How To Identify Clay in Nature 

The one guy that didn't like this video probably found a bunch of potters, digging for clay in his front yard, the day after this was released. 😆

What a super cool guy, simply teaching the world about self sufficiency and craftsmanship. Cheers to you bud 🤎

I went out clay hunting today. The creek I had my eye on was virtually inaccessible due to thick brush. Then I spotted a nearby irrigation ditch, bone dry...and it looked like the earth that the ditch-digger tossed up to the sides was clay. The bottom also looked like clay but was a little questionable in color. It was hard, but looked like the cracked clay; some was in odd shapes it had taken and dried. I gathered some and came home...felt good in the water. I've strained it (it had seashells in it because we live IN a prehistoric lake bed) and pillow-cased it and it's hanging. If it's clay, I've found a gold mine! lol

Thank you so much for addressing the signs of natural clay in a DRY environment. So many videos feature people reaching into a stream bed, grabbing a handful of clay and showing how to do a coil test. Some of us don't have a lot of water nearby!

I'm taking a ceramics class at my school, and I decided to look up some pottery RU-vidrs. I'm afraid I've become addicted to your channel... lol! Keep up the great work!

There’s this creek by my house that has veins of PURE gray clay! It even comes with a bit of sand mixed in!

Am I the only one that wants to hang out and run around the desert with this guy 😆 🤣 😂 Absolutely awesome 👌 👏 👍

Great video. You may also find gray clay on the sides of the rivers and streams. Clay sticks to your tools and is hard to wash off. Here you must be careful because darker, black colored sticky soil may be silver bearing soil, not a clay. Either way you win.

this video and channel is a such a blessing, clay is truly an incredible technology from nature

I am from (and still live) in New Mexico. I guess I’ve been looking at clay my whole life. It all looks so similar and very familiar to me now after seeing this. Can’t wait to get out and find me some. Thank you!

you are my favorite youtube channel hands down! your videos have helped me in so many ways , financially,spiritually and, reconnecting with art and nature. sometimes personally, being in nature isn’t enough for me to get out my head. now everytime i go out, it’s an adventure. thank you

I love your channel so much I enjoy creating art with clay so much for so long i was convinced that BUYING clay was the only way (and being honest i don't always have the possibility 💸) you opened my eyes! Not only that, but the idea of doing a little adventuring to find my own clay is amazing✨ Edit: I live in the Patagonia, and for a long time in ancient B.C. times a large portion of the land was completely under water I was living surrounded by clay!

The gist of this video is this: to find clay=look for craggily ground where waterbeds are/were. This was very informative and will help me survive in the future.

We fossil hunt at Wilson's Claypit in Grosvenor, TX. The clay is purple and green. Shades from lilac to aubergine and light sage to teal. As you drive to it you can see the purple and green hills of mined materials.

Hi, I live in Oregon. We had one of the wettest springs on record. It rained the first 3 weeks of June 2022, almost every day. The last two years were like living in California, much warmer & dryer than normal. Even got evacuated for fires in 2020. I love putting in a vegetable garden and it was just too wet to plant my tomatoes & zucchini in my garden, except for a couple raised beds. It was 92° yesterday. I was out trying to amend my soil in the garden so I could plant some of my tomato plants. On average I would get my garden tilled by Mothers Day. I was wanting to go no till this year. All this additional rain has made gardening nearly impossible. As I was digging yesterday preparing soil to plant 2.5 foot tall tomato plants the soil was still hard & wet as it only stopped raining about 4 days ago. When I cut in with my shovel, it reminded me of clay in my pottery class my Senior year of high school, several decades ago. I thought, add water to mix in this compost because It's so hot now the tomatoes need to keep hydrated or they might die in this heat. What a mess! Bad idea. We will see how hard it is today. Last year I had an area of my garden I didn't plant so I tilled in wood shavings as an experiment thinking after a year it would break down and loosen the clay soil, No sign of it, it disapeared. I add compost and composted steer & chicken manure to the holes I dig for tomatoes every year. This year the clay is so expanded from months of rain I've decided I need to start extracting some of the clay every year and making things out of it. I have lots of buckets now. It's going to be 98°+ today. So I don't know if I will get much done, but your video has given me a whole new perspective on my clay dilemma. If life gives you lemons you need to learn how to make lemonade right? Who knows I may have some fantastic clay here, I know I sure have a lot of it. My garden has almost no rocks, I removed the few it had over the last 20 years. Pottery was my favorite class in high school. The only class I got A+ all year. Happy Summer everyone! I'm a new subscriber, Thank you for your videos!

