How To Wet Process Wild Clay 

If you like wet processing clay, that's great, I happen to think dry processing has many advantages. I spent years wet processing clay so I do have experience with both methods. Yes, it depends on the quality of the clay you dig, on your local weather and humidity and personal preference. If you would like to hear what advantages I think that dry processing has then check out my latest video about dry processing clay here - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-u6RlHSG4cY4.html

Back in India, my ceramist parents used fine Ganges clay for their terracotta studio pieces. It was very malleable, very fine, low firing clay. We used to dry the wet clay on plaster bats before kneading by hand and throwing on the wheel. One thing about clay, is if you let it sit wet in a bucket, some fermentation process happens slowly and it becomes more and more workable/ flexible. Nature takes its course. You might just want to soak it in buckets for a few months ahead of time and have a rotating cycle of Tub Soak, Plaster Bat dry, Knead, Use. Adding a bacteria called 'bacillus subtilus' ferments the clay and makes it more plastic with a stronger bond and smoother to knead. This is probably why clay along pond edges is so soft and slimy. Nicely broken down by the bacteria.

Couple ideas. I actually prefer wet processing because even though it's time consuming I don't find it very labor intensive. The first thing that I think will help you is ditching the pillowcase method and using a plaster bat instead. My clay isn't that liquid when I move it to the plaster, so I have a flat slab of plaster, but I bet you could make a plaster bowl or tray so you could pour the liquid clay in it. This wicks moisture out evenly from the clay, so it drys pretty evenly, and you don't loose any clay through the plaster. Second I wonder if you could weigh the dry clay before beginning processing and estimate the amount of temper needed. Then mix it in after straining out the rocks but but while the clay is still liquid, using the drill mixer. That way wedging is less labor intensive. Hope that helps!

Press your clay down to a cookie shape. Cut it like a pizza into four equal slices. Remove one slice and use it to make a sort of dam around the outside of the slice you removed. Fill that empty slice with your temper. That will give you a 4 to 1 ratio of temper to clay which is suppose to be just right.

I remember add a kid watching a video about native American communities in the South West processing clay themselves. They did it while the clay still has the texture of thick mud. In a cotton drop cloth, and mixed in the temper by kneading with their feet (think wine stomping) then allowed it to dry further in the drop cloth. It was a really significant batch of clay, enough to make pottery for the whole community.

