29.8.2017 muddytales

Never-ending cycle

One thing I love about clay is its recyclability.

I can reuse my clay as many times as I want before it’s fired. Even if it has dried out I can transform it into plastic again. It’s really simple to do, the only things you need are some time, effort and muscle power. Here’s how I and my classmate Anna did it.

DAY 1

First we needed to break the dry clay lumps into smaller pieces. We made it happen with some good old hammers and raw girl power! And the reason for pulverizing the clay lumps was that the water could dissolve the clay back to mud sooner that way – start the cycle over once again.

After we had enough crushed bits we filled an old dough machine’s basin halfway with it. Filling it up with any more clay would cause the mixture to pour over in the mixing phase. Lastly we hosed water in the basin to cover the clay bits under water. We left the mixture to soften up overnight.

DAY 2

Magically the dry clay bits had turned into sticky mud overnight. So it was time to turn the merry old dough machine on. It took about 3 hours for it to knead the mud into soft clay. Occasionally one of us needed to checkon the kneading process and clean the sides of the basin – to make sure that the mud dough was evenly mixed.

After the clay was thoroughly mixed we moved it onto plaster slabs. This allowed the excessive water to soak into the plaster by making our clay responsive and less sticky – more easier to coax into forms.

We left the slabs to do their job overnight and covered them with plastic sheets to prevent the clay from drying out too much.

day 3

Finally it was time to split, weight, wedge and bag our clay. It’s important to wedge the clay well – it helps to even out the texture and getting rid of air pockets.

This part was the one which left us sweaty after wedging about 60 kg of stoneware clay. We tightly bagged our clay into 10 kg bags for easier storage. And it was important to get all the air out of the bags to preempt the clay’s premature solidification.