Here in North Carolina you can’t help but find clay anytime you dig. Great for pottery, annoying for gardening! I dig a bright red clay in my yard and after slaking it down and passing through sieves it works beautifully for handbuilding, throwing, and firing to cone 04. No temper added!
Thankyou for the reference to "cone 04". I had to research what that meant since I am a total pottery newb. I am in Wisconsin and also have abundant clay on my property...down about two feet and it's unavoidable. I'm also an avid gardener. I stumbled onto Andy's vids when looking into DIY ollas.
I always slow down when passing construction sites, if I see those big pretty chunks of clay I stop and ask for some. I've never been told no, they just look at me crazy and say, "Sure, take it." The first time I found clay I was 8 years old playing around on the construction site my father was working on and I have been hooked every since. I'm glad i found your channel today, thank you.
Hi Deanna, I've always been shy about asking but seems by your account it was fine to ask. I've found a pretty good clay, a huge amount, tossed on the sides of dry irrigation canals. Gotta get resourceful, right? Best wishes.
Very informative and great presentation. Thanks. I’m a palaeontologist in Alberta Canada and I spenD hundreds of hours searching for fossils in our clays. You mentioned a loose clay of the Naco formation. There is a place in Arizona called Kohl’s Ranch. It is in this loose clay that you will find many fossils. Especially brachiopods and crinoids.The clay was once hard and compacted into rocks but has since been ground back into clay particles. This frees the fossils. The Naco formation is middle Pennsylvanian inage or about 300 million years old.
this video is unintentionally a really good guide for worldbuilders on how societies can access clay, and which ones have more than others, and which types they have
Just wanted to say you have an amazing channel. Just the niche I'm looking for. Very informative, well made, and entertaining. I'm not kissing no a** but I appreciate your love for the history and art of pottery.
I’m only just getting into pottery but as a kid I used to wade in the lake at my parents’ cottage in Newfoundland, Canada and dig up sheets of what we’d call “pug”…it was dark grey and texturally reminds me very much of the white clay I’ve been using in my class. I could pry up sections about 3 inches thick and as big as I could carry to shore and we’d hand build it into little bowls (which would ultimately break because we had no way to fire it) or dissolve it to slip and rub it all over ourselves as “spa treatments”. Does this sound like something I could make pottery with? I still know all the best spots and am willing to go back in the lake - haha.
Howdy Andy, I built my house in Oregon, right on top of a clay deposit. When having a well drilled, I found it's 30-40' to water and then there is an old river bed with sand and gravel. The old neighbors had dynamited pockets, filled them with dirt and grew their apple trees in the pockets. there is about 3 feet of dirt, then 30 feet of clay under my feet anywhere on the property. I dug a pond about 5 feet down. I holds water very well all year. I keep dreaming of things to do with all the clay. I work about 2000 miles from home (Alaska 9 months out of the year), so don't get to spend a lot of time playing with it, but if you're ever in/near/by Oregon in the summer, please do stop by. I can make anything out of it, but once it is out of the ground, I end up wearing it on the bottom of my shoes; it doesn't go away..... Dan heading to Oregon (home) soon.
Clay can be a blessing or a curse if you live on top of it. I know many places here in Arizona have broken foundations because they were built right on top of clay. I'll bet that Oregon clay would be great for making pots, maybe when you retire...
@@AncientPottery I’m also in Oregon just West of Portland in the hills. We have a unique property where we’re midway down our mountain with sloping property. Part of it is more or less wetland and we use that for pasture where we have springs all over our property but there is a bunch of clay there in the route down the middle to our kind of clay bog. It’s yellowish showing that it’s high also in organic content. Down a bit further to our creek we have clay deposits down inside (it’s like a 5ft ravine) with green clay? 😳 also brown and reddish clay. How would I tell which KIND of clays these are from the various colors- I know they’re probably all riverbed clay, but the different mineral compositions make it hard for me to figure out how to process them? I think I have a short video up showing them, I can’t remember.
Our farm in eastern Ontario Canada sat on what the locals call blue clay that seemed bottomless. My father cursed it because in the spring when it was wet his tractor would get stuck in it. When it dried out it became hard as rock and he had to break it up with the discs so my mom could plant her garden. My mom loved it because her garden grew amazingly well in it. I don't know its geologic origin but this area was once covered in glaciers and was also once the bottom of an ancient sea bed
This is super fun. Our local weather has not been agreeable with clay collecting, but I know right where to go. The colors are absolutely AMAZING; Pinks, Burgundies, Orange, Brown.
I live in Juneau, Alaska and we have what appears to be very clay-like deposits around our glacial lakes and rivers. We always call it silt -- and it's super slick to walk on! Would that make good pottery? Just happened on your channel for the first time. Very interesting!