I got a metal strainer, the oblong kind made to rest on the edges of your sink whilst you hull strawberries, wash potatoes, whatever. The mesh is heavy, but about the same size as window screen, maybe a little larger. I'll pour the clay (dry, if it's friable enough) through that to get out the larger pebbles and so forth. Bigger chunks I can then soak and run through the sieve, too. That sort of saves the first step in the levigation process. Then the process is pretty similar to yours, though the pillowcase is genius. You can probably save a lot of work by doing a few things...one, once you get it out of the pillowcase, put it in a plastic bag or covered bucket overnight. Osmosis and all that other stuff you learned in high school means that the water will migrate from the wetter parts to the drier, so that you aren't trying to work in those crumbles of dry clay. It gives you a nice, evenly moist clay body to wedge. Let the clay do the work, so you don't have to! Also, Andy, you are trying to wedge *way* too much clay at the same time. About the size of a loaf or a loaf and a half of bread is a good size, but if you have let the clay sit to even out the moisture you may even be able to skip that first wedging more than a shove or two to gauge how it is doing. It may seem like more work to break it up, but you aren't having to wrestle with all that weight. Give your arms a break! As far as temper goes---Metric-Man To The Rescue! One milliliter (1 ml) is a measure of volume equal to 1 cubic centimeter. (Many American rulers and kitchen measuring cups have both metric and Imperial--if yours don't, you can pick them up inexpensively anywhere that carries that sort of thing). Whack your clay into something as close to a cube as you can. Measure the length, width, and depth in centimeters, and then calculate the volume just like you would in Imperial. Therefore, a cube 10 x 10 x 10 cm = 1000 cubic centimeters. Because 1 cubic centimeter is equal to 1 ml, 1000 cubic cm=1000 ml. If you want to do a 4:1 ratio of clay to temper as Andy often does divide, the size of your clay block (1000) block by 4 (the ratio of clay you want). Result: 250. Use a metric measuring cup to scoop up 250 ml of temper, and you have your 4:1 ratio of clay to temper. Now for the wedging! Sprinkle some temper on the work surface and roll out your clay (break it into two if you have to to make it more manageable, and just use roughly half the temper on each half). Sprinkle more temper on top and roll it up like a jelly roll. Start at the short end of your roll, and roll it up into a cinnamon bun, and give it a few good wedges. If you split your clay, do the same with the other half. Then tear off softball-ish sized hunks of clay, roll into a ball, and throw them down on your work surface--hard! Throw again--square that thing off into a rough cube. Grab another and keep going. Let physics work for you--the force of the impact helps push the temper through the clay--besides, it's a good way to work off your frustrations! You can also stick a finger in the clay and pour a little temper in the hole, too, before you start lobbing softballs. Mix up your softball cubes so you have some from each lump of clay (cinnamon bun) you've worked to help even out any inconsistencies in the different batches of clay. Then repeat: give it a few quick wedges, sprinkle, roll out, sprinkle, jelly roll, cinnamon bun, a few quick wedges, softballs, cubes. How many times you have to repeat will depend on your clay, the moisture content, the amount of temper, the size of the temper, etc., but it's more efficient than you would think. When it all seems pretty homogenous, then split it into loaf-sized pieces, give them a good wedging, then combine the whole kit-and-kaboodle. This is the only time you'll have to be manhandling a large amount of clay, and by this time you're just evening out minor inconsistencies between the various loaves and making it even, so it shouldn't take too many shoves. A handful will be plenty. Voila! Lovely moist clay with even temper, ready to play with! I like to roll the clay into softball-ish sized balls again and store it in Authentic Ancient American Ziplock Bags. That way the moisture content stays consistent throughout, and one ball is a good size for a smaller pot or for a few coils on a larger pot. If the clay seems a little dry when you are sealing them up, sprinkle a few drops of water in before you seal it. Over a day or so (or longer) the clay will absorb it and even out the moisture levels again. I love your beautiful assistant/supervisor, too, Andy!

I've liked every video of yours that I have watched, and here's why. Not only do you show us the step by steps, 12:00 but you're also using your experience to speculate why things are behaving the way they are and that gives the viewer ideas for improving the overall process. Like + sub

I use a big piece of plaster of Paris that I molded over a very large stainless steel bowl. The plaster of Paris pulls the water out a lot quicker than draining it through a pillow case and there is no loss of clay.

I'm a hobby metal refiner, and when I want particles in a large quantity of water to settle I use a little bit of dish washing liquid. It forces any floating particles to settle. I've been watching your videos because I have excellent clay deposits in my yard, and I want to start working with it beyond mashing it with my feet on a tarp for making raised garden beds.

You should look into planting bags to dry your clay in. They're designed to hold soil in and let moisture out, and I used one when I processed clay and seemed to keep a majority of it, since the water leaking through was barely brown.

I'm binging your videos for my own experimentation with wild clay starting in a few days. Since i use commercial clay for my pots (for now!) i have to add the temper the wet way. I found that the faster method to add the temper is simply to break down the big ball of clay into small chunks, i just pinch small amounts off the ball until i've got a hill of chunks then I pour the temper over it with a bit of water. Kneed for a few minutes and thats it! I can do good quantities pretty fast. For my classes I just let the students do the tempering ;) with this method its not a lot of effort and everybody can do it. I do mostly schools so even children can do it. They learn one more step of the process and less work for me, win win!

I use old jeans. Cut the legs off and sew them up where I’ve cut them (like a long pillow case). I pour the processed clay in, tie it up and after hanging for a bit, I lay them down on an old pallet and turn once or twice a day. It works really well. Edit: when it’s dripping you don’t see much clay running out at all, so it might be worth a try. Can always pick up old jeans at a thrift store.

I would have never thought of doing that. We used that for grinding sausage on the farm, but I would have never thought of that. Wonderful. Andy thank you so much.

Phew. I was exhausted just watching all the work you did ;-) . Thanks for all your videos.

