Do you reclaim your clay? Shortly after I started at the studio, two of the guys were talking about it and it made perfect sense to me. Those pots-that-wouldn’t-be and trimmings can be used over, cool!
I am such a recycling nerd, it had me so happy. ?
Checking last visit, my buckets full of sludge which will one day will grow up into pots, mugs, trinket dishes needed a little attention. One bucket’s full and another half way there… today started a reclaim cycle for me.
With COVID Craziness, we have limited time at the studio. With time at a premium, it will be a cycle over a couple visits.
As a pottery noobie, I’m still working out the kinks to my process but there’s not much to it.
Generally, I’ll keep adding to a bucket clay from trimmings or settled clay from my throwing water. Every so often pouring off the water at the top. Usually once that bucket gets full, the reclaim festivities get started. This time, because we’re being COVID careful with our clay and activities in the studio, I have a full 4 gallon bucket and another 5 gallon that’s half full. So a bit more clay this time around.
My learning curve causes me to start with many balls of clay that don’t make it to the bisque kiln. Those abandoned forms get tossed into a different plastic bag. They may need just a bit of moisture management and wedging, not a complete rehydration.
Back to the bucket… The process starts with pouring out the water above the settled out clay. Then the remaining slop gets gently poured into one of our plaster forms. A plaster form will speed the process because it pulls out the water. Placing it in front of a fan helps too but since this cycle will be unattended, no fan this time.
Now… we wait.
And wait… and wait. Well, it depends on how much clay you’re reclaiming.
Today I poured as much as I could and left it on my shelf.
I’ll go back as the schedule permits for a quick check in. Once the clay is dry enough, a new clay bag is started. Once enough clay has been reclaimed, the wedging begins and then the clay is ultimately used to build new forms.
A couple things I wanted to mention:
- Everything I make right now is fired to cone 5/6 and that means all my clay can be mixed together.
Sometimes I separate the two clay colors I use now.If you’re using low/mid/high fire clays, be sure to keep like like firing targets together. - How do you know the clay is dry enough? I usually play with that. Because there are usually a couple rounds of drying out the clay in one bag, I use the first wedge to combine the rounds of clay and then tweak the moisture as needed.
- You may want to keep separate reclaim buckets for different clay colors.
- Before starting, be sure that any clay you’re reclaiming has had enough time to completely rehydrate. I’ll do another post peeling back the next layer of the reclaiming/recycling onion and the clay body.
For a detailed discussion of reclaiming/recycling visit this post by Jonathon Kaplan at the Ceramic Arts Network (and if you don’t belong, consider joining). This is the go-to organization for Ceramic Arts. They have many resources to help you navigate your clay journey including magazines (electronic & hard-copy), a blog and an active forum.
Check back as the process continues… Cheers!
Here I am checking back…
Knew when I poured out the sludgy slip that it might have been better to let it wait in the bucket for another week after pouring the excess water, but I wanted to press. So, this was a longer process than it probably needed to be. Sometimes lifes like that…
This pic is a day later and I added the remaining clay from the bucket.
Here’s on Monday (started on Friday) before mixing.
I took the clay, mixed it up, let it sit for a couple hours longer and then wedged it.
Let’s get to throwing… after I get a few pieces trimmed.
Peace.