Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: clay

You know how I love free clay!
Okay, so sure I needed to do some physical labor to get it done, but it was well worth it. So I took my stoneware scraps, dried them, smashed them up and then soaked them in a big tub. After awhile, you can take the re-hydrated clay out of the bin and place it on a large plaster bat to help suck the moisture out. I’ve been trying to judge the moisture level of my pile of reclaim. It always dries out faster on the outside, and stays gooier on the inside. Tonight was the night.

So I carefully took the clay off the plaster bat in batches. Then did several sliced layer towers to help homogenize the clay. Some more pounding, slicing, stacking, pounding, stacking, slicing, and so forth.

By the time I finished reconstituting the clay, I had it all packed & bagged… and it turned out to be a 151.5 pounds of FREE clay!!! It’s not fully wedged at this point, but it will set up in the plastic bags. When I get ready to use it, I will do the full wedging then.

2 Comments

May 30th, 2014

151.5 pounds! You make me want to go reclaim some clay.

Sally

June 1st, 2014

It makes good sense to recycle. And even a large trash can full of water to “wash down” gear, tools, bats, etc can lead to a pile of clay matter in the bottom of the can.
Explain THAT to the IRS, next time.

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