Love your videos, Andy. I haven’t looked through all 851 comments, but I’ve read many, and no one yet has mentioned stack and slam wedging. You take your mass of clay and cut it in half with a wire (vertically- top to bottom). Then throw the first half down, followed by the second half directly on top of it. Repeat that cut/throw/throw process several times and the clay will be very well mixed. If you add the temper in between the layers the first few times you throw the second half on the first, it will be mixed in easily. Also this method will save you a lot of work!! Thanks for all of the inspiration!

Thanks to your videos, I have made my own clay twice ❤ Thank you for sharing your knowledge! 😊

I prefer the wet method only because I believe the result is much purer clay, while many impurities float to the top, however, I don’t use the pillow case because 1. You lose clay, 2. Uneven drying, 3. Harder to knead the clay with temper, 4. I find it easier and quicker allowing the clay to dry in the sun at the bottom of the bucket simultaneously removing the top portion of water while it being easier to eyeball and mix temper while the clay is sludgy

Just discovered a nice light redish-orange clay pocket in my backyard and going to try the wet process. It's been a year now and im pretty sure you've probably improved the labours process. As a suggestion, running the clay through mechanical rollers should cut down the labor process significantly. Thanks for the content. 💯💚💯

Hi Andy, I love your channel, great information! I decided to comment on this video because of my experience with plaster and slip casting. I have done slip casting from plaster molds for some 30 odd years. In my opinion, the easiest way to turn "slip" into malleable clay is to pour the slip into a "mold" that has a shape that will be easy to work once it is in clay format. A plaster bowl will not work as well, it should be a large, flat rectangle shape and the plaster thickness on all sides and bottom should be the same thickness. You can easily make a form (size and shape of the volume of clay you wish to process), then build a 4 sided box that is 3 inches wider than the form on all 4 sides, and it should be taller than your form by 3 inches as well. Seal the form to a flat surface (I use clay to seal a wooden form to a sheet of acrylic that is sitting in a table), place the 4 sided box around your form and seal the 4 sides of the box to the acrylic (again, clay sealant for wooden box). Generally I am 50/50 mix plaster and water. Mix then, pour in liquid plaster to the top of your box and let it set. It would be best to not remove the box or form until the next day, but at least wait for it to go though it's heat cycle + 1 hr. Do not use any mold release of any kind (on the form or on the box) as this will inhibit the plaster's ability to wick away the water. Once set, the plaster will not stick very hard to the wooden form or box since the wood is malleable somewhat. I use wood screws to hold the box sides together so it is easy to remove. The form can be trickier to remove but it shouldn't be too hard (again no, none, nada mold release. it will take a long time for this mold to completely 100% dry but it is worth it's weight in gold once that has happened. Sitting out in the sun in your dry climate especially if it is windy, it should go a lot faster than most (maybe a week or 2). Do not use it before it has completely dried from the molding process. If you do, it will dramatically reduce the results. Once you have this, you should be able to pour your slip in where the form was and have usable, homogenously moist clay in a few hours at most. Add dry temper to dry clay at the % you want. It is clay, not rocket fuel. In my opinion the % precision is negligible. Mix with water with a drill, let it settle and drain off the clear water as you showed, strain into bucket then you should be good to go, I have hundreds of molds that I have done this way. Fast and easy clay processing once you get it set up, and if you truly wait for the mold to dry 100% first, drying out the mold after that will go much faster than the original water did, but I'm not completely sure why. LOL best of luck! Thanks for the paint strainer Idea, I Love it!

I love how intuitive the whole process is. Before I happens upon your channel I had already processed my first batch of clay . After wet processing it was still too wet and I was out of patience. So thinking I was taking a short cut I split my pile of clay into quarters and added sand off our road till I was happy with the feel. I’m working on my second batch now and I’m so antsy to get working again! I’ll have to add vinegar next time, after a full 24 hours of my watery clay sitting I had less than an inch of water at the top 😅

My favoured method for working temper into a plastic mass of clay was to roughly work the clay into many thin pancakes and then pound the temper in; later recombining the pancakes. This was quite effective for quickly adding large amounts of temper when making crucibles for my friend/colleagues proto-metallurgy experiments and demonstrations. We ended up with some vessels that looked like they where more temper than they where clay, and they held up amazingly well in the smelting process. Though one did get a bit glassy.