Hmm, interesting. I know people in Alaska who use glacial clays, the difference between silts and clays would be that the clay is plastic and moldable and dries hard. Give it a try
❤ Absolutely. Love you. I'm really trying to pay attention for the tilt. I absolutely love watching. You are really good at informing about plays because you yourself rent the hardway
Not in to pottery per se, but building a greenhouse and storage building using on-site materials. Thank you for your interesting videos on the subject. These videos will be useful for my projects.
Thanks for all the videos, very helpful. Got Sand on top of red clay sand mix above iron ore above more clay then sand potable water zone. All within 20 ft surface here. Nice part is, I have more than 20ft change in elevation on this land. Dig down from top of hill to about 50ft and I have lignite coal. Don't need coal though, trees grow like weeds here. Being retired, I am focused on using resources here in as many of the old way as possible to build my home.
Just out of curiosity, can you find good clay in the bottoms of rivers or lakes? There's not many where I live, but I was visiting one once and noticed that it felt either very claylike and was very plastic or very sandy depending on the area, so I was curious about whether it would work or not. Great video by the way.
Love your channel. My son kept telling me that he could make clay easily because we're surrounded by it, but I was skeptical and about to order a bunch until one of your videos popped up in my recommendations, which kind of makes me wonder if my phone is "listening" to us, haha, but anyway thanks for the information!
I live on a flood plane in Texas absolutely saturated with clay. I’m working on digging it up and filtering it. Hopefully I can make jewelry pieces, pit fire them like you’ve shown us, and I can share this art with the community. I’d also like to make a kick wheel for throwing. I’m so excited to try this ancient art. Thank you for your videos!
If I dig some inches in my garden there are tons of clay, it is gray like the clay you can buy. I have removed like 600 kg to make room for my tomato plants. It is extreamly heavy. Probably marine clay.
Do you have permission from the landowners to dig clay on their land? Or is all this clay on public land? I’m curious about the legality of prospecting for and harvesting clay on public and private land.
I always make sure of land ownership. Road right of ways are good because nobody really cares. You can collect small amounts of minerals for personal use from most Forest Service and BLM land, but make sure you are not disturbing surface soil or plants, so collect from road cuts, creek cuts or other places where the strata is already exposed. The clay shown in this video is almost all in road right of ways.
I was curious about this as well. There was a damn breakage near me and they don't expect the lake to be filled for another 7 years or so. I'm wondering about the legality of going and harvesting from the lake bed.
Thanks Andy, this is a very helpful topic. I live near Albany N.Y., and my yard is full of high quality ancient glacial lakebed clay. It’s about 8 inches down below the top soil and runs about 18 inches deep before a layer of shale below the clay. There appears to be a grey and red variety swirled together in most places. It is extremely sticky when wet. Of the varieties mentioned, what types do you use for what purposes ? For example pottery vs say bricks. I’m curious what what would be the best use for this type of clay that I have. Thanks again for your great station.
You are welcome. All of the clays I mention here can be usable for pottery but every individual deposit has different properties so experimentation is required to see what can be done with a given clay. My main clays that I use for building pottery are a primary and an alluvial.
I collected some marine clay which is washed away daily by the sea. I am wet processing it but wondered if salt content is an issue e.g. when firing? Thanks, love your videos, great educational content 👍
I'm from MN. We have the Decorah shale formation. The shale does make for good clay, just takes more work as the clay is compressed and needs to be agitated ( I use a paint mixer on my drill) to loosen up the clay from the shale it has been pressed into.
I live in tn where the ground is basically red clay. But after separating the clay using water and filters, forming simple cylinder pots, adding temper, and wood/charcoal firing. The pots will resist falling apart or "melting" in the rain and water but has no strength. It breaks super easily. Any suggestions why it does that?
Hmm, my guess would be that either you ended up with too much temper which can make pottery brittle, or you didn't fire hot enough. Experiment to find the answer.
Dude, you need to visit SLC. I’m sure we could bring enough people together to make it worth your while. I have noticed some deposits of clay around my place.
I like this simple division of clay into primary and the 3 secondary. How common is it for clay that has been compacted/lithified into some sort of tuff, shale, mudstone or claystone to weather back into clay ? Is there a way of telling weather small clay deposits surrounded by tuff, shale or mudstone have failed to lithify or been formed by reweathering of lithified material. Does it make any practical difference? On a technical note, could you make the narration slightly louder and the music between the narrations slightly quieter ? When listening with earbuds the music is a little too loud.
kaolinwasher the red is okay, the white is real plastic but also has a high shrinkage rate so is best used as a slip. Probably the best building clay shown here is that grey alluvial clay I showed by the river, that’s pretty good stuff.
