If you are interested in some of those other sealing methods, here is my last pottery sealing video which covers starch, lard, milk and cutting board conditioner th-cam.com/video/Ln4jKlfruaw/w-d-xo.html
Resin did leave a taste, as the wine Retsina had its unique flavor from the pine resin used to seal the vessels in which the wine was stored and shipped.
I wonder if birch resin would leave a better taste. And maybe try cold pressed flax oil instead of linseed, the linseed of today is made with chemicals added.
A 3 way compare *IS* good science. Your control for each is the other option. When testing a new drug, the control is often the existing drug for the same problem. Sometimes multiple options are compared also. Don't sell your self short on doing very practical science.
I wonder if, like the corded wear pottery, a mug shaped crocheted with oil cloth thread, such as flax (linseed) or sheep wool (lanolin) and then a repeated dipped and dry in the clay mixture. Then when the mug is fired in the kiln, the oils would release from the interior and seal whilst being kilned. 🤷🏽♀️
03:30 There is still a Greek wine today; the "retsina", whose origin, 4000 years ago, is the use of pine resin to seal the amphorae which were sent to the various trading posts of the Mediterranean Sea. The pine resin actually gave a particular taste to the wine, but also protected the wine from oxidation. This wine always has this particular taste well known to tourists in this country.
@@respectfulgamer7232 yep. Haven't had it (or any wine) for years, but my recollection was the first glass was pretty rough, but the subsequent ones went down pretty well :)
There are also really cheap greek wines where they add pine on purpose for the sake of tase. I heard it is really cheap and tastes bad, but it liked by the locals because of the tradition and because they drank it in times they had not much money.
In Kerala, India, we seal the pots with rice starches. After washing the rice, save the liquid. Thereafter after cooking the rice, don't throw away the starchy liquid (rice gruel). Mix these two liquids and soak in it over three days (every day freshly washed rice and gruel). Soak the pots in this liquid for three day. On the 4th day, rinse and dry in the sun. Next use some coconut oil and leave the for some time. It will soak the oil. Thereafter,pour some more coconut oil.and fry some coconuts in the pot. The smell will stay through out.
Funny thing is rice starch is an old alchemy trick for making good clay for pots and crucible. But it was used in the process of working and processing the clay before shaping and firing it.
I took some time to realize why this video defined "old world" as just Europe and Middle East, until he said "other than glaze" and remembered how the silica-alumina based glaze became very dominant a lot earlier in East Asia compared to everywhere else. But it makes Indian subcontinent left out, so this was an interesting read for me. Rice is linked with pottery in Korea as well, mainly in maintaining them. Rice water is said to be a weak surfactant, so in Korea we wash porrous earthwares (those often used for fermentation) with starchy rice water. People avoid using dish soaps on them because the detergent can soak through and remain on those pots' porrous surfaces. Rice is "food-grade" by definition, and it's not only safe, but also absent of strong scent or aftertaste. Being it safe and subtle on pots should mean a lot, judging from how three test mugs fared in this video. Whether it is used as a sealant or a soap, it was cool to have known how different cultures use rice as a "food-grade" material to apply on cookware, thanks to you.
I don't know about earthen wear pottery, but when you seal earthen floors with boiled linseed oil, it involves several coats, drying between coats, and then ,when the clay will take absolutely no more oil, a topcoat of beeswax (often heated with a heat gun, and polished).
I work a lot with pine pitch in pottery and can give a couple small pieces of advice to get more desirable results. First, you can put a slice of ginger in the pitch-sealed vessel overnight or for a couple of days to eliminate any odor. I have made decently large pieces and for some reason ginger just absorbs the bitter smell of the pitch very efficiently. Second, you can cook off any excess pitch by putting the vessels in the oven or near a fire at about 400F. The time it takes depends on the size of the vessel as well as the thickness of the pitch coating, but it should leave behind a very nice surface with any excess pitch burned away. You may even consider rubbing a rag saturated with pitch onto the vessel immediately after firing it rather than poring it into the vessel as you did in the video. The very hot ceramic will burn off any excess, leaving the pores completely sealed.
Good Morning Andy! How wonderful to meet your wife! Thank you - historical sealing options are not a widely considered topic and these insights you are sharing enlighten not only out present, but our past in the most delightful way!
When sealing wood with linseed oil, best results are when you put wood in a really hot oil (100C-130C +) and keep this temperature until bubbles /mostly/ stop coming out of the wood piece. Which means that wood is fully saturated with oil. After that, dry it for a week or a month, preferably in a dry and sunny place. Maybe same would work for earthenware? It will require a ton of oil, a really big metal pot and quite a bit of time though.
Thanks for that insight. Like I said in the video, I think if I could spend more time on it I could get a better seal with the linseed oil, but that smell...
@@AncientPottery The linseed oil is supposed to be applied before burning the cup. Or if you want later, then you have to wait until the oil dries completely, about two weeks. In both cases, you must apply a thin layer of oil that does not pool, if you apply too much, you must wipe it off. Too little is also bad. Polymerization of untreated linseed oil takes a long time.
@@AncientPottery Oh, you're right, I didn't take into account how high the temperature at which you fire clay pots is. So probably only the second option remains. You can also try to imitate the process of burning linseed oil as in cast iron pots
Remembering resin flavored wines and liquors drunk around the Eastern Mediterranean from ancient times to the present I did NOT expect the pitch sealed cup to be unodored or flavorless.
Well to be fair, mine was a very short duration test. Maybe if I left the drink in there for an extended time such as wine might, then I may have very different results.
Wine enthusiast here: Pitch was definitely used in wine containers during Roman times. This was definitely detectable by taste; at least some winemaking in France was done both in 'pitched' and 'clean' variants, pitched for those weird Romans, unpitched for local consumption. It seems so have been an acquired taste, which, for the Romans (probably due to bad experiences pre-pitch), indicated quality. Kind of like chlorinated water nowadays, which apparently is preferred by Americans and French, but is actually disliked in my country (the Netherlands), because we have clean drinking water coming out of our taps without chlorination. Love your vids, btw!
Pine pitch has been used to water proof leather water bottles. It works amazing and can sometimes give a piney taste to the water which could be helpful if ur water had a weird taste.
For wooden cups, I use a paste I make by mixing beeswax and linseed oil. But you have to let it cure for a couple of days before use. Yes, they smell strongly on the first few days, but after a week there is no noticeable difference smell.
If you use linseed/flaxseed oil to seal food or drink vessels, be sure it’s the edible kind. Flaxseed oil and linseed oil are the same thing, but (in the USA) the kind used for food is usually called flaxseed oil, and the kind used for furniture finishes and paint is usually called linseed oil (terminology may differ in other countries). “Boiled” linseed oil typically contains solvents and driers that are not food-safe. But the pure linseed oil sold as a food ingredient or dietary supplement is safe to use on dishes.
Great Video as always 😄 The south asian part where I am from, buttermilk or mustard oil is used to seal the pots for cooking They soak pot really well in water/buttermilk for a few days, changing water every second or third day and leave it out in the sun Then they would apply oil really well and leave it out in the sun again and probably apply 3-4 coats of oil so the sealing process in really lengthy . I guess in far south where they would use Rice water as an alternative of starch and probably use coconut oil or any kind of local oil available
@@AncientPottery Mustard is part of the same family as rapeseed oil (cabbage family). I believe it's called Canola in the States. I wonder if that would work as well.
Hi Andy, I wanted to compliment you on not only sharing some great info on sealants for your earthenware pottery (beeswax seems like the one I would use), but also including some fire safety tips (the Smokey the Bear insert was great!). Folks can sometimes be a little careless with fire, so your attention to this really shows what a thoughtful person you are and the purpose with which you approach this honored craft. Looking forward to watching more of your content and hopefully doing some outdoor firing myself in the not-too-distant future. Cheers!