Andy, I have found that letting the clay settle and pouring off the clear water more than once helps reduce that clay loss through the pillowcase. The drips I get tend to be pretty clear (might also have to do with my pillowcase). It does take a little longer of course.

great video by the way! Looking forward to trying this!

Regarding how much temper to use, you could weigh the initial ground dry clay, and adjust a weight percentage of temper according to roughly how much silt and material discarded per batch. Love your channel, thanks for the content!

Just watched the video, and the first thing that came to mind was salt flats. Distribute the watered clay over a wider area and slowly skim the sediment off the bottom to the edges, like it's done when collecting sea salt on the slat flats. Plus the evaporation of the water is significantly increased. Just an idea, thought I'd share. Great video though.

Wet process it as normal but when it comes time to drying I put mine in a large shallow cement mixing pan after draining off the excess water of course. Then let it completely dry to the point where it dries out, break it up into smaller chunks, dry it some more and then put it back in a bucket to be ground up, add your temper then rehydrate it. The whole process takes longer but it utilizes the best of both processes by cutting out the heavy labor. Being in Arizona should make this process much quicker due to the temp and all the sun there.

This video and its comments are so useful! Thank you!

I process clay by foot and hand and one way that helps me to add the temper is to squeeze down the clay body into a sheet and add whatever tempers and additives. You got me into this stuff thank you so much.

I slice up the wet clay with a wire, then press the slices into the grog, slap the slices together, then knead

I always found that when doing the wet process, when it comes time to begin the drying step to lay out the slurry in a shallow trough I welded from old sheet metal. The more surface area exposed allows it to dry much faster. But that requires a long shallow trough and probably isn't very feasible.

I'll try this with some fairly oily black/grey sea clay I got recently. Hopefully it will work. Thanks for the information on the process.

I love your idea for processing clay

Hi Andy, My suggestion would be simply to measure the weight of clay and tamper on a scale to make it in the ratio of 10:2, or whatever the ratio you wish.

You can always add dry to your wet and knead that. Kinda half and half the labor some. The corn grinder is interesting, I've never seen that before. Used to working at scale with commercial clays, so haven't ground my own. I generally, when I process wild clay, use a commercial dry mix to make it workable and such.

There’s is so much to learn about this stuff. I’ve just been using the wet method so that’s all I know at this point. Some people are talking about adding bacteria and Vaseline etc etc. I’m gonna keep it as simple as possible until spring.

I’ve tried both for two years now, and I find wet processing works well for me. I go through so much clay and find I’m able to achieve a consistent product while not slacking on productivity. I have one caveat however and that is my clay production is a byproduct of my sand washing (making concrete but don’t want to truck sand in from off site) and as such I’m making 20-50 lbs a day when washing sand for my house construction.

Try cutting that big block of clay into manageable slices, sprinkle each one with temper, and wedge it in. Smaller pieces are easier on the wrists and hands. Also, maybe don't let the clay dry out to be quite as stiff before working the temper in. I use plaster bats; it works quickly to draw out water and you don't lose any clay. Just flip the clay mass so it dries evenly and work in the temper while it's still somewhat stickier than you would normally work with. I have small hands so I like to wedge smaller lumps of clay individually or use a slice, stack, and slam method to mix.

If you had a two foot bar or chunk of 2X4 bolted to a hinge on your bench you could keep throwing the block under the bar and using the leverage of the bar to kneed it. Save yourself a lot of work.

Thanks for the time and effort

Dang! That IS a lot of work! Thanks very much for your GREAT instruction!

It does take a while. I did it once but I still think it would be fun to do again. Paint strainer bags are going to make it a ton easier to strain.

In the coming year or so, I plan to have a foundation dug for an outbuilding. Inasmuch as my soil has a high clay content (acidic red clay, if what I read about southeastern US soil is accurate), I was wanting to use that soil to make clay. I'm just learning, so until I saw this video, I didn't even realize there was a dry process. Thank you for the informative video!

