Jen WC Posted July 12, 2022 Report Share Posted July 12, 2022 Hi All - Like many of you I suppose, I found a clay that was a perfect match for my glazes and me - kismet! But then I moved overseas and if you know about costs of transporting from one country to the next the last decade, you will know I can`t get any of my absolute favorite clay here where I live. They used to produce and sell it dry, but I never got around to buying it that way (still heavy) and now they´ve stopped. But it seems to me that I ought to be able to make the clay, or very similar (water is different here etc.) if I can find out the content of the original mud. Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Min Posted July 13, 2022 Report Share Posted July 13, 2022 2 hours ago, Jen WC said: Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Definite maybe on this. I would really think about if you want the dust and labor of making clay, it really is a lot of dusty work. If you only go through a small amount of clay and can mix it up in a 5 gallon / 25L pail then it wouldn't be too bad to do but much more than that and you are probably better using what is available to you and spending the time you would take formulating and mixing a claybody and spend it on glaze testing instead. Jen WC and Piedmont Pottery 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jen WC Posted July 13, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2022 Thanks for replying Madeleine, Yes, it would be in reasonable amounts each time. I currently make colored porcelain clay routinely so I feel like I have a decent system I can replicate for the 25 liters. It´s really a question, I guess, of whether analyzing the content is a "thing" that is doable. I guess your answer to that part is "yes"? 8^) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Min Posted July 14, 2022 Report Share Posted July 14, 2022 Does your former clay manufacturer offer any info as to what the claybody you like is made from? Example below of what mine supplies, this isn't going to give you a recipe but it would be a starting place to try and test some possibilities. It is expensive but you could always pay to have an analysis done with a sample of your old clay to give you a chemical analysis like below and then try and work off that. Do you have access to the same spars and kaolin etc as you used to? What type of clay are you looking to replicate? How much knowledge of materials do you have and do you use glaze calc software? It might be doable, but chances are whatever you come up with isn't going to be an exact match to what your old clay recipe was. Looking at the analysis of the clay I use below as an example, for the alumina, it doesn't tell you where the alumina is coming from obviously. Some from whatever kaolin and ball clay is in the body plus some from the flux it's using, a tiny bit if there is bentonite in the mix etc. I would have to guesstimate how much ball clay or kaolin is in the mix then work backwards from there filling in the remaining with how much flux (probably nepheline syenite) is needed to give me an absorption figure of the targeted 1% this body has. And so forth for the silica plus fluxes. Do you mix your own glazes? If so I would be looking to alter those to fit the clay you have access to now. Piedmont Pottery 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark C. Posted July 14, 2022 Report Share Posted July 14, 2022 Clay is cheap and making your own is big work. Yes it can be done but its not worth it in most cases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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