As someone who spent summers at cottages or camping with campfires, candles, and kerosene lamps, I'm always shocked at how careless people can be around open flames/fires.
Hey Andy, I can't thank you enough, besides my sub, for the work and information you are providing. I just fired my 1st 2 pieces made from Georgia's red clay. I did it in a pit fire on corrugated steel with a rock circle on top. I had my 1st bowl and a gooffy little pinch pot much smaller. I used wood ash and sand, unmeasured for grog, and honestly expected total failure. I did wedge it. I am truly blessed today! Both made it without any problems. I'm in shock, for real. I've seen so many tragedies. I worked hard on the bowl and burnished it to a nice shiny surface. I put a metal pot over it like you did in a video as I did not have broken pieces yet to put around. This was a few hours earlier. I wiped it down with food grade mineral oil and I'm about to try eating my hot dinner, rice and veggies, in it. I'm on cloud 9 over here! Thank you! I'm so excited about this new hobby as an old man now. It's a ton of work, but it cost me nothing, and it's beautiful! I hope this finds you well my friend, you're a good man and the world needs more folks like you. Thank you, and I'll let you know if dinner goes right through it or not either way. I'm a deer hunter too and process everything myself. Deer fat is so sticky, I make bone broth too, seems like that would seal it totally. Wondering what your thoughts on that are. Again, thank you sincerely.
so you used the "red clay' that isn't very thick like kids used for play dough - but almost more silt-like? I am familiar with that GA red clay - but never thought of it as real clay. Great to know.
@@genkiferal7178 Yes it is usable but I started playing around and mixing it with a gray clay I got from a river where I fish and had a lot better success. Made a bunch of oil lamps, I call them prayer lamps and they are really cool and work great. Did it so much I kinda burned out, pardon the pun, so it's been a while now. Great hobby so good luck my friend.
John Plant over on the Primitive Technology channel uses porous earthenware to process clay. He starts by stirring clay-bearing soil into a pit filled with water and gives it a couple of seconds for the heavy particles to drop to the bottom, leaving the fine clay particles in suspension. He then transfers the suspension to a large earthenware pot where the water slowly seeps out leaving the clay behind. He uses a similar process to dry iron-bearing sludge.
If you stored a light white wine in a pine pitch sealed amphora, the result might approximate *retsina* -- which is a Greek wine that's stored in pine barrels and picks up flavor from the pine resin. I've had this, and found it pleasant enough, though I'm not much of a wine drinker. I'd have hoped you'd allow several weeks for the linseed oil to cure -- I recall from learning oil painting (really forty years ago?) that oil based paints might take as much as a year to fully cure, and even the old oil based house paints (still in use when I was a kid in the 1960s, since completely replaced with latex-based, water-solvent paints) would take several days to cure enough to be safe to handle. Also worth noting that pitch (presumably from pine) was used throughout medieval times to seal "jacks" -- leather drinking mugs. These were used to drink whatever a traveler might get (which would be ale more often than anything else). Given the inconsistency of medieval beer before gruit was replaced by hops, however, it's very possible a traveler would never notice a flavor in the beer from the pine pitch.
I've been making earthenware ollas to water my vegetable during our (increasingly hot and dry) summers, based on traditional techniques from multiple cultures. It sure beats having to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to water my large garden before it gets hot, and having to water multiple times a day. Because the olla is buried and covered, it eliminates evaporation from the surface, meaning almost all the water goes where it's needed, to my plants' roots, and isn't wasted. I also made an earthenware pot to mount orchids to. That porous nature is very useful!
Doing a mix of 7 parts linseed and 1 beeswax... 2 coats Then another coat of about half n half Needs few days to a week between coats of drying time Linseed is a hardening oil. Used already boiled oil for best results
I think the trick is to coat them then put them again on the coals, suspended so it dries out. That way, the pitch can polymerize and turn from resin into rosin. And it probably won't hurt the other sealing methods, either, to do. Edit: You might want to start a smaller fire nearby, too, to get the temperature high enough for the oil and pitch to fully polymerize into basically ancient plastic. And also you might want to use something like a piece of cloth to "polish" the surface in the same way you would with a buffing compound, again, all that before "baking" the result at high temperatures, so the oil and resin can turn rock-hard. Often, a mixture of resin and wax was used to get the melting point of the mixture lower, before it was baked to evaporate the wax and have only the resin leftover, as a glossy coating. Also, I'm not entirely sure if this works, but I think it could be, so I think it is worth trying: by mixing beach sand (silica sand) with lye (which was traditionally made from wood/grass/plant ash, so from potassium instead of sodium), you make waterglass, which you can use to not-really-seal pottery, then dry it out, then add an acid (i.e. vinegar) to separate the lye from the sand "shell", then carefully remove the liquid, then bake it again, or bake it for the first time. You would likely have to do this in a few steps, for example first the bottom then use some clay as a lid to keep the liquid in while doing the sides by marking a + and an x on one side of the cup so you can remove the lye 1/8 of the cup at a time, for the silica to precipitate and form a shell around the clay, which to cover the pores of the clay. If this is done before firing, it would likely be needed to let the clay dry so the silica layer properly bonds/adheres to the clay. I know this was not traditionally done, as far as I know, and it would have been a lot of effort for getting a glass glaze, but you might be able to get a glass glaze this way.
Have you ever tried this ancient method? For the glaze, use a mixture of 40% sieved and water-mixed hardwood ash (lixiviate the ash by allowing the solubles to dissolve in water and then pour off the clear solution), 40% bonemeal from baked and ground chicken bones, and 20% of the prepared clay. Paint the inside and outside of the pottery with this glaze mixture.
I heard that linseed oil turns toxic if heated for long. And Black Coffee has a natural oil film on the surface (but you saw it more in some filled cups than in the others of the three. The more you let the black coffee sit, the more oil from the coffee house to its surface.
Thanks for a very interesting video. I was surprised that the linseed oil (aka Flaxseed oil) wasn't more effective. When I purchased my carbon steel wok the manufacturer recommended flaxseed oil to seal the steel. I've also used it on cast iron with great success - liberally coat the vessel then heat it to the smoke point and when it cools it is sealed very well. I kind of expected that stoneware would be the same. So, it was very interesting to see it wasn't as effective.
I only recently learned that un treated ceramic weeps, AND NOW IM SEEING STUFF RELATED TO THAT FACT EVERYWHERE!!!!! I’m enjoying learning a bunch of new things!!!
I use a copy of a southeastern cup for my coffee. I'm using native clay I dug from a slough about 1/4 mile from my house. The first cup or two of coffee leach into the clay and the coffee cools very quickly. After that, with regular use, they quickly stop being porous. My clay isn't a terra cotta but it's pretty close. It fires tan to orange. If I leave it in the fire, it will turn orange to grey, depending on how seasoned the wood is.
this is a great point that i missed until you said it. i was researching natural ways to filter water and learned that hundreds of years ago, people used porous tall thin clay vessels to very slowly filter the water into a larger nonporous vessel. After so many filterings, the porous clay vessel was no longer porous so had to be replaced. If you saw the price of berkey filters, you'd know why I wanted a cheaper method of water filtering. Supposedly, some wine holders made of clay can be used to filter water - if one trusts that no toxins were used.
lol Smokey the Bear! Back when I was a firefighter, I had to wear the Smokey costume when I was a newbie and boy did it smell bad in that costume, plus it's hard to see where you're going and it's incredibly hot in there! Still, from being a kid camping, I always douse my fire in ample water, so much so that the branches I cut to make a shelter over my fire at my fort in the woods started to grow again come spring. You know you've put your fire out well and good with water if cut branches start growing because of all the water.