Very interesting video. Seen videos of both dried and completely water logged clays, but nothing like what I describe. I'm wondering if I am really remembering this--but when I was around ten I was digging around near a pond (with hands) and found what appeared to be quite pure red clay that was moldable and soft. Was able to take it home and play with it, would go back again and again. Can't believe I invented this whole memory but I can't find any videos that look like the stuff I found. I was interested in art even back then and recognized the stuff as similar to what I got in art class. BTW, in Wisconsin--huge areas in Wisconsin were under glaciers. True or not so true memory?
I live in Oklahoma, dig ANYWHERE like 4 or 5 inches and you're in a super thick clay layer. Deep red clay. There are parts of the Canadian River in central Oklahoma that are sand bottom. When I was a kid we use to go swimming and I would find giant balls of perfectly round clay. Hundreds of them, I use to "make fossils" but pressing plants into it and then covering it camp fire ashes, peel off the plant, boom... Instant "fossil".
I live in northern Utah and most rock around me is limestone. I know that there is a lot of clay in the subsoil having dug a lot of fencepost holes. I have heard that this kind of clay is undesirable. Is that true? If so, why is that?
Limestone in your clay can cause your pottery to break. So you either need to make sure there are no pieces of limestone in your clay or fire below 900 C.
Anyone have experience looking in the new england area? We don't really have these big expanses of mostly empty soil. Anywhere there aren't buildings there's likely to be trees and foliage, and it doesn't seem like most of the exposed soil has much clay
All I have is clay, clay, clay. I have red clay. I have cement-like grayish silvery clay underneath red clay. Two feet deep and more. Clay, clay clay. I want to grow vegetables and all I have is CLAY!
Hey, I am absolutely digging your content ! I’m in northern Vermont. Out here we have high levels of play in our subsoil. It’s a gray clay. When I was outback, running the kayak out of little creek, I came across huge bed of smooth, gray clay under the water. It’s like it has been washed clean! I’m hoping to go back this Summer and start breaking out some lumps and processing it. I can’t wait! Your channel has giving me the confidence that I can actually do this. I’ve never done anything with pottery, but I want to so bad. I love the southwest, and the rich native history. I’m going to see if there is some Northeast Native American techniques For pottery and see if I can emulate that.
Hi, I see you call the red clay primary clay along with the other types. I dug some red clay on my farm and have had it sitting since last year, it's really sticky. I had it in a bucket with a sieve that allowed water to drain off of it. Anyway, I've seen it referred to as "plain ole brick clay" that doesn't sound good. Can it be used for pottery or sculpting or am I stuck with just plain old brick clay? Thanks.
The color doesn't have anything to do with the type. It is primary because of the way it was deposited. All clays are different, I hope your "plain ole brick clay" turns out to be good.
I've recently been needing some fire brick, and I heard it's made of Fire clay. How do you find, and recognize fire clay? It's hard to find any information, almost like it's top secret.
Can you do a video on making clay pots with beach sand? Hawaii has beautiful black sand! There's red sand beaches, and also white sand beaches. That would be cook to see on video! :)
A lot of people are interested in finding and processing their own clay. A lot of people spend a lot of money buying clay when they could just dig their own.
Mine's easy enough to find. Dig a hole in the garden, I can find pure clay, massive chunks, not even very deep. Entire area has it, down one end of the beach there's cliffs that are just pure clay (occasional pebbles & grit). (South east Ireland, I think it's the glacier that dumped them here?)
@@AncientPottery yeah our garden is gorgeous & lush due to hard work my mom put into it. But when we moved in it was clay on the surface, grass & reeds! (marshland around here a bit I think?) We used to play with clay chunks she dug up & make stuff to just dry in the sun! I did put a mini pot or two into our house fire. It did turn that terracotta red, so that was very cool!
I’d be afraid of digging up clay , the land is always owned by someone , the feds , the state the cities and hard to convince some people your just digging clay and not on their claim looking for gold !!!
True all land is owned by someone, but sometimes nobody really cares. I have been doing this for a long time and have found that roadsides are a great place where nobody will hassle you for digging up a little dirt.
I watched one of your videos and I was just recommended this one and I just wanted to let you know that the thumbnail looks like you are wearing someone else's face it's kind of freaky
I know people who make pottery from that red Georgia clay. I don’t know enough about it to tell you what kind of clay it is though. If I had to guess I would say primary but it’s just an uneducated guess.
I was a potter and graphic designer before I was a video editor. I learned video as I went and audio was the last thing I figured out. I hear this a lot on my older videos but there's not much I can do about these old videos. I am doing better now though. thanks for the feedback.
