The Best Way to Improve Your Wild Clay
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- čas přidán 3. 08. 2024
- I get the same question often, "I have found some clay but it has problems, how can I improve it?" There are some ways to improve clay but my best advice is to keep looking until you find a clay with better working properties.
#wildclay #nativeclay #primitivepottery
\\ Lots more information including video based lessons are available on my website at ancientpottery.how
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Great relationship advice. Thanks Andy.
Thank you Andy for facilitating the knowledge of an art from the past I hope your teachings bring you happiness like your videos have brought me and the knowledge to spread this to others
You are welcome and thank you.
Thanks, I found some clay right near my house but have been having some problems with it. I was starting to think was me but now I know not all clay is equal. Time to go hunting.
You are welcome. Let me know how your clay hunting goes.
Just what I needed to hear today! Thank you!
You are so welcome!
Glad you're back, I have recently found you, and spent the last few weeks diving into your archive of videos! Thank you for making them, they have been so helpful in plating with the clay I have locally. Thank you! From Niagara region in Ontario, Canada. The clay here is from the dry creek sides, on the Niagara escarpment along the Bruce Trail. It is grey, but when fired in the fire pit outside turns orange-ish :)
Thanks! I'm glad I can help.
Thanks, Andy! I've been working with a lot of wild clay in the past few weeks. Got that corn grinder in the mail. Thanks for all your help and inspiration, and good luck on your trail!
You are welcome. Wishing you success with your clay.
Hi Andy, ty for your videos. The info. you're sharing really is helpful.
Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for putting up a video like this!! Very helpful!!
Thanks for the encouragement.
Andy,
You are a treasure. You have more teaching skill than anyone I’ve seen! And you’re willing to share what you know instead of preaching. I’m going back to our little lake near Yuma and find more clay thanks to you.
Thank you Andy, I always appreciate your knowledge.
My pleasure!
Nice to see a you are back at it.
Thanks.
Good to see you back in action...great video...I may have found a clay that needs no temper, fires well and has a wonderful buff color...one test pot attests to that....ever good Thanks
That sounds great, you may have a keeper there. Keep up the good work.
11:10-11:30 is good relationship advice andy!
As everytime....very good content. I love the way you do it !
Thank you so much 😀
Great video... I'm a soils technician myself seen a lot of clays and even recognized some of the areas in your videos. I'm currently working just outside of Black Mesa right across the street from you probably know but we have a bunch of there dark brown clay in our road excavation going to give it a try. Seems like it probably works for the ancients!
Adam, I don't know where "Black Mesa" is that is near me in Tucson. I know of one up on the Navajo Reservation, is that where you are working?
@@AncientPottery black Mesa is just outside of Kayenta on the Navajo reservation. The National Park is right across the street. There are actually ancient Anasazi Ruins within a hundred yards really really neat place
@@adamfox4765 Oh yes, I have been there. There are some very high quality clays on Black Mesa. I got to go clay collecting on the Hopi Reservation last year with a Hopi friend of mine. They have Arizona's best clays.
I have a question! I live in Oregon in the hills west of Portland. I have found 3-4 different kinds of clay near and in my creek- we are in a mountain but have a wetland area with lots of springs. How do I figure out which kind of clays they are? The one in the wetlandish area is a nice yellow ocreish clay that is very viscous and sticks together. At the creek there is a brown clay, a grey clay in the creek and just above and then there are these red clay rocks embedded in the gray that break down into a terracottalike color.
Hello i just read your comment and a question come to me. Is possible to analyze a soil to know what kind of minerals and organic things it have? And is possible to know the age that they came from? I would like to know what kind of animals the organic part of the soil is made of. Is this possible through any laboratory study?
Great content. Thank you
I want to apologize..things used to be easy for me to pick up. Guess I have gotten lazy and mean in my old age. I didn’t want to do the leg work/mistakes and am jealous of your knowledge. I did do a few positive things today..finally found some clay, don’t know how good yet. I started a small kiln, after 3 start ups that weren’t right. You put a lot of information out thank you 🙏 oh btw.. your pottery is beautiful
Thanks Andy, solid information to consider.