G’day Andy, learning a heap from your posts, great informative content, thank you. Don’t have much advice when it comes to wet processing, but may have an idea to help with the grinding. Have you considered motorising your corn grinder? Can easily be achieved using an old windshield wiper motor. Attach a pulley to where your grinder handle fits and another on the motor shaft. Make a bracket to mount the motor an then a belt to join the pulleys. You can run the motor from a car battery or get a 110/12 volt transformer and run off the mains. Rotation direction can be changed by simply swapping the motor wires to the power source. 12v motors have a lot of torque so you can fill the hopper, turn it on and do other stuff until you need to add more dry clay. Speed can be determined by pulley sizes, bigger pulley on the motor and smaller on the grinder shaft equals faster grinding. Hope that’s of some help. Cheers, Stewart

As always good content and top infotament. I Love your channel Andy !

For the settling down part you could use a milk seperator centrifuge. The pillow case could probably exchanged for one of these apple presses with clothbags and the tamper part could be nn electric pasta machine that you then turn the rollout strip 90° and make it feed back into itself. I think this could have a lot of throughput.

I reduce the amount of kneading to add temper to wet clay by cutting it into slabs about an inch thick, then layer the temper between slabs before kneading. If that doesn't get all the temper in at first, I just stack/slam wedge a bit and then repeat the layering process followed by more kneading/wedging. If you lay the temper on the table and knead *onto* it, then the clay surface area in contact with the temper is literally the minimum possible. By layering, you can increase the surface area exposed to allow more temper to be incorporated into the clay body.

Something I did with the liquid slop after straining that really helped with the workload after. I kept it in the original plastic bucket and allowed it to settle. I kept rope or paper towel over the edge siphoning off the water that separated out until the leftover clay way ready.

Amazing.. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I’m hooked on your channel, learning about clay.

Yes definitely add your temper to the liquid clay like I do before the pillow case , the clay won’t go through your pillow case as much either. 😀👍🏼

The primary purpose of temper, whether it be ground-up pottery shards, sand, or clamshells, is to reduce shrinkage. First you have to establish how much your untempered native clay shrinks from the workable plastic state to the bone dry state. If a ten-inch clay bar shrinks to nine inches, it is one-tenth shorter, or has ten per cent shrinkage, which is usually acceptable. If it shrinks to eight inches, it has shrunk two-tenths (1/5, or 20 per cent), which is too much (too prone to cracking as it dries) so you should add temper. The other purposes of temper are to add stiffness to a clay which slumps easily, and to "open" the clay particles allowing moisture and steam to cook out more easily in the fire. Tempers always reduce the dry strength of pottery, whereas the microscopic clay particles are what knit together all the other minerals you find in native clays. If you are outdoor-firing with wood and/or brush, you may need more temper than with an electric kiln, because an "open" clay can better withstand expansion stresses caused when one side of the pot is closer to the flames/coals and gets much hotter than another side.

I like your videos I think they're great!. Having dry mixed some things, I mean, I have made a few mud pies in my time I like to think the meat grinder/sausage filling techniques might prove fruitful to such a trooper as you. Thanks again!

Thanks for sharing. I watched a couple of your videos and was inspired to go out and bag some wild clay/dirt. Our area here in Nayarit Mexico has a lot of rich clay deposits. I did both dry process and wet. It’s been fun but I see your issue with volume. My idea is a 20 qt Hobart mixer with a dough hook. It essentially does the needing that you’re doing by hand. That’s of course after the clay has cured. Thanks so much again

Is it possible to marry the two methods and avoid the labor at the end of the wet process? Could you add the temper to the clay after it's been strained, but before it's been through the draining/drying process?

My suggestion is to take the wet process all the way back to dry. After straining pour the whole bucket into a concrete mixing tray sitting in the sun. Once dry enough to grind try a rough grind with a rock and add the temper then. Honestly, I've never understood the whole pouring off the clear water and putting it in a pillow case part - the sun will do a much more efficient job separating the water from the clay and mixing trays are cheap. A light weight sheet over the tray would keep it clean while allowing evaporation - I'll let you know if it works when I can try it. Alternatively, I wonder if it could be resaturated after you can estimate the amount of temper and use a bread hook on a stand mixer to incorporate. Still going to take longer since it would have to be really wet for a mixer.. Anyway, those are my armchair quarterback suggestions.

LOVE the overalls! Excellent choice.

My dude getting up without grunting is what I strive for.