Such a blend is used in other traditional sealant applications, like canoes. I think the pitch adds a certain toughness while the wax adds fluidity/workability. Also pure beeswax would probably absorb and get saturated with oil and soften if not outright dissolve if used in long term contact. Pine or polymerizing oils might be superior for sealing in oils in that regard? Not sure but the best sealant probably is application dependent. But for coffee mugs im also convinced of the bees wax!
I visited Sri Lanka in the 80s and beer was served in unsealed terracotta mugs. The beer soaked through the pottery and the evaporation cooled the contents. Not everywhere had refrigeration so this was a practical solution to warm beer.
You picked three materials that all have a synergy with each other: -Linseed oil thins beeswax and pitch, allowing them to combine more than they could alone and penetrate into smaller pores in wood, then provides the toughest final polymer seal. -Beeswax provides the first surface seal and gives the composite retention into the clay, lowering the effective volatility of the other components, but simple mechanical abrasion removes it bit by bit if it's not hardened by something else. -Pitch resists simple abrasion better than any oil or wax alone (it's the basis of a traditional jeweler's lap), and I believe several rosin acid compounds themselves eventually catalyze the polymerization of linseed oil, but the soluble acids will leave pores behind after use with hot liquids that will reseal when melted. All three materials can be improved with some added chemistry: For linseed oil, the common wood stain chemical iron (III) acetate can be made by boiling steel wool or other fine iron source in vinegar, and the resulting acetate will react with rosin acids to form a rapid-drying catalyst (see simplifier.neocities.org/linseed ) that can reduce the cure time to a day or so, similar to commercial "boiled" linseed oil. For beeswax, it may be somewhat cheating, but adding half paraffin to a beeswax melt improves its sealing properties beyond either type of wax alone. For pitch, melting your pine pitch floating on a much larger volume of water would give it a chance both to lose soluble acids, and lose turpentine transforming it into rosin. This will make the resulting initial seal much closer to the cured state. This last trick has already been done if you buy pine rosin for musical purposes, or as a byproduct of manufacturing turpentine. Beeswax is fast and easy, for any material, and the bits you eat won't hurt you at all. 1:1 wax/rosin mixture seals instantly against harsh weather, and can be pressed into service as a hot glue for emergency canvas tent patches, as well as being decent for making a "food wrap" or similar food-safe utility oilcloth. 1:1:1 wax/rosin/flax takes a week or more to fully cure, but appears to retain advantageous properties of all three in the long-term for both canvas and wood. My guess would be the clay's rigid nature mean the beeswax inside pores is protected enough that the mixture would either be the same or worse than straight beeswax, but I regularly melt up specifically rosin, beeswax, and flax oil for wood products, and find the results I've had playing with wood samples fascinating.
What would you recommend for sealing coffee cups? ...so something that will be dealing with hot liquid and also soap (as most people will instinctively wash their cups with soap)
@@ryanpeters5754 linseed, walnut, and tung oil can all polymerize to some degree, with linseed as the toughest... they need to be slow-cured in air for a week or three, but the straight oil finish is most resistant to heat, soap, and acids together. Soap still wears it down slowly, and it will probably need reapplication every year or two.
This is very interesting. Brings to mind the concept of solvency. The sealing mixture of wax and resin should have a lower solvency than the oil. This ensures a solid seal.
Hi, thx for the amazing content. I live in South Italy, here we still use "terra cotta" pottery for some cooking. Generally, on first use, we give a special treatment to the pot, letting it rest for a night into water, then we wash it. Maybe it's a missing step in your process and this is why you have floating material into your coffee
I love the "no, I dont have a control, because I'm NOT a scientist" especially because you do have theories and are testing and documenting most of what you're doing. Yeah sure, its not rigorous and exhaustive, but you're experimenting and documenting, which I would call the heart of science.
Interesting results. But a thought on the linseed oil. When used to paint with, the drying time before it's proper solid can be as much as 6 months or more, i don't know if that's a possibility but letting it harden through natural oxidation might be an option for a stronger seal?
love it love it love it!! you and your wife are adoreable. thank you for all you do, i am learning neat stuff I never even thought of before.. and I appreciate your videos.
The association of smells is learned. When I lived in MX for a while, I had to learn that the strange smell of the laundry and dish soaps, would eventually be associated with clean, but at first, it did not!
I remember reading about some amphora found in the Black Sea from the early Roman Empire era, it still had wine inside and was coated and sealed with bees wax. I'm sure they actually used every available method depending on what the merchant/craftsman knew and had available as a resource. Bee wax was always valuable and I doubt they used it much for 'common' storage like olive oil or water containers.
Damar resin is heated with beeswax to make encaustic painting media, which has survived thousands of years on Egyptian sarcophagus ( Fayum funerary portraits). What are the chances that this technique would be used for the amphora as well?
Very nice to see Tanya! Thanks so much for this demo. I've been trying to figure out how to make my primitive pottery more practical. I would love to make a coffee cup with my wild blue clay.
interesting test, I have my own supply of beeswax so thats what I would use but intriguing to see the flax oil and pine resin along side. Thanks for sharing
Hi, Vik from Geeko Farm here. We grow olives. I can tell you for sure that beeswax dissolves in olive oil, so maybe not a great choice for amphorae. Tar is definitely softened by olive oil (handy cleaning tip), so it would probably dissolve into it to some extent, so not sure how that would go long term. Not tried it on pine resin.
Good to know, thanks. I suppose if you were just eating and drinking from it, there may not be time for the oil to dissolve it, but if it were stored there that would be a different story.
Andy the temps out there have been insane…I don’t know how y’all do it. But I’m glad you’ve survived the summer and are feeling better. Great to hear you are refilming those early videos. Your sound quality and organization are so much better I’m looking forward to seeing what you do. Good luck!
Get fire department structure fire gloves if you can. You can pick up burning logs with them and hold them for a while before they even start to get at all warm so even if something flammable gets on them and catches fire, you shouldn't get burnt unless you try to scratch your nose with them on fire.
Thank you Andy! I'm working towards living off grid and I'll be making just about everything I need with the exception of solar and wind power. I've learned so much on your channel and I like that you are offering classes.
So when sealing, would sealing both the inside and outside of the mugs be beneficial to insure its sealed all the way through? Is there a disadvantage to sealing the outside also, beyond the possibility of making it slippery? Although with a mug handle that wouldn't be a concern. Love your videos! I took ceramics in college for 3 years, and have learned more from you in just a handful of your videos.
The only problem with bees wax is that it has a melting point below boiling (eg. 100 c) - it is around 65 C (150F) - so wouldn't you have problems with very hot drinks/food?
I was helping with laying a foundation when I lived in Peru and I found some really old pottery that was painted on the outside. I wonder if that's how they made it so that it didn't weep. I know I painted a glass bottle one time, put cold water in it, and my paint came off, but presumably they weren't using acrylic paints in ancient Peru.
Getting the flax oil up to 500° F until it smokes an then keeping it hot until it stops smoking is how you seal cast iron. Leaving the flax raw like that can also seal it but it has to oxidize for about a week to 10 days between coats. Walnut oil does the same thing but works much faster, taking only about 3 days.
@@AncientPottery Maybe it wasn't on the heat long enough? Even watching the video it's hard to troubleshoot, so if you're interested then maybe it calls for more experimentation. I use flax oil and heat to season my cast iron, and my pans don't taste like flax. The black of the pan comes from that coating. It has to go on pretty thin though or else it gets gummy because it won't cure all the way. Text isn't the right medium to explain, I'd watch a video on seasoning cast iron or a carbon steel pan and then seeing if you can make the process work for ceramic.
@@AncientPottery Funny you say that because after leaving the comment I got curious and went and licked one of my pans. It's like licking glass, there's just nothing. I know iron is porous, but it's way less porous than ceramic so maybe that's the difference? I guessing though.