I will be driving atound now looking for places where i might find clay i havent done pottery since childhood but i did love the experience now im retired who knows where this might lead me thank you
The "stoneware" designation just refers to the ability of the clay to withstand very high temperatures. Many wild clays can be stonewares and many melt at that temperature, you just need to test them to find out how high you can fire them. See this video on that process th-cam.com/video/lbVXOHO5TsE/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for sharing your knowledge we have a pond and a stream in our woods and that is where i find my clay for Yaki-ire=clay tempering of swords and knives. I found your channel by trying to learn how to remove the dirt from clay.
No, and I have looked. The same issue exists in Phoenix as we have in Tucson, all the good clay is underneath parking lots or housing developments or covered with riprap. Try out by Florence, where Attaway Road crosses the Gila River.
I try hard to make the information usable to people anywhere and I have had many satisfied customers from all over the world. But, the examples I show and most of my experience do come from the American Southwest. There is also a money back guarantee in case you feel it is not useful to you after you buy it.
@@AncientPottery i was just wondering if the processing of clay would differ much from Oceania or pacific islands that have been known to be part of the lapita pottery region. but thank you for your prompt response!! i look forward to watching your videos.
Really interesting. I love how you've taken a bunch of people interested in craft and given us a nature documentary! I'd also be keen to see you do a follow up video of types of clay found in tropical, coastal or alpine regions (if you ever travel outside your state) . Thanks.
Thanks. The same clay types exist around the world, the only type of clay we are lacking here in Arizona is glacial clay. This is an old video and could use an update now.
North America here! I have a backyard full of redish brown wild clay, and I decided to try wet processing it for the first time, well I strained it a couple different times, and ended with a large bit of clay at the end, but it's grainy/gritty. Is this a good quality? Do I still have to add a temper or will whatever is in it work as one? Do I have to do the wet process all over again?
It depends on how much grit and how much shrinkage the clay has. Do some experiments and see how it does. This video can help th-cam.com/video/l4QjKYP3fGk/w-d-xo.html
@@AncientPottery the coil test proved harder than I thought it would be. I couldn't even make it into a pinch pot, it kept falling apart. The clay I left out to dry hardened up nicely, and had alot of strength strength, but it disintegrated pretty quickly once wet.
I tried burning a lot of paper that was sent to me, during a year.. The fly ash, mixed with water has very, very fine particles.. left it to dry in the sun and it´s pretty solid, it´s crumbly, but ok. I´m gonn try some pine-resin on it.. It seems... you can fire up this ash-clay really hot and it will calcinate.. if you add water again after that it gets quite solid.. that just takes a lot of time and I haven´t gotten it right yet. But as an easy source for clay... I think you should give it a go. I´d love to see your opinion.
A Filipino friend has found a nice outbreak of what appears to be 'Kaolin clay' in her yard. She wanted to know how to determine if it would be suitable for mining, say for cosmetic purposes ?
thanks so much for these videos. just a suggestion, I'm sure it would be appreciated if you equalized the volume between the music and your voice? sometimes the sound pick up of your voice is very quiet and then the music comes in very loud.... had to keep turning my headphones up to hear you and then quickly back down before the music blew out my eardrums. just a small thing but makes a big difference so i can focus on the good info
Thank you for this video, I had just sourced some wild clay prior to watching this without much of an idea what I was doing. Luckily my old foraging trick of using place names was also useful here, I collected from "clay wood" in my local area. Now to binge watch all your content so I can begin my experiments in earnest. What a fantastic resource you are providing, I am very grateful.
You know sow many things about clay and maby you know wich one clay, we use to make fire bricks? I mean fireproof bricks. We mix the clay with cement for thoses clay or just clay? Thank you and hapy the new year sir.
I live near southern Utah and found red, yellow,red/purple, and white/gray. It seems like the yellow clay is a lot more gelatinous and thickens up real quickly. Reddish purple clay does the same but seems to have more body. The red clay has a lot more sand in it. I'm wondering what the mineral content could be in these and if they are useful for pottery?. I suspect the yellow could have sulfur. I know the Reds have iron oxide. The whitish-gray possibly Lime but also a lot of silt. I found all these deposits on the steppes of a reservoir where there is occasional thermal activity nearby (hot pots). They were all found in the same vicinity of each other and in veins, if that makes sense? I also found chocolate brown clay in Colorado that settles really fast, not sure why this is? Also found green clay but no sign of BioLife as I have encountered in past clays. Hey I'm so excited and I would like to know more about these!. I have recently become fascinated by Clay and came across your very informative video!
When I experimented with God Panning, rather briefly, in my own back yard (Seattle), I discovered during the washing and classifying of my dirt that... I'd probably make more money mining Clay.
@@AncientPottery Something something Glacial Till imported from Canadia, eh? It was shipped in a few millennia back. I remember it well, mom was SO happy! Well, once the glaciers and flooding subsided, that is.