2 years ago i made a small table top for the wet processing. I added perlite to the plaster so it can soak up more water. I was actually able to dry it around 75-80 liters-something like 20 gallon i guess... After 3 days added the temper when it was like mashed potatoes and left another day. I didn't know how much temper to add so i just eyeballed it too 😂🤷 Personally pillow cover causes loosing material and it's not efficient for the big batches. And I need to say shirt is rocking sir 😂❤️

Just a couple of thoughts.... If you have the clay dripping into the pan then why not just let that air dry to tacky (while still in the pan) and then reincorporate it to the bagged portion during the drying process? also would it make sense to add a base amount of temper to the the clay mixture while it is still wet. I'm thinking after you have poured off the clear water but before you put it into the pillow case. I realize you will not know the exact amount that you will need, but you have enough experience that I believe you will know a starting point of how much should be incorporated. I've also been interested in other clay uses such as a building material and I am thinking that it might actually be easier to process it in larger amounts, like they do for cob. Then you can work it when it is a little sloppier. Probably in a concrete mixing pan and foot tred it instead of doing it on your work bench. You can also foot mix it on a tarp if you can't find a concrete mixing pan. You'd be able to get enough for a class that way. I need to know more about your temper.

You might want to lean in to the clay leaking through the pillowcase and get an even looser filter and catch the drippings in a shallow pan to be dried out in the sun. Also the quickest shape for drying/moisturising something is to form it into a toilet-roll or doughnut shape, the through-hole is key.

Thanks for that. There's a lot of videos about how to get the clay, but not the tempering part. For me with the tempering I would roll the clay out and layer it like a sandwich and sprinkle the temper on each layer before kneeding, can save a lot of time.

Here's a possible idea, after you remove ot from the pillow case. Put the clay into a large Tupperware container and leave it outside for a couple of day's. Also, when tempering, make slabs of clay. This is what you do. 1.) take a chuck of clay that you can easily flatten into a manageable slab 2.) Sprinkle some grog down to cover the bottom and then cover the top with an even coverage. 3.) Set aside the slab and repeat step 1 and 2 making a grog embedded clay slab pile. Or kneed the small slab, set aside and repeat 1 and 2 and keep making a pile of tempered clay. Then kneed the hole pile.

Re: pillowcases. I was losing a lot of small clay particles through my pillowcase, and then realized that not all pillowcases are alike. When I started using a different pillowcase I had much better results and only clear water came through. The difference? Some pillowcases have a seam along the bottom. Higher quality pillowcases do not. The one I switched to was all cotton, with NO seam at the bottom...only on the sides. Since clay goes to the bottom, the water is wicked out above the bottom through the side seam instead of through a carelessly sewn seam at the bottom, which was the problem with the first pillowcase. Hope that makes sense.

I did some wet processing and found out spreading the clay thin and letting it dry makes it easy to process as dry. It doesn't need grinding since thin dry clay breaks as soon as it touches water, and you can add the temper before adding water.

another solid video, also andy's shirt game is always on point

Thank you for sharing. You taught me a couple tricks and I want to share my thoughts with you. Mixing the clay with water, using a strainer, let the refined clay to settle, remove the excess water and poor it into a pillow is a fairly easy (Labor free), acceptably short process. The drying can take a long time and the mixing with temper can be problematic. Here is what I would do: Instead of placing the clay into the pillow and let it dry naturally, I would place them into a solar distiller. That will favors evaporation and would speed up the whole process esponentially with no labor nor, at 0 cost (No power required) and with the possibility to reuse the water (If you distill it, you can also collect it!). You don't put the the pillow in the distiller, you use a set of frames to form clay ingots that can fit your grinder. Once those ingots will be dried, you'll be able to grid them easily with minimal effort. Same thing for mixing them up.

Just processed my first batch of found clay. What an adventure!!! Fully enjoyed it. ⭐️Here’s a tip on the drying phase….. I used a shallow 2’x2’ plastic tub -lined the bottom with scrap sheet rock -later out an old bed sheet over that Then poured the clay slurry on to the sheet. -folded sheet back over slurry The sheet rock pulled the water out sooooo fast! (I did take the paper off the sheet rock. What your left with is a flat piece of plaster.) Note-the slurry was not poured directly on the plaster, the bed sheet was used in-between.)

