You Can Find Clay Anywhere - Even In Montana!
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- čas přidán 24. 06. 2023
- In which I go hunting for wild clay in the wilds of Montana and strike gold!
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Ever since you've taught me, through videos, how to find wild clay, I literally see it everywhere! I even annoy my family with it - shouting out "clay" every time we pass some 😂
maybe i am unlucky
I can't find clay anywhere
Yeah me too, sometimes I point out clay in the most ridiculous places where it might even be dangerous to try to collect any. Thanks.
@@Lovelybudgieswithme have you checked a day or two after a good rain? If there's an area with standing water, when the rest has dried up, that's a good area to check.
@@Lovelybudgieswithme you can also do an internet search for geological surveys for your area. That will show you good areas to search as well.
I am the gollum of clay,... my precious!!!!
The level of dirt nerdiness is inspiring
I live in St. Ignatius, Montana, in the far western part of the state. I have a creek that runs through my property and man do I have a nice band of aluvial clay and another spot that is older and dryer. Yes, there is clay in Montana. There are potters and even a shirt company that dyes their t shirts with the red and bronze colored clay from here in Montana.
I went up to Helena last week and looked around at Archie Bray. There is quite a rich tradition of pottery in this state.
Found mine by chance in the back yard in roundup Montana and there’s tons of it! My son is making himself a hobbit house and I noticed the blue chunks when he was digging steps up the hill to his little hobbit home! I had to promise him I wouldn’t compromise it when I dig for clay lol
That's cool.
I found blue clay in my backyard near our pond. Blue clay is what the Catawbas have always used to make their pottery.
Cool
Lucky you!
Clay is everywhere , quality of it , for potery is another matter .
True. But keep looking and you can find that truly exceptional clay.
Definately
This has been very informative! I live up in the mountains but in a dense forest. So its rather wet, humid, and not too many opportunities to find anything sandy but definitely have some rocky places! I hope to find something like this and I hope to one day make primitive pottery. Thanks to your channel, I've discovered something new I wanted to try and get into!
Thanks, I am glad to have helped you. Sometimes clay can even be found in the mountains.
I live in Missoula and was told the Ninemile Valley has clay so pure the University of Montana used it back when they had a kiln on campus. I once helped a friend connect a waterline to a wellhead there and can attest the chunks we pulled from that trench looked like they could easily been thrown directly onto the potters wheel (except now I know you must add 20% non-plastic).
Wow Montana is full of clay! Who knew?
(I've never before seen you put in a clip for comic effect. That was awesome. LOL)
Great video and Adventure as always!
Thanks Granny, we had a great time in Montana, I even got to fire some pottery.
Montanans knew, lol!
Totally agree!!!
❤❤❤
I found some clay at a local creek thanks to you. Crayfish holes showed me where to find the high purity clay
I moved to Miles City last year and found your channel a few months ago. This motivates me to get out and try finding that stuff, now I have no excuse not to build a little kiln on the driveway and start making pottery!
Awesome, first comment from someone in Miles City. Deadman Road and Strawberry Hill Recreation Area are both good places to find clay. Have fun.
@@AncientPotteryawesome. I live near miles city too. Very informative. Thanks.
Your videos are absolutely phenomenal, its obvious how much time and care you put into them. I hope you never stop!
Thanks
Good Day Andy,Hope you made it back home safely, and hope you got to see your Son,Bless you Andy..
he's my favourite youtuber about pottery ❤
We have had a wonderful time with the kids and will start back soon. Thanks!
@@Lovelybudgieswithme you can join his pottery class here in Tucson and actually learn from him/work with him..I'm planning on this soon as possible
@@AncientPottery ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Very educational. Thx. 👍👍👍👍👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
Always a great video. Hope your time was great!!!
Thanks, I will be back!
Howdy Andy ! Another great informative video , I would’ve been tempted to try that gray-clay to see if it would fire a white color, Yu made me laugh out loud w/that Oh Brother Where Art thou , clip !
I got to fire some Montana clays on Thursday and they all went sort of tan. I have been told that is pretty common here.
This is hilarious! I just subscribed and watched quite a few of your videos. Love them and you btw! Thank you! And I’m in MT looking for clay😂
Awesome! Thank you!