I don't know anything about pottery but I do hunt clay for my niece who loves everything pottery. Great video! I wish I was smart enough to describe what I find or even ask the question I want to ask but I'll try. In some very old drainage ditches that have cut below the topsoil into the prehistoric ocean bottom (I live in the PNW) I will find a grayish-white substance that is harder than a clay but softer than a rock that can be crumbled into a fine powder. I would love to know if I can process this into clay... I found it last year and now the river is too high to extract any without significant effort but if it's usable I'd put in the effort...
Hi Andy. I'm looking to find the appropriate clay for plastering straw walls internally, I'm based in Ireland and I have access to ' Macamore' clay. Is this ok or not the right type ? Thanks
@@AncientPottery good to know! I just found that i can remove iron out of powdered filtered wild clay with a strong magnet, I wonder if it will significantly lower the redness. Have you ever heard of that?
I have come to an age , where I watch man looking for clay with excitment. And Im just 31. :) it would be awesom to find some clay here, I know there are alot in countryside. Greetings from Latvia!
Hey Andy, I watched most of your vids and tried to make my own clay from the soil I have here (northern Europe). For some reason the result doesn’t resemble clay but will break or collapse from just looking at it, a bit like a sand castle. I tired to add more or less sand or replace sand with ground pot shards, but all outcomes were absolute bulls**t. Any suggestions?
It sounds like you don't have clay at all. All clay is dirt but not all dirt is clay. You need to do some searching for a good clay to work with, this may be the hardest part of the process, finding a good clay bed to use.
@@AncientPottery I got it from a small stream, it’s yellowish and more dense than the soil around, I swirled it in water and took what settled down from the solution Update: I just looked up some geological stuff and saw that silt can also float in water and looks clay-like when constantly conducting ground water. So, damn it haha
Have you tried doing a clay test on soil in different areas? Get a mason jar and fill it half way with some dirt (literally any dirt you think might have clay in it) and fill it the rest of the way up with water. Shake it up until everything is broken apart, and then let it settle for a couple of minutes. Everything that isn’t clay should settle pretty quickly. So if you filled half the jar with dirt and only 1/2 of that settles you have about 50% clay in that soil. Then you have a rough idea of the clay content
Just watched a few of your videos on finding and processing wild clay and I have no idea if I'll ever use this knowledge but I love that these videos exist and that I have learned something new. Thank you!
Thankyou... a very informative vid about wild clays. Firstly, is that the same Benson, Arizona as from song in the movie 'Dark Star'?😎 I'm going out this weekend near Newport, Wales, UK to get some lovely red soil that I know has clay in it to see just how much it yields. We don't have the same climate or geology obviously but there's clay everywhere so it's good seeing your tips... I have a few river banks in my sights too.
Yes, it must be as there is only one Benson in Arizona. I was unaware of this song before your comment. And yes, our geology and climate may differ but clay is found everywhere and many of the same principles apply in finding it.
Here in Deep East Texas we have red clay and blue, "Gumbo Mud"...clay. I didn't grow up here so I was familiar with the Gumbo mud until I helped my husband dig a well. We started hand digging but eventually resorted to pushing a steel pipe into the ground passing through gumbo mud. Husband told me if I wanted some out of the pipe I'd better get it while it was wet because once it dried I wouldn't be able to get it. Of course, I didn't listen. Yup. Next day when I attempted to retrieve the now dry substance out of the pipe...it wasn't budging. That pipe got used for a gate...with gumbo mud still intact. For all these years I've threatened to collect our mud and try my hand at firing some pottery. You've inspired me to get off my duff and get it done!
My boyfriend just picked some alluvial clay up for me. He found some that looks like it was washed up on the side of the road with the rain It looks really pure with maybe a little bit of plant matter. I'm so excited!
You live in a geologist's dream. So privileged to hear you speak to it with applied experience and wisdom.
Thanks
Here in North Carolina you can’t help but find clay anytime you dig. Great for pottery, annoying for gardening! I dig a bright red clay in my yard and after slaking it down and passing through sieves it works beautifully for handbuilding, throwing, and firing to cone 04. No temper added!
Awesome, that’s something special you have there.
Thankyou for the reference to "cone 04". I had to research what that meant since I am a total pottery newb. I am in Wisconsin and also have abundant clay on my property...down about two feet and it's unavoidable. I'm also an avid gardener. I stumbled onto Andy's vids when looking into DIY ollas.
I have that in my yard what method do you use to process it???
@@TheBesilas i use the wet method, watering it down to slip then using a mesh screen
Lucky duck, all I have in my yard is rocks!
I always slow down when passing construction sites, if I see those big pretty chunks of clay I stop and ask for some. I've never been told no, they just look at me crazy and say, "Sure, take it." The first time I found clay I was 8 years old playing around on the construction site my father was working on and I have been hooked every since. I'm glad i found your channel today, thank you.