I hope your travels are going well:)
Cheers
Ps: loved your Romsn kiln video over at wild clay facebook.
Thanks Peter. The Roman kiln was not my video but my friend Graham Taylor. The video is linked below in case anyone is interested. czcams.com/video/44SDWfGcsG4/video.html
I’ve been scouring the internet for answers… I should have known you would be the most help
Glad to help!
Sometimes we find a clay and we want to bend it to work for our ideas instead of using the clay for its own properties. Like a red clay high in iron that we try to fire to cone 6. It is a waste of time to fix it... make some nice pots and sculptute at cone 05, and find another clay if you want stoneware!
That is another way of looking at it, the clay is what it is.
Great stuff. Here in the UK, we don't have the same ease of access to places to dig clay, but I hope it's still possible. I'm a complete beginner and finding your videos very helpful, thanks.
I have never been to the UK but I think there may still be plenty off places to look for clay. How about road sides, the edge of farmers fields, old quarries, construction sites?
@@AncientPottery I'm sure you're right. It's just a matter of getting out and looking. I'm checking out geological maps and there are helpful old place names, too, like Brickfield Lane and Claybrooke amongst many.
Great video!👍
Thank you! 👍
HI, I did read through comments before posting a questions, because this vid title indicates the discussion will be about poor quality clay. If I had the clay that you are all talking about I would feel like a queen. You're all talking about clay that has TOO much plasticity. What happens when there is the opposite? I have too much sand in my clay. Hardly NO PLASTICICITY! I have lost all hope at this point because no one is talking about this. The temper, naturally. I found poor clay quality that has sand it it that won't filter out using a coffee filter like the other clay I collect two weeks ago did. I dont know what else to do. I put it through the seive a millions times until I got out the gravel and pebbles. Now it's a mix of sand and clay and I cannot separate them! So, I had to combine my paper meche & flour (and elmer's glue) clay to function.
The whole point of this video was that not all clay is usable for making pottery and that sometimes the best advice is to move on and find a better source. If your clay isn't working for you, look for a better place to dig your clay.
I know this probably defeats the purpose of the video but if it helps i do really minimal sifting when i process clay and let physics do most of the work. Sand and gravel is heavier and bigger than clay and will immediately sink to the bottom. Pour that between two containers and give it a good mix and let it sit for a second before you pour and rinse the containers before you pour back in, but that basically gets the sand out
Summers are brutal down there. Stay in the cool!
They sure are, and this summer has been worst than most. Thanks.
As always, your videos are enjoyable to watch! (Keep up the good work!!) You might make another episode that delves into more depth about the technologies to modify properties of clays one may like for one reason, but need to modify for another (though the effects of changing temper amount is covered partially in this one), especially given that the various cultures we are trying to emulate tended to choose different clays and tempers for different types of pottery (e.g. cooking vs. decorated) based on suitability of structure and aesthetics for the intended use of the final product. Some examples could be tied in with discussion of the archaeological examples.
Thanks William. This video is obviously more for the artist working with native clay and less about experimental archaeology. Many more variables would be included in choosing a clay source to match an ancient pottery type than are discussed here. I have made a few videos on that subject and will cover it again soon, you might enjoy this one if you haven't seen it already czcams.com/video/vPLyKHt8s40/video.html
Hi Andy, first of all, thanks for your videos and effort to do it! I have, close to the place I live, a reddish clay just like this one you show and I'd really wanna work with it, not for any attachment but just for local resources. I'm grinding it, watering, ..., and then I'd like to use a certain cloth mesh to remove the excess of water. coming from silk screen arts we have several different polyesters meshes(treads by inch). in case you know about, which would work better because i don't think cotton is a good choice, please let me know. thanks again, Haro
Whatever works best for you is fine. I have had decent success with cotton but I suppose any fabric woven tightly enough will work. I generally do not wet process my clay, I dry process so no need to remove water. See this video for a comparison of these different methods czcams.com/video/ntn2-Le4DB8/video.html
So what happens if you blend the floppy first claypit stuff with the short 2nd claypit stuff ? Have you tried adding bentonite cat litter for plasticity, or a little paper pulp, they often can make quite a difference. Levigation and elutration can be speeded up by using aluminium sulphate, and a dash of milk as a flocculant (or comercial polyanionic flocculant and aluminium sulphate ) to drop the clay floc out of the water, so you can skip some of the more teedious dewatering steps.