Thank you, I agree.
Of course we have tons of RED clay in Alabama, but there’s also dark gray and creamy gold clays that are nice to work with and fire beautifully. I also use fired mussel shells (freshwater) for great temper. Come on over.
I keep hearing about all the good red clay in the south. I need to plan a trip.
how can I find clay am I just unlucky
The state I live in has LOTS of clay...but no sand. One state over, closer to the Atlantic, lots of sand but almost no clay. However, this was a very interesting look at different states and different techniques. Might be worthwhile making a road trip now and then just looking for clay in different places.
Good video!
Thanks!
What a fun educational video! I live over by Butte, MT.
Thanks. I was over that way last week visiting a friend in Helena.
When I grew up near Miles Cuty there was a clay called gumbo. It was impossible to drive on - just like grease. Nice video.
Thanks Wes. There is an 80 pound gumbo ball found on a cows foot in the local museum.
Nice boots.
Thanks, Nicks handmade boots.
Another informative video that I appreciate :)
Im currently grinding clay i wet processed then dried. Also currently drying dug up clay and going to try to dry process. The issue with ohio is the clay that i dig is already wet.
Thank you. Some day I want to make a clay video about finding clay in the east where it is wetter and there is more vegetation on the ground.
@@AncientPottery would you like me to message you?
@@mikkiland no, it won’t be until probably next year, my schedule is pretty full. Thanks though
@@AncientPottery okay let me know if I can help, I live in Ohio where the clay most of the time is wet
😎 👍🏼
I live pretty much on the opposite side of the state, in the Flathead Valley and we have so much clay here! I've always been curious how it would look after being fired
If I can find clay in Florida you can find clay anywhere. Granted I have to search hard typically river banks and there's a few limestone caves (sinkholes) that have clay, but wow I have to dig to find the good stuff!
Sometimes people can’t believe that there is good clay in Florida but it’s there.
you can find clay I am just a loser at it 😢
@@AncientPottery It's mostly inland away from the coasts. And it gets harder to find south of Tampa.
@@Lovelybudgieswithme You have to get out in the woods and it requires a fair amount of digging.
Edit: bring lots of bug spray!!!
This is the perfect combination of education and enjoyment! Thanks for bringing us a political free zone to be ancient potters! That Montana clay looks just like Rio Puerco clay... Was there any selanite sparkling in the white layer below? I have used clay that looks just like that and it makes a mineral deposit of small crystals on the surface when it is dry. I am assuming selanite.. they burnish in well and the pottery fires very hard. Great video, Sir!
I didn't notice any selenite crystals but that doesn't mean they weren't there, it was the kind of material I am used to seeing them in. Yes, it does remind me a lot of the clays in northern Arizona and New Mexico. There is yellow and grey clay and layers of coal just like that area. I wonder if they are geologically similar formations.
Great initiation to clay collecting! I wouldn't be too optimistic though: Montana and Arizona are both at least partly in the Western Interior Seaway of Northern America, which from the end of the Mesozoic period has yielded those wonderfull dinosaur fossils dug out in the 19th century which must often coincide with the good clay layers. So the geology may not be that different between the two states - it is like you have moved further north in roughly the same geological layers. In Northern Sweden much of the clay is buried under sand because of the steady land uplift and river deltas which have been wandering always further towards the coast (I still collect it on construction sites and it is terrible). In Greek Macedonia clay is very rare around the archaeological site I am working with: it is a stony erroded landscape, so I collect it along rivers where it is layed down in pools in periods of draught, sometimes it has cow dung trampled into it (I collect it anyway, the smell goes away if you mix it with sand and let it stay one year, but still smells if you forgot to mix it with sand). So I am still envious of your clean Arizonian clays and geology 😃!!
That's another thing to consider, many ancient potters didn't have the luxury of using great clay, they used whatever was near the village and often that was pretty bad. Today with automobiles we can drive much farther in search of better clays. And yes, the geology here did remind me quite a bit of that in northern Arizona, thanks for the geology lesson.
if there is a river, and dirt, there is clay. only example i could think where clay might be hard to find is a place like the alps, where there is rivers but surrounded by rocks and the water meeting the sea before it can process the rocks and materials into clay.