I'm glad you found my channel too. Thats a great tip for finding clay, thanks for sharing.
Hi Deanna, I've always been shy about asking but seems by your account it was fine to ask. I've found a pretty good clay, a huge amount, tossed on the sides of dry irrigation canals. Gotta get resourceful, right? Best wishes.
i took clay home as a kid working with my dad
Imagine the income they could make selling that clay. Could fund a lot of good work with that.
Clay wouldn’t be $25 a bag anymore 😂
Very informative and great presentation. Thanks. I’m a palaeontologist in Alberta Canada and I spenD hundreds of hours searching for fossils in our clays. You mentioned a loose clay of the Naco formation. There is a place in Arizona called Kohl’s Ranch. It is in this loose clay that you will find many fossils. Especially brachiopods and crinoids.The clay was once hard and compacted into rocks but has since been ground back into clay particles. This frees the fossils. The Naco formation is middle Pennsylvanian inage or about 300 million years old.
I am familiar with Kohl's Ranch. Thanks for adding your expertise.
this video is unintentionally a really good guide for worldbuilders on how societies can access clay, and which ones have more than others, and which types they have
Just wanted to say you have an amazing channel. Just the niche I'm looking for. Very informative, well made, and entertaining. I'm not kissing no a** but I appreciate your love for the history and art of pottery.
Thanks a lot.
I’m only just getting into pottery but as a kid I used to wade in the lake at my parents’ cottage in Newfoundland, Canada and dig up sheets of what we’d call “pug”…it was dark grey and texturally reminds me very much of the white clay I’ve been using in my class. I could pry up sections about 3 inches thick and as big as I could carry to shore and we’d hand build it into little bowls (which would ultimately break because we had no way to fire it) or dissolve it to slip and rub it all over ourselves as “spa treatments”. Does this sound like something I could make pottery with? I still know all the best spots and am willing to go back in the lake - haha.
Interesting, maybe decent clay.
Howdy Andy, I built my house in Oregon, right on top of a clay deposit. When having a well drilled, I found it's 30-40' to water and then there is an old river bed with sand and gravel. The old neighbors had dynamited pockets, filled them with dirt and grew their apple trees in the pockets. there is about 3 feet of dirt, then 30 feet of clay under my feet anywhere on the property. I dug a pond about 5 feet down. I holds water very well all year. I keep dreaming of things to do with all the clay. I work about 2000 miles from home (Alaska 9 months out of the year), so don't get to spend a lot of time playing with it, but if you're ever in/near/by Oregon in the summer, please do stop by. I can make anything out of it, but once it is out of the ground, I end up wearing it on the bottom of my shoes; it doesn't go away..... Dan heading to Oregon (home) soon.
Clay can be a blessing or a curse if you live on top of it. I know many places here in Arizona have broken foundations because they were built right on top of clay. I'll bet that Oregon clay would be great for making pots, maybe when you retire...
@@AncientPottery I’m also in Oregon just West of Portland in the hills. We have a unique property where we’re midway down our mountain with sloping property. Part of it is more or less wetland and we use that for pasture where we have springs all over our property but there is a bunch of clay there in the route down the middle to our kind of clay bog. It’s yellowish showing that it’s high also in organic content. Down a bit further to our creek we have clay deposits down inside (it’s like a 5ft ravine) with green clay? 😳 also brown and reddish clay. How would I tell which KIND of clays these are from the various colors- I know they’re probably all riverbed clay, but the different mineral compositions make it hard for me to figure out how to process them? I think I have a short video up showing them, I can’t remember.
Our farm in eastern Ontario Canada sat on what the locals call blue clay that seemed bottomless. My father cursed it because in the spring when it was wet his tractor would get stuck in it. When it dried out it became hard as rock and he had to break it up with the discs so my mom could plant her garden. My mom loved it because her garden grew amazingly well in it. I don't know its geologic origin but this area was once covered in glaciers and was also once the bottom of an ancient sea bed
One of the best sources I’ve seen on finding clay
Thanks!
This is super fun. Our local weather has not been agreeable with clay collecting, but I know right where to go. The colors are absolutely AMAZING; Pinks, Burgundies, Orange, Brown.
That's great, the anticipation waiting for the weather to clear up...
@@AncientPottery It's GLORIOUS, today. =D
I live in Juneau, Alaska and we have what appears to be very clay-like deposits around our glacial lakes and rivers. We always call it silt -- and it's super slick to walk on! Would that make good pottery? Just happened on your channel for the first time. Very interesting!
Hmm, interesting. I know people in Alaska who use glacial clays, the difference between silts and clays would be that the clay is plastic and moldable and dries hard. Give it a try
Thank you Clay dude
Any time!