Andy, you really are just describing all the dirt in Oklahoma. Doing some research to find some natural clay to make some simple vessels as a hobby. Slowly finding out that I could likely dig a hole anywhere here in OK and find something usable.

you are a wonderful guy!! watching 4 videos of yours have solved my issues, thanks so much I have learned a lot!!🙏

these are supremely well-planned videos! i love your content, and i was really shocked to see you only have 79K subs. please keep releasing great videos like these!!

Man, this is amazing info. Thank You! Watched your other vid about processing wild clay too - I had no idea clay is simply defined by particle size!

i love your channel! just found you, and it gets me so excited to do some pottery. I grew up next to a river, and all our garden soil was extremly clay-y. i once tried making a little pot out of the garden soils just as it was, and fired it in the wood stove. it worked out, it had one crack, but otherwise held up, which for totally unprosessed clay with no added sand is pretty darn good. i gonna go visit my dad and steal a few buckets of dirt! :D

Thanks for this video, I was able to identify clay because of this! I'm going to try making something out of it now

I live in norway and i will for sure be trying this out next year when the frost is gone!

Thank you so much! Answered all my questions

if you want to know if your area had a body of water a long time ago you can look up paleogeography for the area to see what the map was like a long time ago. Also if your area has lots of limestone and sandstone.

I hope this man is appreciated cuz this right here is quality content

I live in East Tennessee and all our dirt is clay, thankful it's finally useful

Thank you for the guide. This really helps to know what to look for.

So happy I live around so much wet clay but also so happy that since I will live part time in a desert area in the next few years , I can now find clay there too❤

This video just helped me talk my husband into going on a clay hunting adventure here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia this weekend! Can't wait!!

Great video. Now I know where and how to look for clay!

Excellent video, as always! Thank you!!

Great video!

Great video, it was very informative, glad this randomly came up in my recommendations. I've Been thinking about getting into making my own clay for awhile now as I really want to try my hand at some sculpting but don't want to invest any money into it until I find out if I'm any good or not... came across your video tonight and after hearing about how clay can differ region to region I decided to run a quick search about finding clay in my area and discovered that the piedmont region of northwest Georgia where I'm from, is apparently famous for it's "red clay" also discovered that the dirt isn't Red everywhere else you go in the world..so that's neat. 😅 I remember being a little kid and visiting my aunt who lived down a long dirt road in the foothills of the smoky mnts and how my mom always warning me not to get into that "red clay mud" that made up the driveway cuz I'd ruin my clothes... I'd totally forgotten all about that until looking it up a earlier... Now the question is, will red clay be suitable for sculpting with? Maybe I'll find out while I'm off this weekend 😏

I live on red clay and rock (a small mountain in the Ozarks). I have to garden above the land in raised beds.

Thank you for the video Andy! I don't live in a dry region, I live in Pennsylvania with a lot of moisture but just the part where you talk about tire tracks etc was priceless for me. It's helped me identify the places on my property where I have clay. Fantastic. Thank you!

Great info, thanks for sharing

I love your clay videos ❤

I am 100% going to have to try this

Thank you so much.

Incredibly helpful!!

Super informative! Thank you!!

Thank you for this great in depth information 🙏

This video is Awsome! 😊

Thank you for this 🙂

thank you so much for this entire channel, but specifically the tip to try dry ponds and lake beds, i found some bluish gray clay just below the surface of my friend's pond, and it gets purer gray as i dig deeper! so excited to process and age some of it. at the moment i'm doing small things, just practicing, but soon enough i'll be making the big stuff! thank you again for inspiring me and giving me a strong foundation for this burgeoning passion for pottery in me!

made a list of a few places I can look! pretty sure I might have some good spots in my area

Excelente trabajo 👏

Great share, beautiful work. Lovely Voice and Excellent instructions. Thank you 🙏

So grateful ❤

So great! Thank you so much, gentle and connected to Nature knowledge you share with us. I appreciate your humanity in the way you show us this amazing activity called ancient pottery. Yeah! I will try to find mud when i get back in Canada and do a small fire! Thanks again

loved the video the songs were amazing too. Keep it up

Where I live in southcentral Pennsylvania, I am located next to a creek, and off the side of the creek there is an old water raceway cut into the ground that feeds water into an old flower mill that was turned into a house. In that raceway, there is so much water, silt, mud, and broken-down leaves that have been collected over many years, from flooding all the way back to colonial times. It's so deep that if you walk in it, you will get stuck and sink into it up to your arms. The water raceway never drys out, so every year a new layer is added from flooding. I have used it for making clay once, and I was surprised at how well it worked. I just threw a bucket in and let it sink, then dried it out, crushed it up into a fine powder to separate it from any of the decomposing leaves and sticks, and then added water to it. Also, right next to this location, 120 yards away, there used to be a native village, and it would not be surprising if they even used it for making pottery.

