, it's too precious to use for bodies! But it makes a dandy "Albany slip" glaze at cone 6.

Best regards,

Bob Masta dqatechATdaqartaDOTcom D A Q A R T A Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

In article , MJ writes

I use this technique for any clay body I use. I haven't used it for local clay for some years, but that was a local riverbank clay which I now use as a slip glaze. Currently I make up a mix from powdered ball clays and fine silica sand. There is a large bed of very refractory clay along the edge of the River Severn which is about 25 miles from here. A major brickworks use it, and I use their bricks to build my kilns. I've taken it well over 1300oC. I may well have a go at that in the near future, just for the fun of it.

Steve Bath UK

That's exactly what i mean, if you go to all the trouble to make this clay, it becomes more expensive than if you buy it from the people who already have all the equipment to do so on a large scale. You also have to consider the time you spend, which is probably better used to make and sell pots, than to prepare your own clay. It sounds very romantic, but is not really cost efficient? They have the knowhow and the equipment, we know how to make pots. (If i want to sew a dress, i am not going into spinning and weaving, i buy fabric and leave the spinning and weaving to those who know how to do that.) If you make a dandy Albany slip out of it, more power to you. That's great.

Monika

And any pot I make is far more expensive than what I can get from corning. There is always down time in the studio when something like this can be done. I just love the process itself. It really isn't that different from recycling your unused clay only more fun because of the adventure involved. Turns out there are also people that love to spin and weave the material they used for making a piece of clothing more than doing the sewing (I really like weaving and dread sewing). In pottery it is the entire process I love - from wedging huge piles of clay on a cement slab by walking on it to opening the kiln at the end of a firing.