Hmm that don't look like Arizona to me! Haha, wow that hill of yellow ochre, that looked like some good stuff there! This was a fun video to watch with all the different scenery and clays.
Thanks Will. It kind of reminded me of some of your videos as I was editing it. It's fun country to explore, now I am looking forward to getting back and doing more videos in Arizona.
You talk about using a gourd to make a tool for smoothing inside and outside of of your pottery. I saw a CZcams video made by a Navajo. He used a ball canning ring to scrap to smooth the inside of his pot. I have heard you telling your viewer to use what they have available in their homes like spoons. Just thought I'd pass it on.
Yes I have seen that used before, some Pueblo potters use the same.
There is clay in Minnesota and Wisconsin it is just much harder to find and everything is covered in vegetation
Montana and Arizona both have 30 million acers of public land.
Montana as a much larger state has a smaller percentage of public land than Arizona.
I live in Alberta and here clay isn't rare, it's so common it's a nuisance. In a lot of places there's only a few inches of topsoil on the ground before you hit solid layers of this pastel brown clay that makes any kind of digging a nightmare. I've wondered how useful it would be for pottery, maybe i'll give it a try this summer!
I have a friend up near Edmonton who has had trouble finding clay, but Plainsman makes commercial clay in Medicine Hat, so I guess there must be some good stuff up there.
how can iron oxide be yellow I have only heard about red and black
Iron hydroxide to be precise. Look up limonite.
I've been watching your videos and I tried to wet process some clay but It always turns out dirty, even though I sifted it many times what can I do?
where is this colour list
Question: if you add sand as temper so the clay can withstand firing, why is silt bad?
Unclear. I think technically since silt is "non-plastic material" is might work as temper, but a silty clay may just have far too much of it. Some experiments would be needed to properly answer your question.
Do you put a piece of earth into a glass of water and stirr?
so after that you can see how many clay are in there ? When I make that I can 3 elements: clay, lime and sand.
So I can get the pure clay and after that I mix with horse menure.
No, I don't usually do that. I can get a pretty good idea just be feeling it between my fingers.
@@AncientPottery Doesn't the clay crack when it dries?
I observe that when a soil sample contains a lot of pure clay, then it cracks when it dries. Then I add sand and horse menure. I do tests until I find the exact percentages to stabilize the sample.
Same thing occur when I have to build an adobe house.
@@AncientPottery Doesn't the clay crack when it dries?
I observe that when a soil sample contains a lot of pure clay, then it cracks when it dries. Then I add sand and horse menure. I do tests until I find the exact percentages to stabilize the sample.
Same thing occur when I build an adobe house.
Hello andy ,you should rehydrate clay with oil
czcams.com/video/h9dYwE9YGN0/video.html
👍
Where is Clay in Chinyunyu, Zambia in Southern Africa using google Maps? I can’t seem to find any it’s so granite here
Granite can decompose to clay don't give up.
I watched a video of a guy process clay out of dirt from the side of a random road using water, a siv and a pillowcase. Clay is technically all over the place it would seam.
Truly
I know but it matter's that how the person is at recognizing clay
I went through about 50 gallons of soil in my backyard to get about half a gallon of clay. Unfortunately nature is all in the parks around here and they wont let us take anything from them
Try roadsides, the highway department is a huge land management agency that doesn't really care if you take some dirt.
What about clay you find when you dig?
I always use clay I find when I dig. What about it?
My problem isn't finding clay. It's finding useable clay. Most has too much silt which requires turning it into the consistency of a milkshake and letting it settle. After pouring off the water, I have to let the clay dry and then scrape off the silt. Then I have good clay. If I use it as is, then it will be brittle and make a poor pot. Unless you make it really thick. Which I have done.
I live in Arkansas and the clay is everywhere
Awesome
how close were you to that train derailment that is going on ?
172 miles downstream from there.
Florida???????
Yep
Wow! Never knew that! On it, thank you!
What type of low-grade clay would be good for making a mold to fill with concrete? I want to make a mold for a concrete chair, but better than one of those 5 gallon concrete bucket seats. Thank you.
Sorry I have no idea. I mostly make pottery with my clay.