Oh my gosh. When I first saw the crackle ground, I was reminded of one of the empty lots from the neighborhood I grew up in. The cracks are deeper in this video though. Cool!

You had me at strata ❤

I lived in Costa Rica for a long time and I had a house with red/brown clay, but when we dug we found deposits of white clay that the locals make stuff with a little. When we had a big hole dug with a backhoe we found enough to surprise me. I also found a lot of fragments of old pottery shards from the indigenous people there. It was all brown.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful ideas to make some things nice again thanks ❤

In wet climate sides of roads are a great place to find clay

Thanks for the information and details!!! From Germany

Ey! I live in Arizona and wondered where exactly to find clay. This video is perfect for me!

I grew up in Willcox; dad was always teaching me of the history and geology of the area whenever we would be out hunting.

Thank you. I stopped the video and went outside on my property and was able to identify clay right away on my road and in various other places around the homestead.

We have literally hundreds of thousands of termite mounds on the surrounding plains here. Our village is built on clay, and so I'm wondering if these abandoned Termatoidae colonies would be suitable as pottery clay. I guess extracting and processing will determine that.

I now know how to find natural clay, thank you!

I live next to a huge green belt (large strip of fields, protected by English law) and these videos have helped me realise that the dirt there has a lot of clay in it. I noticed a huge patch of clay last year while on a bike ride, and recently realised that the dirt cracks a lot when the farmers don't till it for a while, and their truck tracks stay for months. Definitely tempted to pick some up on my next bike ride now

Great work Andy 👍🖐

In Illinois I would go to creeks to find pure grey clay. Sometimes you have to dig a bit. Other times you can find it in the creek banks

On the PNW so over saturation is typically the problem. Excellent videos with pratical info. Sub'ed♥️🇨🇦❤

Thanks finaly i know what to search

Wow your channel is so underrated! I can tell that you really love making videos and pottery. I hope you become more popular.

good advice

Awesome, thank you. Now i'm wondering if i have clay in my back yard! The adventure awaits :)

Thanks!

Thanks Ward. You're helping me really. Greetings from other side of the planet.

You my dude are awesome!!!!

It's really helpful. I didn't know that I have so much clay around..

great channel!

very interesting topic, great approach on the delivery of the content, good production value. really interesting video, Sir. Thank you very much for the effort you put into it, it really shows.

Thanks ❤

I find it in my backyard when I'm digging a hole for reason I live in Texas so its in abundance

We have alot of clay up here in Alberta/Sask, I'll have to try making my own low fired pots this summer and maybe do some vids on it, thanks for all the info on this subject!

Very nice video.. hope it will help to the pottery makers

Thank you for telling us about Identifying clay in Nature, when I have a chance to find clay in nature to identify here in my country. I do interest to know more about clay and making clay pots, mugs n others😀👍🙏

This is very informative thanks for the advice

thank you - on my land in Italy there area few types of clay depth - the blue layer is the strongest

Thank you Sir

Homie spent like 30 min hammering that lake. Bed for the clip love the dedication thank you for the information my guy

I found this video by accident and was surprised to see you at the Playa - I live on 5 acres in Hereford, AZ and the entire 5 acres is greasy, dark clay, with sand on the surface. Interesting stuff!

Thankyou

Aww man, all those years of my Mum cursing the chunks of pure grey clay in our back garden here in the UK - and I could have been using it? Fascinating stuff

Thanks love you ❤

I see I'm going to be watching your videos for some time to come.

Having taken pottery in college and then with job, household and kids I gave up on doing pottery, no time and no room or money for a wheel and kiln..... your videos are exciting! All I need now is to dig about a foot down in my back yard and see if that red clay would be any good😁

I LIKE YOUR PASSION . I DID SUB WHEN U SAT ON GROUND YOU GOT MY RESPECT

thanks

So excited to start clay hunting! Thank you!!!

Get the man to 100k!

Man you have me thinking now on how I can get clay together for adding to sand casting and other projects !

i don't no how I come here but intersting to see. good explained

Nice video. Those top layers of playas sure turn "clay like" when they get wet. Probably mostly clay and easier to harvest.

Super Informative. I have a question, where would I look in a forest area (I know you said you lived in Arizona but I was wondering if you had any tips, thanks!)