Birch tree resin was used in many things as glue and sealants due to it being more stable and 'flexible' compared to pine resin. Pine resin over time can crack especially in cold weather. It's hard to make Birch resin in comparison as it has to be made in a vacuum but it's been around since the Neanderthals as they used it too. The mix of wax and resin it to keep the seal 'flexible'. You could potentially get an incredible long lasting seal by using birch resin with a small amount of bees wax.
It's common to tap some types of birch trees for sap in spring time to make sweet syrup for candy or pancake topping. The sugar content is much less than maple sap, so results of boiling off, are much smaller, but still useful amounts can be had.
The Greek wine Retsina is flavoured with pine resin. Probably a taste developed from ancient times of transporting and storing the wine in resin sealed jars.
I have personal experience on polymerizing clay with linseed oil for an earthen floor. It worked. The floor is waterproof. The difference however is that the oil was applied on raw clay. Maybe the linseed oil applied before firing could be an interesting approach.
@@AncientPottery Thank you for your reply. As far as i understand the linseed oil reacts chemically with the clay so after applied there is not any oil there to be burned anymore. Anyway I will try it and let you know of the results. And let me express my deep respect to you and your channel. Greetings from Greece.
Was it possible that these sealants were actually applied to the *outside* of the containers, not the inside? There would be far less food contamination that way... Additionally, it's known that oiling a cast iron pan, wiping off the excess, and then baking it until it stops smoking applies a "non-stick" coating of carbonization that fills up the pores in the cast iron...so perhaps they used a similar method with pottery to seal its pores?
A stick would of been ideal to plunge in the gravel so you could just set your mug over to drain out. There may be a surface blemish of more resin, wax or oil where the stick and vessel touch but inside the cup and not on the lip. Like a wine bottle drying rack. The pine and beeswax maybe a good mixture if you can find that sweet ratio. But I appreciate your vid and have filed this in the back of the noggin for future use! Thank you so much! This reminds me of the cooking baskets and clay vessels that just got better seasoned over time.
For sealing an earthenware house with linseed oil, you have to apply it, wait a week and repeat two times to fully seal and cure it. Maybe it's similar for the pottery
the Greeks, from ancient times to today, used pitch to seal the wine jars. We know this from archeology and written sources, the wine retsina is made today by adding resin to the wine direct to mimic the flavour it added to the jar mouths sealed with pine tree sap.
Another interesting thing to try would be to to burn in the oil like you do with cast iron cookware. I bet you would have to do it multiple times but the resulting carbon in the pores should be a very effective and taste-free seal. I can also imagine ancient people did this because it happens naturally if you have something oily in the pot and forget about it for too long.
Just want to say I love your channel. I've been wanting to get more experience in the old world ways and you boosted my interest in clay from like 5% to 100. One thing I do choose over your dry method is wet "sifting" .Just imo, it gives you the chance to wake up any bacteria, and easily get rid of them, their wastes, and past bioorganic debris. Of course there's always bacteria in clay, but this has been getting me a nice consistency, as compared to other clays I've bought, decent amount of silt, and I can control the temper with the sand I took from the base dirt. Just my backyard starting experience from past knowledge and watching your channel 👍.
In India we still use terracotta pots for cooking, storing water(for cold water in hot Indian summers), drinking water, tea, storing curd and lot more but surprising none of them are sealed and they neither ooze out as you have shown here .
There is also the question of how often such pottery would have been used for hot liquids. For amphorae, that certainly wasn't the intended use. Maybe people back then mostly used wooden vessels when eating soup and drinking hot drinks? Also, proper polymerization of the oil would probably remove the oil smell
There were resins that were less flavourful - mastic from Pistacia lentiscus, for example. The classic amphora was often waterproofed with asphalt. Not recommended. The usual dilution of wine with water was suggested to be to reduce the resin and asphalt taste.
I know from wood working that linseed oil really needs multiple applications to seal with really really long times between applications and a long wait after the last one. Raw linseed oil takes forever to finish hardening but once it does it is very good stuff.
Andy, I love these videos. It really would be a great advantage to have a control in these experiments, though. I for one am very curious how a completely unsealed mug would have held the coffee here. Would it be slightly damp on the outside? A mess all over the table? Would be interesting to know how crucial sealing is.
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If you are interested in some of those other sealing methods, here is my last pottery sealing video which covers starch, lard, milk and cutting board conditioner th-cam.com/video/Ln4jKlfruaw/w-d-xo.html
Resin did leave a taste, as the wine Retsina had its unique flavor from the pine resin used to seal the vessels in which the wine was stored and shipped.
I wonder if birch resin would leave a better taste. And maybe try cold pressed flax oil instead of linseed, the linseed of today is made with chemicals added.
A 3 way compare *IS* good science. Your control for each is the other option. When testing a new drug, the control is often the existing drug for the same problem. Sometimes multiple options are compared also. Don't sell your self short on doing very practical science.
What about just a mixture of honey and fine clay. Cover the inside let it dry and start , sand and start over a few times..
I wonder if, like the corded wear pottery, a mug shaped crocheted with oil cloth thread, such as flax (linseed) or sheep wool (lanolin) and then a repeated dipped and dry in the clay mixture. Then when the mug is fired in the kiln, the oils would release from the interior and seal whilst being kilned. 🤷🏽♀️
03:30 There is still a Greek wine today; the "retsina", whose origin, 4000 years ago, is the use of pine resin to seal the amphorae which were sent to the various trading posts of the Mediterranean Sea. The pine resin actually gave a particular taste to the wine, but also protected the wine from oxidation. This wine always has this particular taste well known to tourists in this country.
Interesting, thanks
it's an acquired taste..
@@respectfulgamer7232 yep. Haven't had it (or any wine) for years, but my recollection was the first glass was pretty rough, but the subsequent ones went down pretty well :)
There are also really cheap greek wines where they add pine on purpose for the sake of tase. I heard it is really cheap and tastes bad, but it liked by the locals because of the tradition and because they drank it in times they had not much money.
I love retsina!
In Kerala, India, we seal the pots with rice starches. After washing the rice, save the liquid. Thereafter after cooking the rice, don't throw away the starchy liquid (rice gruel). Mix these two liquids and soak in it over three days (every day freshly washed rice and gruel). Soak the pots in this liquid for three day. On the 4th day, rinse and dry in the sun. Next use some coconut oil and leave the for some time. It will soak the oil. Thereafter,pour some more coconut oil.and fry some coconuts in the pot. The smell will stay through out.
Funny thing is rice starch is an old alchemy trick for making good clay for pots and crucible. But it was used in the process of working and processing the clay before shaping and firing it.
@@SilvaDreams Thank you for this information. I didn't know it. May be used, may be they didn't. Let me ask potters whether they do it.
I took some time to realize why this video defined "old world" as just Europe and Middle East, until he said "other than glaze" and remembered how the silica-alumina based glaze became very dominant a lot earlier in East Asia compared to everywhere else. But it makes Indian subcontinent left out, so this was an interesting read for me. Rice is linked with pottery in Korea as well, mainly in maintaining them. Rice water is said to be a weak surfactant, so in Korea we wash porrous earthwares (those often used for fermentation) with starchy rice water. People avoid using dish soaps on them because the detergent can soak through and remain on those pots' porrous surfaces. Rice is "food-grade" by definition, and it's not only safe, but also absent of strong scent or aftertaste. Being it safe and subtle on pots should mean a lot, judging from how three test mugs fared in this video. Whether it is used as a sealant or a soap, it was cool to have known how different cultures use rice as a "food-grade" material to apply on cookware, thanks to you.
