Hi all,
I'm making some terra sig from my backyard drainage creek red clay in NC. I need to deflocculate it, but didn't start with dry clay, so am not sure how to calculate the amount. I've got about a gallon of watery stuff that's almost there; a nice orange color. It's been strained to 100 mesh, then left to settle and removed the bottom sludge. It shines up when applied with enough coats, but it's too watery, and it could be better. I haven't measured the s.g. Do I actually need to dry this stuff out completely to weigh it, or can I approximate the deflocculant somehow? I could assume a half pound of clay and use something like 2g of combined sodium silicate/soda ash, but that might be too much? Should I try less and see if it separates?
If I start over and dry out the initial clay stuff , rocks and all, would that be easier? I don't want to lose the finest particles coating the small rocks, but not sure how to figure out how much is clay and not-clay.
Robin