After pulling my reclaim out of my orange reclaim bin, it was time to re-fill it with some more clay scraps. I’ve had these bags sitting in the corner of my studio for two months now… ever since my trip to Minnesota for the St. Croix River Valley Pottery Tour. And today was the day to get rid of them!

One of my pottery friends lives up in Minneapolis and for some reason chooses not to reclaim her own clay. Instead she bags it up… and luckily for me, it’s waiting for me to take each year when I’m up there for the pottery tour. Sure, it’s a lot of work… but I think it’s well worth it… FREE PORCELAIN?… I’m in!!!

So I dumped out the clay one bag at a time. And went after it with a rolling pin to break it all down to small pieces which will “dissolve” faster and create a smoother reclaim slurry.

But then I found a few bags that much larger chunks in them… so I had to pull out the big guns… and actually break it up with a hammer… before I could rolling pin it!!!

The finer the clay is pulverized, the smoother my reclaim will be… which kinda equates to less wedging later. So it behooves me to do the work upfront before it goes into the reclaim bin.

So now all of the porcelain scraps have been broken down and put into my bin… covered with water, and stirred up. It will sit in there for two weeks or so until I’m ready to pull out the reconstituted clay to put back on the plaster bat to dry it out. Sure, it’s a good amount of work… but FREE CLAY is FREE CLAY… and FREE PORCELAIN is even better!!

After weeks of slaking down, it was finally a good day to pull out my latest batch of reclaim clay. Lots of scraps, trimmings & dried clay bits all soaked down in my big orange bin… and now setting out on a large plaster bat. The clay will sit on the bat for a few days as it slowly absorbs the water and helps to dry out the clay. When the clay gets stiffer, there’s a LOT of wedging in my future! But I’m in… FREE CLAY is the best clay!!!

Cuteness in the reclaim buckets…
so many fun things popping up around Lillstreet these days!

After picking-up my new clay at Continental Clay…
I also took a little side trip to a friend’s pottery studio.
Lucky for me, she’s not a big fan of reclaiming her own clay?!
So I loaded several bags of dried porcelain scraps into my car
before heading home. WHOO-HOO!!!

Just break it up… add water… soak.. a little labor… FREE CLAY!!!

One of the “benefits” of being stuck in my studio all day yesterday while firing the soda kiln… is being able to get a lot of side odd projects done. Like turning out my latest batch of reclaimed clay… now sitting on a large plaster bat drying up until it’s good to wedge up and start over with some new “free” clay!!!

As seen on a shelf at Lillstreet… looks like Chuck is conducting some sort of science experiment in his clay bags?! I know it’s just an organic slimy mold growing in the bag… which will be wedged in making the clay more “plastic”… and will be burnt out during the bisque firing. No worries… perhaps a little off-putting… but also a fun little pottery petri dish!

So now that we’re in between class sessions at Lillstreet… looks like our clay monitors have some catching up to do! The class reclaim buckets are overflowing… in the best way possible! I love the precarious balance of that big pile.

You know my Summer Camp kids would never allow this to happen… as pressing the chunks through the metal grid lid is one of their favorite projects!

Just a few close-ups from my class demo where we introduced colored slips as a great opportunity for textures, patterns & surface decorating! Gooey spiral, chattering & squiggly fun!!!

The next “event” of The Pottery Olympics was to see who could roll the longest continuous coil using two pounds of clay. The rule was that if your coil breaks, you cannot squish is back together! You could keep rolling with what was left…as we were looking for the longest coil in 10 minutes!

After rolling, the team-mates were then challenged to make the tallest free-standing “tower” cylinder using the coil. And yes, we even’d out the playing field by making the tower builders all use the same length of coil. Turns out the big discussion was if the one in the center was indeed a “cylinder” or not?… your vote???

he first “event” of our Pottery Olympics last night was to have each team cut certain weights of clay off the big block. They had like nine different pieces to cut… but the twist was that they could NOT use a scale!!! They had to do it “logically”… or some tackled it “analytically”… but it was amazing how close they all got to the correct weights!

Which we did double-check with a scale before awarding points for first, second & third places!