Thank you
Philippines we use grated coconut rub outside and put it on fire,and cook the grated coconut inside until it turns black
I don't know about earthen wear pottery, but when you seal earthen floors with boiled linseed oil, it involves several coats, drying between coats, and then ,when the clay will take absolutely no more oil, a topcoat of beeswax (often heated with a heat gun, and polished).
Thanks for that tip.
I work a lot with pine pitch in pottery and can give a couple small pieces of advice to get more desirable results. First, you can put a slice of ginger in the pitch-sealed vessel overnight or for a couple of days to eliminate any odor. I have made decently large pieces and for some reason ginger just absorbs the bitter smell of the pitch very efficiently.
Second, you can cook off any excess pitch by putting the vessels in the oven or near a fire at about 400F. The time it takes depends on the size of the vessel as well as the thickness of the pitch coating, but it should leave behind a very nice surface with any excess pitch burned away.
You may even consider rubbing a rag saturated with pitch onto the vessel immediately after firing it rather than poring it into the vessel as you did in the video. The very hot ceramic will burn off any excess, leaving the pores completely sealed.
Where do you get your pitch? Do you perhaps make it yourself?
Pine tar is used as a flavour in some places (e.g. for ice cream in Finland), so for some people that might be a bonus!
Oh my! Pine tar ice cream that does sound terrible
It has unique smoky barbeque note in it. Great for candy (tar lion) and fish like salmon, in ice cream it's aquirred taste
Finnish wine is flavored with spruce or fir rarely pine. Never pine tar.
And sweets in Denmark
Hmm, smoky pine flavoured ice cream, I think I could go for that
"Do I have a control? No, I do not. Because I'm not a scientist." That made me chuckle and it just feels like a whole mood.
Thanks
"I'm not a scientist"... Then drinks the pine pitch. You Sir, are indeed a scientist of the best kind!
Good Morning Andy! How wonderful to meet your wife! Thank you - historical sealing options are not a widely considered topic and these insights you are sharing enlighten not only out present, but our past in the most delightful way!
Thanks, I am glad you are appreciating my content.
When sealing wood with linseed oil, best results are when you put wood in a really hot oil (100C-130C +) and keep this temperature until bubbles /mostly/ stop coming out of the wood piece. Which means that wood is fully saturated with oil. After that, dry it for a week or a month, preferably in a dry and sunny place. Maybe same would work for earthenware? It will require a ton of oil, a really big metal pot and quite a bit of time though.
Thanks for that insight. Like I said in the video, I think if I could spend more time on it I could get a better seal with the linseed oil, but that smell...
@@AncientPottery Smell will go away with time and with use, but yeah, it's tolerable but not pleasant for sure.
@@AncientPottery The linseed oil is supposed to be applied before burning the cup. Or if you want later, then you have to wait until the oil dries completely, about two weeks. In both cases, you must apply a thin layer of oil that does not pool, if you apply too much, you must wipe it off. Too little is also bad. Polymerization of untreated linseed oil takes a long time.
@@Timoshim You cannot apply the oil before firing, it would all burn away
@@AncientPottery Oh, you're right, I didn't take into account how high the temperature at which you fire clay pots is. So probably only the second option remains. You can also try to imitate the process of burning linseed oil as in cast iron pots
I love your approach to advertising. I much rather hear about your classes than some junk.
Thank you
Remembering resin flavored wines and liquors drunk around the Eastern Mediterranean from ancient times to the present I did NOT expect the pitch sealed cup to be unodored or flavorless.
Well to be fair, mine was a very short duration test. Maybe if I left the drink in there for an extended time such as wine might, then I may have very different results.
@@AncientPottery Ethanol is a better solvent than water for some substances. Water is a highly polar solvent and hardly dissolves oily stuff.
There is a reason the ancient Greeks drank their wine (retsina) diluted with water...
Also wine on a ship does get quite as hot
Wine enthusiast here: Pitch was definitely used in wine containers during Roman times. This was definitely detectable by taste; at least some winemaking in France was done both in 'pitched' and 'clean' variants, pitched for those weird Romans, unpitched for local consumption. It seems so have been an acquired taste, which, for the Romans (probably due to bad experiences pre-pitch), indicated quality. Kind of like chlorinated water nowadays, which apparently is preferred by Americans and French, but is actually disliked in my country (the Netherlands), because we have clean drinking water coming out of our taps without chlorination. Love your vids, btw!
Thanks, I have learned this since I made the video. I would love to do some experiments with wine.
Pine pitch has been used to water proof leather water bottles. It works amazing and can sometimes give a piney taste to the water which could be helpful if ur water had a weird taste.
Interesting, thanks
For wooden cups, I use a paste I make by mixing beeswax and linseed oil. But you have to let it cure for a couple of days before use. Yes, they smell strongly on the first few days, but after a week there is no noticeable difference smell.
Thanks for the tip, I will try it
If you use linseed/flaxseed oil to seal food or drink vessels, be sure it’s the edible kind. Flaxseed oil and linseed oil are the same thing, but (in the USA) the kind used for food is usually called flaxseed oil, and the kind used for furniture finishes and paint is usually called linseed oil (terminology may differ in other countries). “Boiled” linseed oil typically contains solvents and driers that are not food-safe. But the pure linseed oil sold as a food ingredient or dietary supplement is safe to use on dishes.
Buy it from the grocery store. The kind at the hardware store is not for human consumption.
Interesting! “Let’s see what happens” are some of my favorite words.
LOL, (fun ensues)
Great Video as always 😄
The south asian part where I am from, buttermilk or mustard oil is used to seal the pots for cooking
They soak pot really well in water/buttermilk for a few days, changing water every second or third day and leave it out in the sun
Then they would apply oil really well and leave it out in the sun again and probably apply 3-4 coats of oil
so the sealing process in really lengthy
.
I guess in far south where they would use Rice water as an alternative of starch and probably use coconut oil or any kind of local oil available
Thanks for that info, very helpful.
@@AncientPottery Mustard is part of the same family as rapeseed oil (cabbage family). I believe it's called Canola in the States. I wonder if that would work as well.
@@rosalindriley5893 It should, it isn't just part of the same family, it is literally the same plant (Brassica rapa).
Hi Andy, I wanted to compliment you on not only sharing some great info on sealants for your earthenware pottery (beeswax seems like the one I would use), but also including some fire safety tips (the Smokey the Bear insert was great!). Folks can sometimes be a little careless with fire, so your attention to this really shows what a thoughtful person you are and the purpose with which you approach this honored craft. Looking forward to watching more of your content and hopefully doing some outdoor firing myself in the not-too-distant future. Cheers!
Thank you. I spent 10 years working as a fire fighter for the US Forest Service so I am always aware of fire safety.
I definitely appreciated the fire safety reminder, the best craftsmen always make a point of reminding their students to be safe.
As someone who spent summers at cottages or camping with campfires, candles, and kerosene lamps, I'm always shocked at how careless people can be around open flames/fires.
It was obvious how much time and effort spent on editing. I really liked it.
Thanks, glad you recognized my effort here.
Hey Andy, I can't thank you enough, besides my sub, for the work and information you are providing. I just fired my 1st 2 pieces made from Georgia's red clay. I did it in a pit fire on corrugated steel with a rock circle on top. I had my 1st bowl and a gooffy little pinch pot much smaller. I used wood ash and sand, unmeasured for grog, and honestly expected total failure. I did wedge it. I am truly blessed today! Both made it without any problems. I'm in shock, for real. I've seen so many tragedies. I worked hard on the bowl and burnished it to a nice shiny surface. I put a metal pot over it like you did in a video as I did not have broken pieces yet to put around. This was a few hours earlier. I wiped it down with food grade mineral oil and I'm about to try eating my hot dinner, rice and veggies, in it. I'm on cloud 9 over here! Thank you! I'm so excited about this new hobby as an old man now. It's a ton of work, but it cost me nothing, and it's beautiful! I hope this finds you well my friend, you're a good man and the world needs more folks like you. Thank you, and I'll let you know if dinner goes right through it or not either way. I'm a deer hunter too and process everything myself. Deer fat is so sticky, I make bone broth too, seems like that would seal it totally. Wondering what your thoughts on that are. Again, thank you sincerely.