Yes, mixing clays is a possibility and I have done some of that in the past. Not a bad option that deserved to have been mentioned in this video. Cat litter, man I'm not that hard up for bentonite, I know where I can dig my own if I need. I am trying to use only natural materials in my clay but I do appreciate your advice here. Thanks.
Ok, im divorcing my husband.
Hi Andy love your channel! I’ve been getting into harvesting wild clay. I have been using iron oxides to color my clay by kneading them in, could this also double as a temper?? Thanks!!
I think that is a possibility but I have never tried it. Mostly because I never have oxides in such quantities. I assume you are buying the oxides if you have so much that you can mix with clay.
I have a great deal of clay choice where I live. There are white clays full of sand, and purple clays at high elevation. While I have made small figures and things with the purple clay I have never fired it. I am wondering if there is any safer way to fire without adding sand because I don't want to change the color. I understand that there is more risk in not cutting the clay, but I was wondering there were ways to reduce that risk. Like firing it gradually or letting it dry longer?
Thanks so much for sharing your expertise. I usually work with metal and enamel, so I’m wandering outside my lane here, but I’d like to try my hand at making some basic ollas for irrigation this summer. My kiln is too small to fire a vessel this large, so I’ll be attempting to pit fire. Any advice on what type of porous clay would work well for this application?
Use a low fire clay and add plenty of temper to help it withstand the thermal shock of outdoor firings. You can do it. Check out my videos on outdoor firing and think about taking my outdoor pottery firing masterclass ancientpottery.how/courses/open-above-ground-pottery-firing/
@@AncientPottery will do! Thanks again
I can't wait for the ground to thaw so I can get out there and find me some clay. There's LOTS of it around here, in fact we have a county called Clay. lol
I think I can find me some good stuff.
Sometimes those names are there for a very good reason. Some of the best clays I collect here in Arizona come from near the community of "Clay Springs".
But i really enjoyed this so im subscribing.
Yay, thank you!
I am a beginner and I have picked up some East Tennessee Red Dirt next to the lake. I wet it and it becomes tacky and moldable.
My question is how much do I need to process it or is it ready to add Tempur and began to make simple pottery? I would like to teach my Grandchildren.
Thanks Andy. I'm throwing out 3 buckets of my home clay. It's crap. How do I know. Well, I started working clay by using commercial "Wally's" and I rate it as a Cadillac. I just used my first wild clay spoken of by some in our Ancient Potters group (Pima Brown). I rate it as a Chevrolet. My home clay rates more like an old skateboard with metal wheels. Just not worth it. I do have one clay here on my proterty to try. Its hard like a rock and in very flat pieces. I'll break it up, grind it and do a wet test like you show here. If it's the same... I'll be looking for new clay around here when the snow and frozen water leaves the ground. How would you rate Pima Brown compared to the clay you mention here? Also how do you rate Industrial Park clay. I'm looking for a way to take my very limited experience and associate it with good or great clay. Thanks Andy.
Pima Brown is probably a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. I haven't really used Industrial Park very much but I know a lot of people love it. I hope to do some clay exploration in Montana this summer.
If I process my own clay from dirt how do I know how much temper to add.
Hello.. thank you for your work.. I am in the middle of moving to the Benson area and am really looking forward to living in Arizona and learning clay! Was the first clay you tested good or bad? Thank you..blessings!
The first clay is okay but lacks good wet strength although it is usable. The second, which is in Benson is also okay but not great. Send me an email via my website ancientpottery.how and I will send you a couple good places to dig clay near Benson.
I don't have transportation so I can't look anywhere else but immediately around where I live and the clay cracks too much as I'm molding it, is there something I could do to it to make it more workable?