Why is this video so satisfying to watch?

You inspired me to try processing clay and so far my first batch watnt good figuied out it was gravel mixed in there

Thanks for the informative content! Two things I did differently that I think made it easier is I separated my clay into 4 equal (ish) piles. Seemed to make estimating temper a little easier. The second is I tempered with the clay a lot wetter. Still a lot of work though. My first batch, so I'm no pro....

Very nicely n clearly explained!! Thanx!!😊🙏

I prefer the water process, that was the only way I found that efficiently separates the dirt and clay. My fly came out perfect! Took 4 days almost but worked!

I'm really lucky, because I live near the river and there's clay everywhere but I didn't know how to process it, this video really helped my thanks

Love it bro. I think you could add the temper to the clay water just before you put it into the pillow case to dry

As someone who has never process clay my first thought is after you strain it to put it in a pan and put the pan out in the sun and let that dry and then as it starts getting dry occasionally kneed. That would eliminate the inconsistent areas of dry and wet clay that you get from the pillowcase method but I don't know if it would really work I'm just speculating

What if you boiled off the water in the clay mixture?

great video... I love it when people in the south west say "i will just put it out in the sun for an hour to dry".... Doesnt work quite so well in the south east..

Good job ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ thanks so much 🎉

Just to let you know, here in the UK we use large tin pans around 2inc deep 2mx1m in greenhouses we leave it there for around 2-3days then we tip and then use cement mixers to need the clay.

Higher thread count might help with retaining the smaller particulates. You CAN technically dry process it, you just have to lay it out in thinner sheets to dry and then grind it up after the fact. Skip the kneading process entirely but add time, or save time by turning wet processing into a preprocessing step you do in HUGE batches to prep a large quantity of dry stuff to grind and mix on demand.

brilliant thankyou

Hello ! Thanks for the video, really interested in all your videos ! I got an idea if you want to try it out, to add the temper in the wet process. Make sure you let your mix clay+water to rest in a bucket that is translucid or semi transparent, and calculate quickly the surface of the bottom of the bucket : S = Pi*r². Then when it is rested, you mesure the heigth of the clay rested at the botom. You can now estimate the volume of wet clay : V = S*h . Put everything back in the same units to simplify the calculus. Then you know you have to add, maybe not 25% because it is not a volume of dry clay, maybe more like 15%, of that volume in Temper. And you put the temper directly in the wet clay in the bucket just after you remove the excess water. It will be very easy to mix. And then the pillow case step can begin. And maybe do not dry it to much to make it easier to make it homogeneous afterward. That's just something i would try, but you got the experience, tell me if that sounds doable :) ! Maybe with this method, with some try and error, you can make some marks and mesure on your bucket that will tell : this height of clay needs 3 bowls of temper, something like a kitchen mesuring glass, but big and for water+clay :) !

After you pour off the water from the settled clay, use a sheet of plaster drywall that you frame with wood and seal the joins with silicone. Put frame on concrete or paving Mix clay in bucket evenly and then pour out onto the plaster . The clay will dry evenly and peel off. I use an old wringer/mangle from a washing machine to roll and temper the clay in bulk. But a pasta roller works for small batches.

A hinged board attached to the top of your work bench can be used as a pull down lever fo kneading your clay more efficiently.

If you want suggestions, you could weigh the dry clay you start with, maybe subtract the sticks and rocks, and measure the temper by weight. Then, you could probably mix the temper in the settled clay after pouring the extra water out and right before you strain it through the pillowcase. Also, actually hanging the pillowcase would increase the water column height in the lump of clay which would drain some of the water out sooner

I did this a while ago, and instead of a pillow case I used an old t shirt which i folded up quite a lot. my buckets were leaking and it was quite inefficient, but maybe using multiple pillowcases on top of each other could save more clay.

I've found I can scoop clay from the bottom of the bucket with my hand and spread it out on a bat to dry in the sun. It took a few hours here where it's a lot less sunny than Arizona. This doesn't do the whole job, as there's still looser clay in the bucket, but this isn't too big a deal if you're doing several batches and can simply add more clay to that bucket. Might save some frustration compared to the pillow case.