That's awesome glad to hear of your success. Yes I think deer fat would make a great sealant.
so you used the "red clay' that isn't very thick like kids used for play dough - but almost more silt-like? I am familiar with that GA red clay - but never thought of it as real clay. Great to know.
@@genkiferal7178 Yes it is usable but I started playing around and mixing it with a gray clay I got from a river where I fish and had a lot better success. Made a bunch of oil lamps, I call them prayer lamps and they are really cool and work great. Did it so much I kinda burned out, pardon the pun, so it's been a while now. Great hobby so good luck my friend.
John Plant over on the Primitive Technology channel uses porous earthenware to process clay. He starts by stirring clay-bearing soil into a pit filled with water and gives it a couple of seconds for the heavy particles to drop to the bottom, leaving the fine clay particles in suspension. He then transfers the suspension to a large earthenware pot where the water slowly seeps out leaving the clay behind. He uses a similar process to dry iron-bearing sludge.
I love Primitive Technology also❤ John is the best IMO!
The pine pitch method definitely looks the coolest.
If you stored a light white wine in a pine pitch sealed amphora, the result might approximate *retsina* -- which is a Greek wine that's stored in pine barrels and picks up flavor from the pine resin. I've had this, and found it pleasant enough, though I'm not much of a wine drinker. I'd have hoped you'd allow several weeks for the linseed oil to cure -- I recall from learning oil painting (really forty years ago?) that oil based paints might take as much as a year to fully cure, and even the old oil based house paints (still in use when I was a kid in the 1960s, since completely replaced with latex-based, water-solvent paints) would take several days to cure enough to be safe to handle.
Also worth noting that pitch (presumably from pine) was used throughout medieval times to seal "jacks" -- leather drinking mugs. These were used to drink whatever a traveler might get (which would be ale more often than anything else). Given the inconsistency of medieval beer before gruit was replaced by hops, however, it's very possible a traveler would never notice a flavor in the beer from the pine pitch.
Loved meeting the Mrs! Hurray on a successful trial.
Thanks you
linseed oil actually hardens at room temperature after a few months. It has commonly been used as a sealant for centuries, especially for paintings.
~ 3:00 That's why there is "Retsina"-wine in Greece...great info !!!
I've been making earthenware ollas to water my vegetable during our (increasingly hot and dry) summers, based on traditional techniques from multiple cultures. It sure beats having to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to water my large garden before it gets hot, and having to water multiple times a day. Because the olla is buried and covered, it eliminates evaporation from the surface, meaning almost all the water goes where it's needed, to my plants' roots, and isn't wasted. I also made an earthenware pot to mount orchids to. That porous nature is very useful!
Wine with a little pine pitch sounds tasty.
Doing a mix of 7 parts linseed and 1 beeswax... 2 coats
Then another coat of about half n half
Needs few days to a week between coats of drying time
Linseed is a hardening oil. Used already boiled oil for best results
Very nice video!
I think the trick is to coat them then put them again on the coals, suspended so it dries out. That way, the pitch can polymerize and turn from resin into rosin. And it probably won't hurt the other sealing methods, either, to do. Edit: You might want to start a smaller fire nearby, too, to get the temperature high enough for the oil and pitch to fully polymerize into basically ancient plastic. And also you might want to use something like a piece of cloth to "polish" the surface in the same way you would with a buffing compound, again, all that before "baking" the result at high temperatures, so the oil and resin can turn rock-hard. Often, a mixture of resin and wax was used to get the melting point of the mixture lower, before it was baked to evaporate the wax and have only the resin leftover, as a glossy coating.
Also, I'm not entirely sure if this works, but I think it could be, so I think it is worth trying: by mixing beach sand (silica sand) with lye (which was traditionally made from wood/grass/plant ash, so from potassium instead of sodium), you make waterglass, which you can use to not-really-seal pottery, then dry it out, then add an acid (i.e. vinegar) to separate the lye from the sand "shell", then carefully remove the liquid, then bake it again, or bake it for the first time. You would likely have to do this in a few steps, for example first the bottom then use some clay as a lid to keep the liquid in while doing the sides by marking a + and an x on one side of the cup so you can remove the lye 1/8 of the cup at a time, for the silica to precipitate and form a shell around the clay, which to cover the pores of the clay. If this is done before firing, it would likely be needed to let the clay dry so the silica layer properly bonds/adheres to the clay. I know this was not traditionally done, as far as I know, and it would have been a lot of effort for getting a glass glaze, but you might be able to get a glass glaze this way.
Have you ever tried this ancient method?
For the glaze, use a mixture of 40% sieved and water-mixed hardwood ash (lixiviate the ash by allowing the solubles to dissolve in water and then pour off the clear solution), 40% bonemeal from baked and ground chicken bones, and 20% of the prepared clay.
Paint the inside and outside of the pottery with this glaze mixture.
I heard that linseed oil turns toxic if heated for long. And Black Coffee has a natural oil film on the surface (but you saw it more in some filled cups than in the others of the three. The more you let the black coffee sit, the more oil from the coffee house to its surface.
Retsina is wine flavoured by the pitch in pine barrels... some people like it!
Thanks for a very interesting video. I was surprised that the linseed oil (aka Flaxseed oil) wasn't more effective. When I purchased my carbon steel wok the manufacturer recommended flaxseed oil to seal the steel. I've also used it on cast iron with great success - liberally coat the vessel then heat it to the smoke point and when it cools it is sealed very well. I kind of expected that stoneware would be the same. So, it was very interesting to see it wasn't as effective.
I only recently learned that un treated ceramic weeps, AND NOW IM SEEING STUFF RELATED TO THAT FACT EVERYWHERE!!!!!
I’m enjoying learning a bunch of new things!!!
Ha ha, isn't that how it always works?
Wonderful video. I would recommend testing with a light tasting tea next time, like chamomile to really see if the flavor changed
I use a copy of a southeastern cup for my coffee. I'm using native clay I dug from a slough about 1/4 mile from my house. The first cup or two of coffee leach into the clay and the coffee cools very quickly. After that, with regular use, they quickly stop being porous. My clay isn't a terra cotta but it's pretty close. It fires tan to orange. If I leave it in the fire, it will turn orange to grey, depending on how seasoned the wood is.
Cool
this is a great point that i missed until you said it. i was researching natural ways to filter water and learned that hundreds of years ago, people used porous tall thin clay vessels to very slowly filter the water into a larger nonporous vessel. After so many filterings, the porous clay vessel was no longer porous so had to be replaced.
If you saw the price of berkey filters, you'd know why I wanted a cheaper method of water filtering. Supposedly, some wine holders made of clay can be used to filter water - if one trusts that no toxins were used.
lol Smokey the Bear! Back when I was a firefighter, I had to wear the Smokey costume when I was a newbie and boy did it smell bad in that costume, plus it's hard to see where you're going and it's incredibly hot in there!
Still, from being a kid camping, I always douse my fire in ample water, so much so that the branches I cut to make a shelter over my fire at my fort in the woods started to grow again come spring. You know you've put your fire out well and good with water if cut branches start growing because of all the water.
I've found that a beeswax and resin blend works really well too and there's evidence of this blend in ancient times.
