Ever since you've taught me, through videos, how to find wild clay, I literally see it everywhere! I even annoy my family with it - shouting out "clay" every time we pass some 😂
@@Lovelybudgieswithme have you checked a day or two after a good rain? If there's an area with standing water, when the rest has dried up, that's a good area to check.
I live in St. Ignatius, Montana, in the far western part of the state. I have a creek that runs through my property and man do I have a nice band of aluvial clay and another spot that is older and dryer. Yes, there is clay in Montana. There are potters and even a shirt company that dyes their t shirts with the red and bronze colored clay from here in Montana.
Found mine by chance in the back yard in roundup Montana and there’s tons of it! My son is making himself a hobbit house and I noticed the blue chunks when he was digging steps up the hill to his little hobbit home! I had to promise him I wouldn’t compromise it when I dig for clay lol
This has been very informative! I live up in the mountains but in a dense forest. So its rather wet, humid, and not too many opportunities to find anything sandy but definitely have some rocky places! I hope to find something like this and I hope to one day make primitive pottery. Thanks to your channel, I've discovered something new I wanted to try and get into!
I moved to Miles City last year and found your channel a few months ago. This motivates me to get out and try finding that stuff, now I have no excuse not to build a little kiln on the driveway and start making pottery!
I live in Missoula and was told the Ninemile Valley has clay so pure the University of Montana used it back when they had a kiln on campus. I once helped a friend connect a waterline to a wellhead there and can attest the chunks we pulled from that trench looked like they could easily been thrown directly onto the potters wheel (except now I know you must add 20% non-plastic).
Wow Montana is full of clay! Who knew? (I've never before seen you put in a clip for comic effect. That was awesome. LOL) Great video and Adventure as always!
Howdy Andy ! Another great informative video , I would’ve been tempted to try that gray-clay to see if it would fire a white color, Yu made me laugh out loud w/that Oh Brother Where Art thou , clip !
The state I live in has LOTS of clay...but no sand. One state over, closer to the Atlantic, lots of sand but almost no clay. However, this was a very interesting look at different states and different techniques. Might be worthwhile making a road trip now and then just looking for clay in different places.
Of course we have tons of RED clay in Alabama, but there’s also dark gray and creamy gold clays that are nice to work with and fire beautifully. I also use fired mussel shells (freshwater) for great temper. Come on over.
Great initiation to clay collecting! I wouldn't be too optimistic though: Montana and Arizona are both at least partly in the Western Interior Seaway of Northern America, which from the end of the Mesozoic period has yielded those wonderfull dinosaur fossils dug out in the 19th century which must often coincide with the good clay layers. So the geology may not be that different between the two states - it is like you have moved further north in roughly the same geological layers. In Northern Sweden much of the clay is buried under sand because of the steady land uplift and river deltas which have been wandering always further towards the coast (I still collect it on construction sites and it is terrible). In Greek Macedonia clay is very rare around the archaeological site I am working with: it is a stony erroded landscape, so I collect it along rivers where it is layed down in pools in periods of draught, sometimes it has cow dung trampled into it (I collect it anyway, the smell goes away if you mix it with sand and let it stay one year, but still smells if you forgot to mix it with sand). So I am still envious of your clean Arizonian clays and geology 😃!!
That's another thing to consider, many ancient potters didn't have the luxury of using great clay, they used whatever was near the village and often that was pretty bad. Today with automobiles we can drive much farther in search of better clays. And yes, the geology here did remind me quite a bit of that in northern Arizona, thanks for the geology lesson.
This is the perfect combination of education and enjoyment! Thanks for bringing us a political free zone to be ancient potters! That Montana clay looks just like Rio Puerco clay... Was there any selanite sparkling in the white layer below? I have used clay that looks just like that and it makes a mineral deposit of small crystals on the surface when it is dry. I am assuming selanite.. they burnish in well and the pottery fires very hard. Great video, Sir!