Great vidio. I,d like to say you make this process look easy. I put the clay onto another piece of cloth when it's gloopy and add temper buy folding or kneading it into the clay in the cloth. This helps dry it a bit. Then as a slab in the cloth I can flip it like a big burger..

I've been playing around with making clay with sandy clay soil since it's winter and it's all I have access to. When the pillow case drip is done but still very wet I switch to a cut up cotton t-shirt bringing the clay into a tighter ball. When it's nearly dry it's less work to kneed it to a even consistency.

Vary good job sir ,it is very important helpful video.

Hi there! First time in the channel and already hooked. So interesting to see clay extracted from the powder of unassuming soil chunks

I know you've pretty much 'put to bed' levigating clay, but after processing a couple of batches I learned a couple of things. For temper, the clay from my yard is relatively sandy, so I let the sand and grit settle and pour off the suspended clay into another bucket. I'll do this a max of three times, leaving behind enough sand that i don't really have to add any additional temper. When getting to the drying out process, I started to forego the pillowcase and instead would pour off water several times. I'd let it sit for a while, pour off, stir, let settle again, pour off, etc. I'd do this until I had a thicker consistency. Then I would make a modified version of Tony Soares' drying trough. Essentially, I make a 'frame' with fire wood on my cement porch, lay my pillowcase in that, pour the thickened suspension on the case, cover with the extra material and wait. I might flip it a few times, even shifting the setup to a dry spot, and waiting a little longer. This works for smaller batches of clay - think 1/2 a five gallon bucket or less. I hope this makes sense. While taking longer to have ready clay, I've found wet process works far better for the clay I have access to (dry resulted in a very crumbly clay that acted extremely short. Though it was the exact same clay I wet process). I hope this all makes sense, for you or anyone else interested 😊

Thank you for this video. My property has a lot of clay, but I need to use water to separate clay from rocks and the little bit of floaties.

Where I used to live we had clay rich too soils but no source of the parent clay nearby. Using a wet method I could process massive amounts of too soil. Fast mixing pulls the clay into suspension allowing it to be poured off the just. If you wanted to add temper after it could easily be mixed in to the desired amounts. I wish RU-vid had been a thing back then. But what an enjoyable experience the experimenting was.

One idea I have if you're saying you're losing clay material through the pillow case is that you place the pillow case over a stiff strainer board of sorts and then place that strainer over a plastic box container so that any escaping clay ends up inside that tub and you end up getting both the clay inside the pillow case and the clay which might escape and end up inside the tub.

Idea for how to figure how much temper to add: Get a chunk of clay to a workable consistency. Cut it into four equal parts(weigh them if you want to be precise). Bag up three of them and let the other one dry out completely. Grind it up and see what volume you have. Compare that volume to one of the three wet chunks. You'll see the difference in volume that accounts for the water loss. You'll be able to better judge how much temper to add. You're estimates are likely pretty close to a true 25 percent, given how long you've been doing this. I'm not suggesting doing this for every batch of clay but if you did this a few times, maybe for different clays, you would be able to 'eyeball' 25 percent with more confidence.

What a beautiful dog!❤❤❤

What about running it through some rollers? With the right setup, it would roll it out into a thinner sheet...kind of like the old laundry wringer machines that were hand-cranked. Using something like that would let you fold the tempering material between a couple of layers of clay between passes through the rollers. Then after you have the temper added, keep folding it over and rolling it out until it's mixed as much as you want it to be.

To expand on the solar food dryer, pore the wet clay on cook sheets, it will allow the clay to dry evenly. Maybe even into powder, which then is drily mixed again. If it drys into chucks, try a trip hammer, that's made with a rounded body hammer. If you do not wish to manually crank the hammer attach a geared-down motor to the crank. Then for mixing in the dry state, make two stand towers, with pull-out slide controls into a bole sitting on a scale. this gives you better control over weight for the percentage in mixing.

Thanks for the video. My buddies property is filled with red clay. We are trying to level it out. REALLY hard to work this stuff! I got to thinking there has to be a way to use it. So I am trying your wet process to see if I can get clean clay out of it. I will be referring to your video alot!

Or a press down lever lower or even on the floor, just add a small resistance spring.