Clay from bags always too hard

[HenryBurlingame]

Hi all, so I was wondering how common this was. I have been trying a lot of new cone 6 clay bodies from various suppliers and I am finding that 90% of the time the clay is too hard to wedge or throw straight out of the bag, sometimes waaay to hard even though the manufacturing date was only a few months ago (I’m looking at you Seattle pottery supply!). Is this pretty common? I guess I’m going to have to spend today adding water to bags and flipping them every few hours, but man it is making me want to just decide on one clay body and get a pugmill lol.

[PeterH]

Some ideas in ...

 

[LinR]

I also use the clay bag in the bucket method which works well.  One caution, make sure your clay bag has no holes.  That's a sure way to get slop!  Lin

[Rae Reich]

Back a few decades ago, we students at Santa Ana College were able to go over to Aardvark, where they were mixing and bagging their clays, press our thumbs into the bags and choose which boxes to buy. Those were the days!

Has anyone tried recently, on volume orders, to request softer clay?

[LeeU]

On 9/18/2024 at 11:57 AM, HenryBurlingame said:

(I’m looking at you Seattle pottery supply!)

I use them and have always gotten satisfactory clay-not too soft and not too hard. I got 50 lbs this week (I'm in NH) and it is perfect. If you haven't contacted them and spoken directly with someone, it might well be  worth letting them know you have an issue. (If you have talked to them and gotten no resolution, if it were me I'd contact again and make some noise!)