I didn't notice any selenite crystals but that doesn't mean they weren't there, it was the kind of material I am used to seeing them in. Yes, it does remind me a lot of the clays in northern Arizona and New Mexico. There is yellow and grey clay and layers of coal just like that area. I wonder if they are geologically similar formations.
Another informative video that I appreciate :) Im currently grinding clay i wet processed then dried. Also currently drying dug up clay and going to try to dry process. The issue with ohio is the clay that i dig is already wet.
If I can find clay in Florida you can find clay anywhere. Granted I have to search hard typically river banks and there's a few limestone caves (sinkholes) that have clay, but wow I have to dig to find the good stuff!
I live in Alberta and here clay isn't rare, it's so common it's a nuisance. In a lot of places there's only a few inches of topsoil on the ground before you hit solid layers of this pastel brown clay that makes any kind of digging a nightmare. I've wondered how useful it would be for pottery, maybe i'll give it a try this summer!
I have a friend up near Edmonton who has had trouble finding clay, but Plainsman makes commercial clay in Medicine Hat, so I guess there must be some good stuff up there.
Hmm that don't look like Arizona to me! Haha, wow that hill of yellow ochre, that looked like some good stuff there! This was a fun video to watch with all the different scenery and clays.
Thanks Will. It kind of reminded me of some of your videos as I was editing it. It's fun country to explore, now I am looking forward to getting back and doing more videos in Arizona.
I live pretty much on the opposite side of the state, in the Flathead Valley and we have so much clay here! I've always been curious how it would look after being fired
if there is a river, and dirt, there is clay. only example i could think where clay might be hard to find is a place like the alps, where there is rivers but surrounded by rocks and the water meeting the sea before it can process the rocks and materials into clay.
You talk about using a gourd to make a tool for smoothing inside and outside of of your pottery. I saw a RU-vid video made by a Navajo. He used a ball canning ring to scrap to smooth the inside of his pot. I have heard you telling your viewer to use what they have available in their homes like spoons. Just thought I'd pass it on.
Unclear. I think technically since silt is "non-plastic material" is might work as temper, but a silty clay may just have far too much of it. Some experiments would be needed to properly answer your question.
I live in one of the worst states to find clay Florida there’s still definitely clay I mean literally one of the most used clay is mined here ep kaolin but still there’s not as much as in other states and I also don’t want to go outside when it’s so humid and hot so haven’t found much
Do you put a piece of earth into a glass of water and stirr? so after that you can see how many clay are in there ? When I make that I can 3 elements: clay, lime and sand. So I can get the pure clay and after that I mix with horse menure.
@@AncientPottery Doesn't the clay crack when it dries? I observe that when a soil sample contains a lot of pure clay, then it cracks when it dries. Then I add sand and horse menure. I do tests until I find the exact percentages to stabilize the sample. Same thing occur when I have to build an adobe house.
@@AncientPottery Doesn't the clay crack when it dries? I observe that when a soil sample contains a lot of pure clay, then it cracks when it dries. Then I add sand and horse menure. I do tests until I find the exact percentages to stabilize the sample. Same thing occur when I build an adobe house.
My problem isn't finding clay. It's finding useable clay. Most has too much silt which requires turning it into the consistency of a milkshake and letting it settle. After pouring off the water, I have to let the clay dry and then scrape off the silt. Then I have good clay. If I use it as is, then it will be brittle and make a poor pot. Unless you make it really thick. Which I have done.
I went through about 50 gallons of soil in my backyard to get about half a gallon of clay. Unfortunately nature is all in the parks around here and they wont let us take anything from them
I watched a video of a guy process clay out of dirt from the side of a random road using water, a siv and a pillowcase. Clay is technically all over the place it would seam.
What type of low-grade clay would be good for making a mold to fill with concrete? I want to make a mold for a concrete chair, but better than one of those 5 gallon concrete bucket seats. Thank you.