Andy Wards ancient pottery: Tyvk 4 sharing the benefit of Your knowledge! :)
You bet!
Thank you for showing me where I can find the clay I don’t have a way to get out there but I sure will try
You're welcome
❤ Absolutely. Love you. I'm really trying to pay attention for the tilt. I absolutely love watching. You are really good at informing about plays because you yourself rent the hardway
Not in to pottery per se, but building a greenhouse and storage building using on-site materials. Thank you for your interesting videos on the subject. These videos will be useful for my projects.
Thanks, I am glad to hear that you are enjoying my content.
Thanks for all the videos, very helpful. Got Sand on top of red clay sand mix above iron ore above more clay then sand potable water zone. All within 20 ft surface here. Nice part is, I have more than 20ft change in elevation on this land. Dig down from top of hill to about 50ft and I have lignite coal. Don't need coal though, trees grow like weeds here. Being retired, I am focused on using resources here in as many of the old way as possible to build my home.
That’s cool, everything you need is at your fingertips. I’m glad you are enjoying my videos.
Just out of curiosity, can you find good clay in the bottoms of rivers or lakes? There's not many where I live, but I was visiting one once and noticed that it felt either very claylike and was very plastic or very sandy depending on the area, so I was curious about whether it would work or not.
Great video by the way.
Yes clay naturally settles to the bottoms of still water so that is a great place to find it
Love your channel. My son kept telling me that he could make clay easily because we're surrounded by it, but I was skeptical and about to order a bunch until one of your videos popped up in my recommendations, which kind of makes me wonder if my phone is "listening" to us, haha, but anyway thanks for the information!
Awesome, listen to your son. Ha ha.
To answer your question, yes, they are listening to us. Thats what cookies are for, easier for companies to advertise content to you
I live on a flood plane in Texas absolutely saturated with clay. I’m working on digging it up and filtering it. Hopefully I can make jewelry pieces, pit fire them like you’ve shown us, and I can share this art with the community. I’d also like to make a kick wheel for throwing. I’m so excited to try this ancient art. Thank you for your videos!
Sounds like some cool ideas.
I'm building a wheel with the base and pedal of an antique sewing machine.
If I dig some inches in my garden there are tons of clay, it is gray like the clay you can buy. I have removed like 600 kg to make room for my tomato plants. It is extreamly heavy. Probably marine clay.
Sounds promising, give it a try and see how it does.
Do you have permission from the landowners to dig clay on their land? Or is all this clay on public land? I’m curious about the legality of prospecting for and harvesting clay on public and private land.
I always make sure of land ownership. Road right of ways are good because nobody really cares. You can collect small amounts of minerals for personal use from most Forest Service and BLM land, but make sure you are not disturbing surface soil or plants, so collect from road cuts, creek cuts or other places where the strata is already exposed. The clay shown in this video is almost all in road right of ways.
@@AncientPottery Damn, Black Lives Matter has their own land now?
:-P
Blue Gorilla Bureau of Land Management
@@tammiedyer3225 🙂
I was curious about this as well. There was a damn breakage near me and they don't expect the lake to be filled for another 7 years or so. I'm wondering about the legality of going and harvesting from the lake bed.
Thanks Andy, this is a very helpful topic. I live near Albany N.Y., and my yard is full of high quality ancient glacial lakebed clay. It’s about 8 inches down below the top soil and runs about 18 inches deep before a layer of shale below the clay. There appears to be a grey and red variety swirled together in most places. It is extremely sticky when wet. Of the varieties mentioned, what types do you use for what purposes ? For example pottery vs say bricks. I’m curious what what would be the best use for this type of clay that I have. Thanks again for your great station.
You are welcome. All of the clays I mention here can be usable for pottery but every individual deposit has different properties so experimentation is required to see what can be done with a given clay. My main clays that I use for building pottery are a primary and an alluvial.
I collected some marine clay which is washed away daily by the sea. I am wet processing it but wondered if salt content is an issue e.g. when firing? Thanks, love your videos, great educational content 👍
so glad i found your channel. love the content. thank you.
Welcome!
you're the best! love your content man.
I'm from MN. We have the Decorah shale formation. The shale does make for good clay, just takes more work as the clay is compressed and needs to be agitated ( I use a paint mixer on my drill) to loosen up the clay from the shale it has been pressed into.
Awesome video. Great tutorial. I'll be using dried clay to make metal casting sand and your video really helps me with locating clay deposits.
That's great, glad to help!
I live in tn where the ground is basically red clay. But after separating the clay using water and filters, forming simple cylinder pots, adding temper, and wood/charcoal firing. The pots will resist falling apart or "melting" in the rain and water but has no strength. It breaks super easily. Any suggestions why it does that?