Your clay is lacking in plasticity. You could try purifying it by levigation and see if that helps. If it does not you are out of luck. czcams.com/video/nSFb36fDrOM/video.html
To me, the font looked like it said “wild Gay” and clicked instantly. The top comment said she was divorcing her husband and I thought found gold. 😅
I have a question why is my clay start popping when I put on fire?
i wonder if you put 10# of each in the cement mixer, what would come out?
Let me know when you get that experiment done
Perhaps a stupid question to someone in the middle of the desert... But have you worked with marine clay or know of anyone who has/does? I keep finding this lovely blue clay on the beaches of florida, but I can't find anyone on the internet talking about it much at all. Only one PDF of a study that seems to give it a poor evaluation, and my own experiments have been unsuccessful.
We have ancient marine clays in northern Arizona that were laid down in a sea millions of years ago. Just dig a little up and try making something with it, that's the only way to know if it is any good.
All the clay I bring home from the wild comes in huge compressed clumps from the brook.
Patricia Cooper I would dry it out and grind it up.
@@AncientPottery I have a bucket ready to grind. I bought a corn grinder this year for grains and going to use it. I also bought ground oyster shell for temper seems to need a little bit.
What is your class name so I can join
All of my classes are listed on my website here ancientpottery.how/classes/
Not sure if this video is actually about clay or advice about how to find the right woman ;)
Uh.... clay. Although I suppose the same advice could be successfully applied to many aspects of life.
please, share your ideas and I'll subscribe your channel. :)
How could i find clay from a forest
Pretty much the same. Look at stream banks and road cuts
@@AncientPottery thanks
I was trying to wet process some local clay and it isn’t really settling so I have basically no clear water on the top to pour off even after 24 hours of rest any suggestions??
I have had this experience a couple times. I have been told that it can be caused by the PH of your clay. Try pouring some vinegar in, but if that doesn’t help you will need to wait for it to evaporate.
Andy Ward's Ancient Pottery sweet thank you very much
After I clean clay from the brook I pour it into a cotton tight weave pillow case and tie it to the back of a lawn chair and let it drip. Clay stays in the bag and water drips out and I check consistency for several days until it's ready. Then transfer to a plastic bag... Hope this helps.
Patricia Cooper Thank you! I have one hanging and two more settling, now one with vinegar haha.
@@keithreynolds88kr I have one hanging now, third day and almost ready. Going to put it aside and gather more clay and process until it gets too cold in Vermont. Then I get to play with it all winter and fire it in the spring by the brook when I go trout fishing with Dog the Dingo 🐾🐾. Also looking into bottling it up and selling it to tourist for mud mask. Almost 64 I might just process enough for the rest of my lifetime, 20 more years is my goal 🤣
Can you legally take the clay? Have you looked into this? What is common practice?
Yes. Lots of places you can legally collect clay, I talk a little about it in this video czcams.com/video/EB55tMhH2EE/video.html
I would think the only legal issues related to collecting your own clay would have to do with scale. If you’re taking a bucket full of dirt from a random area, nobody (except maybe “big clay”) would take issue. But using a backhoe on a hill you don’t own to make tons of clay is a different story.
Granted, I know that the greed and stupidity of modern man is nigh limitless, so it might be illegal to collect (or dump) dirt in some places.
Three dislikers are afraid to get their hands dirty.
Ha ha, true.
@AncientPottery I think they accidentally hit the wrong 👍
Did not answer the question at all
Thanks. My white clay slips are just watered down white clay, I have several different sources around the southwest. Maybe this video will help you czcams.com/video/FGj-hyKZ8eM/video.html
I'm not sure what the purpose of this video was. You took over twelve minutes to tell us to move on and not use substandard clay, not how to improve what we have like the title suggests. For some of us, the reason we do this is to discover how ancient potters who lived in the area we live used what they had, and didn't have the luxury of getting into their pickup truck and driving around looking for a better source.
My videos are not all about how the ancients lived, although many are. Some of them are just about how modern people can make use of natural materials to make pottery. In that regard I also encourage people to use the internet to find materials and to learn, which is something else the ancients would never have done. But I am sorry this video fell short for you. I am doing my best to appeal to as broad an audience as I can so that I can make a living at this. I appreciate your viewership and comments.
👏@@AncientPottery