Thanks for that
Such a blend is used in other traditional sealant applications, like canoes. I think the pitch adds a certain toughness while the wax adds fluidity/workability. Also pure beeswax would probably absorb and get saturated with oil and soften if not outright dissolve if used in long term contact. Pine or polymerizing oils might be superior for sealing in oils in that regard? Not sure but the best sealant probably is application dependent. But for coffee mugs im also convinced of the bees wax!
I visited Sri Lanka in the 80s and beer was served in unsealed terracotta mugs. The beer soaked through the pottery and the evaporation cooled the contents. Not everywhere had refrigeration so this was a practical solution to warm beer.
That's cool
The spaniards used to seal leather wine bottles with pine tar, it doesn't react with wine but you shouldn't pour hot beverages in it.
You picked three materials that all have a synergy with each other:
-Linseed oil thins beeswax and pitch, allowing them to combine more than they could alone and penetrate into smaller pores in wood, then provides the toughest final polymer seal.
-Beeswax provides the first surface seal and gives the composite retention into the clay, lowering the effective volatility of the other components, but simple mechanical abrasion removes it bit by bit if it's not hardened by something else.
-Pitch resists simple abrasion better than any oil or wax alone (it's the basis of a traditional jeweler's lap), and I believe several rosin acid compounds themselves eventually catalyze the polymerization of linseed oil, but the soluble acids will leave pores behind after use with hot liquids that will reseal when melted.
All three materials can be improved with some added chemistry:
For linseed oil, the common wood stain chemical iron (III) acetate can be made by boiling steel wool or other fine iron source in vinegar, and the resulting acetate will react with rosin acids to form a rapid-drying catalyst (see simplifier.neocities.org/linseed ) that can reduce the cure time to a day or so, similar to commercial "boiled" linseed oil.
For beeswax, it may be somewhat cheating, but adding half paraffin to a beeswax melt improves its sealing properties beyond either type of wax alone.
For pitch, melting your pine pitch floating on a much larger volume of water would give it a chance both to lose soluble acids, and lose turpentine transforming it into rosin. This will make the resulting initial seal much closer to the cured state. This last trick has already been done if you buy pine rosin for musical purposes, or as a byproduct of manufacturing turpentine.
Beeswax is fast and easy, for any material, and the bits you eat won't hurt you at all.
1:1 wax/rosin mixture seals instantly against harsh weather, and can be pressed into service as a hot glue for emergency canvas tent patches, as well as being decent for making a "food wrap" or similar food-safe utility oilcloth.
1:1:1 wax/rosin/flax takes a week or more to fully cure, but appears to retain advantageous properties of all three in the long-term for both canvas and wood.
My guess would be the clay's rigid nature mean the beeswax inside pores is protected enough that the mixture would either be the same or worse than straight beeswax, but I regularly melt up specifically rosin, beeswax, and flax oil for wood products, and find the results I've had playing with wood samples fascinating.
What would you recommend for sealing coffee cups? ...so something that will be dealing with hot liquid and also soap (as most people will instinctively wash their cups with soap)
@@ryanpeters5754 linseed, walnut, and tung oil can all polymerize to some degree, with linseed as the toughest... they need to be slow-cured in air for a week or three, but the straight oil finish is most resistant to heat, soap, and acids together. Soap still wears it down slowly, and it will probably need reapplication every year or two.
Great, Andy!
Thanks from Vermont.
You're welcome
This is very interesting. Brings to mind the concept of solvency. The sealing mixture of wax and resin should have a lower solvency than the oil. This ensures a solid seal.
Interesting, my chemistry knowledge is definitely lacking
I love how the pine pitch looks. The kind of cups I've seen in the old days.
Hi, thx for the amazing content. I live in South Italy, here we still use "terra cotta" pottery for some cooking. Generally, on first use, we give a special treatment to the pot, letting it rest for a night into water, then we wash it. Maybe it's a missing step in your process and this is why you have floating material into your coffee
Thanks for the tip. Awesome to hear they are still doing it the old way in Italy.
I love the "no, I dont have a control, because I'm NOT a scientist" especially because you do have theories and are testing and documenting most of what you're doing. Yeah sure, its not rigorous and exhaustive, but you're experimenting and documenting, which I would call the heart of science.
Interesting results. But a thought on the linseed oil. When used to paint with, the drying time before it's proper solid can be as much as 6 months or more, i don't know if that's a possibility but letting it harden through natural oxidation might be an option for a stronger seal?
love it love it love it!! you and your wife are adoreable. thank you for all you do, i am learning neat stuff I never even thought of before.. and I appreciate your videos.
Thanks so much! I am glad you are finding my videos educational and entertaining.
The association of smells is learned. When I lived in MX for a while, I had to learn that the strange smell of the laundry and dish soaps, would eventually be associated with clean, but at first, it did not!
I have visited Mexico many times and totally understand that about the smell of Mexican cleaning products.
Wine skins were also sealed with pitch
Thanks for sharing your tests! I really enjoyed watching this.
I remember reading about some amphora found in the Black Sea from the early Roman Empire era, it still had wine inside and was coated and sealed with bees wax.
I'm sure they actually used every available method depending on what the merchant/craftsman knew and had available as a resource. Bee wax was always valuable and I doubt they used it much for 'common' storage like olive oil or water containers.
What a wonderful channel to find.
Thanks
Damar resin is heated with beeswax to make encaustic painting media, which has survived thousands of years on Egyptian sarcophagus ( Fayum funerary portraits). What are the chances that this technique would be used for the amphora as well?
I've always been interested in ancient pottery and even made some clay myself, but I never knew how it was sealed. I really appreciate this video!
Very nice to see Tanya! Thanks so much for this demo. I've been trying to figure out how to make my primitive pottery more practical. I would love to make a coffee cup with my wild blue clay.
Sounds like a good project idea
interesting test, I have my own supply of beeswax so thats what I would use but intriguing to see the flax oil and pine resin along side.
Thanks for sharing
You might not be a ‘qualified’ scientist Andy-but these kinds of experiments are really interesting-thank you
I agree--though I do wish there were just an unsealed mug negative control for comparison!
Hi, Vik from Geeko Farm here. We grow olives. I can tell you for sure that beeswax dissolves in olive oil, so maybe not a great choice for amphorae. Tar is definitely softened by olive oil (handy cleaning tip), so it would probably dissolve into it to some extent, so not sure how that would go long term. Not tried it on pine resin.
Good to know, thanks. I suppose if you were just eating and drinking from it, there may not be time for the oil to dissolve it, but if it were stored there that would be a different story.
Andy the temps out there have been insane…I don’t know how y’all do it. But I’m glad you’ve survived the summer and are feeling better. Great to hear you are refilming those early videos. Your sound quality and organization are so much better I’m looking forward to seeing what you do. Good luck!
There may have been techniques used by those from that time that may have lessened or eliminated transfer into the contents of the cup
Get fire department structure fire gloves if you can. You can pick up burning logs with them and hold them for a while before they even start to get at all warm so even if something flammable gets on them and catches fire, you shouldn't get burnt unless you try to scratch your nose with them on fire.
Thank you Andy! I'm working towards living off grid and I'll be making just about everything I need with the exception of solar and wind power. I've learned so much on your channel and I like that you are offering classes.
Thanks, I am glad you are finding my content helpful.
Pine pitch/tar was commonly used to seal up wooden ships.Very cool to see this used to seal up the pottery, very cool stuff!
Congrats on 100k!
Thanks
Great vid as always.
Thanks
So when sealing, would sealing both the inside and outside of the mugs be beneficial to insure its sealed all the way through? Is there a disadvantage to sealing the outside also, beyond the possibility of making it slippery? Although with a mug handle that wouldn't be a concern. Love your videos! I took ceramics in college for 3 years, and have learned more from you in just a handful of your videos.
I saw those cup going upside down on the sand and I thought oh oh. Use a flat stone Andy!
Yep, lesson learned.
The only problem with bees wax is that it has a melting point below boiling (eg. 100 c) - it is around 65 C (150F) - so wouldn't you have problems with very hot drinks/food?
I was helping with laying a foundation when I lived in Peru and I found some really old pottery that was painted on the outside. I wonder if that's how they made it so that it didn't weep. I know I painted a glass bottle one time, put cold water in it, and my paint came off, but presumably they weren't using acrylic paints in ancient Peru.
Great video, Andy, and nice to see Mrs Andy too 🙂
Thanks
Any drying oil, such at linseed, will work. I think poppyseed and walnut oils are drying. Also carnuba.
Getting the flax oil up to 500° F until it smokes an then keeping it hot until it stops smoking is how you seal cast iron. Leaving the flax raw like that can also seal it but it has to oxidize for about a week to 10 days between coats. Walnut oil does the same thing but works much faster, taking only about 3 days.
It was well over 500 F sitting on those coals
@@AncientPottery Maybe it wasn't on the heat long enough? Even watching the video it's hard to troubleshoot, so if you're interested then maybe it calls for more experimentation. I use flax oil and heat to season my cast iron, and my pans don't taste like flax. The black of the pan comes from that coating. It has to go on pretty thin though or else it gets gummy because it won't cure all the way. Text isn't the right medium to explain, I'd watch a video on seasoning cast iron or a carbon steel pan and then seeing if you can make the process work for ceramic.
@@tarbucktransom you don’t put your face right into a cast iron pan the way you put your face in a mug.
@@AncientPottery Funny you say that because after leaving the comment I got curious and went and licked one of my pans. It's like licking glass, there's just nothing. I know iron is porous, but it's way less porous than ceramic so maybe that's the difference? I guessing though.
Birch tree resin was used in many things as glue and sealants due to it being more stable and 'flexible' compared to pine resin. Pine resin over time can crack especially in cold weather. It's hard to make Birch resin in comparison as it has to be made in a vacuum but it's been around since the Neanderthals as they used it too. The mix of wax and resin it to keep the seal 'flexible'. You could potentially get an incredible long lasting seal by using birch resin with a small amount of bees wax.
Thanks but we don't have birch trees in Arizona and the weather doesn't get so cold that the pine resin will crack either.
It's common to tap some types of birch trees for sap in spring time to make sweet syrup for candy or pancake topping. The sugar content is much less than maple sap, so results of boiling off, are much smaller, but still useful amounts can be had.
The Greek wine Retsina is flavoured with pine resin. Probably a taste developed from ancient times of transporting and storing the wine in resin sealed jars.
I have personal experience on polymerizing clay with linseed oil for an earthen floor. It worked. The floor is waterproof. The difference however is that the oil was applied on raw clay. Maybe the linseed oil applied before firing could be an interesting approach.
It would all burn away in the firing, a pottery firing is incredibly hot
@@AncientPottery Thank you for your reply. As far as i understand the linseed oil reacts chemically with the clay so after applied there is not any oil there to be burned anymore. Anyway I will try it and let you know of the results. And let me express my deep respect to you and your channel. Greetings from Greece.
Was it possible that these sealants were actually applied to the *outside* of the containers, not the inside? There would be far less food contamination that way... Additionally, it's known that oiling a cast iron pan, wiping off the excess, and then baking it until it stops smoking applies a "non-stick" coating of carbonization that fills up the pores in the cast iron...so perhaps they used a similar method with pottery to seal its pores?
This is great! I really like this guy's TH-cam, and I'm so glad he said cowboy Kent Rollins was his go-to, I love that show it's the best.
A stick would of been ideal to plunge in the gravel so you could just set your mug over to drain out. There may be a surface blemish of more resin, wax or oil where the stick and vessel touch but inside the cup and not on the lip. Like a wine bottle drying rack. The pine and beeswax maybe a good mixture if you can find that sweet ratio. But I appreciate your vid and have filed this in the back of the noggin for future use! Thank you so much! This reminds me of the cooking baskets and clay vessels that just got better seasoned over time.
What was used to make the pine pitch? Type of pine tree, and was it self collected or purchased?
Ponderosa pine, I drove up the mountain and collected it myself.
I wonder what would happen if you re-fired the mug with linseed stains. Might be worth it
Would you have to ever re-apply the sealant, like after some time using it would it need another coat of beeswax?
For sealing an earthenware house with linseed oil, you have to apply it, wait a week and repeat two times to fully seal and cure it. Maybe it's similar for the pottery
its not practical to heat a house up on hot coals. apples and oranges.
1:05 “do I have a control? No I do not, because I’m not a scientist” 😂
the Greeks, from ancient times to today, used pitch to seal the wine jars. We know this from archeology and written sources, the wine retsina is made today by adding resin to the wine direct to mimic the flavour it added to the jar mouths sealed with pine tree sap.
That does not sound so good, but I would like to try it at least once. Thanks!
@@AncientPottery it is white wine, chill it well
The other thing I was wondering about was, what if you soaked the cup in the sealing material?
Sure that would probably be good especially for the oil
Another interesting thing to try would be to to burn in the oil like you do with cast iron cookware.
I bet you would have to do it multiple times but the resulting carbon in the pores should be a very effective and taste-free seal.
I can also imagine ancient people did this because it happens naturally if you have something oily in the pot and forget about it for too long.
Yeah I think the oil just needs more coats and heatings. I'm sure with time it could be improved.
Some oils are 'drying oils' and they polymerise to form a gel. Linseed does this, but the pure, food-safe version takes ages
Just want to say I love your channel. I've been wanting to get more experience in the old world ways and you boosted my interest in clay from like 5% to 100.
One thing I do choose over your dry method is wet "sifting" .Just imo, it gives you the chance to wake up any bacteria, and easily get rid of them, their wastes, and past bioorganic debris. Of course there's always bacteria in clay, but this has been getting me a nice consistency, as compared to other clays I've bought, decent amount of silt, and I can control the temper with the sand I took from the base dirt. Just my backyard starting experience from past knowledge and watching your channel 👍.
How about baked on Flax seed oil? I use it to seal my cast iron pots.
I heard you can also seal clay by boiling a piece in milk, though I dont know if it actualy works.
In India we still use terracotta pots for cooking, storing water(for cold water in hot Indian summers), drinking water, tea, storing curd and lot more but surprising none of them are sealed and they neither ooze out as you have shown here .
I'll bet they are either sealed or they ooze
There is also the question of how often such pottery would have been used for hot liquids.
For amphorae, that certainly wasn't the intended use.
Maybe people back then mostly used wooden vessels when eating soup and drinking hot drinks?
Also, proper polymerization of the oil would probably remove the oil smell
There were resins that were less flavourful - mastic from Pistacia lentiscus, for example. The classic amphora was often waterproofed with asphalt. Not recommended. The usual dilution of wine with water was suggested to be to reduce the resin and asphalt taste.
Great video! What about Obvara firing?
Thanks, I've never heard of Obvara firing
I know from wood working that linseed oil really needs multiple applications to seal with really really long times between applications and a long wait after the last one. Raw linseed oil takes forever to finish hardening but once it does it is very good stuff.
Thanks for the info
If you mix flaxseed (linseed) oil with pine resin, you are essentially making 19th century varnish.
Another great video sir. Thank you from the dubbly do
You're welcome
Andy, I love these videos. It really would be a great advantage to have a control in these experiments, though. I for one am very curious how a completely unsealed mug would have held the coffee here. Would it be slightly damp on the outside? A mess all over the table? Would be interesting to know how crucial sealing is.
Watch this video. th-cam.com/video/TBos0j0FszU/w-d-xo.html This pot was made with the same clay these mugs were made with.