Hmm, my guess would be that either you ended up with too much temper which can make pottery brittle, or you didn't fire hot enough. Experiment to find the answer.
Dude, you need to visit SLC. I’m sure we could bring enough people together to make it worth your while. I have noticed some deposits of clay around my place.
Sounds fun. If you are serious, send me an email detailing what you have in mind ancientpottery.how/contact-us/
Things that school didn't teach us:
My school taught most of this.
I like this simple division of clay into primary and the 3 secondary. How common is it for clay that has been compacted/lithified into some sort of tuff, shale, mudstone or claystone to weather back into clay ? Is there a way of telling weather small clay deposits surrounded by tuff, shale or mudstone have failed to lithify or been formed by reweathering of lithified material. Does it make any practical difference?
On a technical note, could you make the narration slightly louder and the music between the narrations slightly quieter ?
When listening with earbuds the music is a little too loud.
Sorry about that, I am a slow learner on video editing but I am making progress slowly.
That was great , how plastic is the red clay you showed us and the white
kaolinwasher the red is okay, the white is real plastic but also has a high shrinkage rate so is best used as a slip. Probably the best building clay shown here is that grey alluvial clay I showed by the river, that’s pretty good stuff.
Very interesting video. Seen videos of both dried and completely water logged clays, but nothing like what I describe. I'm wondering if I am really remembering this--but when I was around ten I was digging around near a pond (with hands) and found what appeared to be quite pure red clay that was moldable and soft. Was able to take it home and play with it, would go back again and again. Can't believe I invented this whole memory but I can't find any videos that look like the stuff I found. I was interested in art even back then and recognized the stuff as similar to what I got in art class. BTW, in Wisconsin--huge areas in Wisconsin were under glaciers. True or not so true memory?
Could be. All clay is different and some wild clays are near perfect right from the ground.
I live in Oklahoma, dig ANYWHERE like 4 or 5 inches and you're in a super thick clay layer. Deep red clay. There are parts of the Canadian River in central Oklahoma that are sand bottom. When I was a kid we use to go swimming and I would find giant balls of perfectly round clay. Hundreds of them, I use to "make fossils" but pressing plants into it and then covering it camp fire ashes, peel off the plant, boom... Instant "fossil".
Sounds like fun. I lived 4 years near Ada, Oklahoma just a half mile or so from the South Canadian, we had red clay all over our property.
Sounds like what I used to find about a hundred years ago, when I was ten.
I live in northern Utah and most rock around me is limestone. I know that there is a lot of clay in the subsoil having dug a lot of fencepost holes. I have heard that this kind of clay is undesirable. Is that true? If so, why is that?
Limestone in your clay can cause your pottery to break. So you either need to make sure there are no pieces of limestone in your clay or fire below 900 C.
Anyone have experience looking in the new england area? We don't really have these big expanses of mostly empty soil. Anywhere there aren't buildings there's likely to be trees and foliage, and it doesn't seem like most of the exposed soil has much clay
Try road cuts and construction sites
Such a sweet guy, like hin.
Is he Single?
All I have is clay, clay, clay. I have red clay. I have cement-like grayish silvery clay underneath red clay. Two feet deep and more. Clay, clay clay. I want to grow vegetables and all I have is CLAY!
Ha, yes sometimes that is the case. And it is terrible to try to garden in.
Hey, I am absolutely digging your content ! I’m in northern Vermont. Out here we have high levels of play in our subsoil. It’s a gray clay. When I was outback, running the kayak out of little creek, I came across huge bed of smooth, gray clay under the water. It’s like it has been washed clean! I’m hoping to go back this Summer and start breaking out some lumps and processing it. I can’t wait! Your channel has giving me the confidence that I can actually do this. I’ve never done anything with pottery, but I want to so bad. I love the southwest, and the rich native history. I’m going to see if there is some Northeast Native American techniques For pottery and see if I can emulate that.
That sounds cool. There is Native pottery in the northeast. Have fun!
I'm so lucky considering i live in the southeastern Piedmont strata. Millions of tons of clay beneath my feet
That's awesome.
Hi, I see you call the red clay primary clay along with the other types. I dug some red clay on my farm and have had it sitting since last year, it's really sticky. I had it in a bucket with a sieve that allowed water to drain off of it. Anyway, I've seen it referred to as "plain ole brick clay" that doesn't sound good. Can it be used for pottery or sculpting or am I stuck with just plain old brick clay? Thanks.
The color doesn't have anything to do with the type. It is primary because of the way it was deposited. All clays are different, I hope your "plain ole brick clay" turns out to be good.
I thought I recognized those mountains!
Bisbee native here!
I film all over southeast Arizona. I grew up in Sierra Vista
I've recently been needing some fire brick, and I heard it's made of Fire clay. How do you find, and recognize fire clay? It's hard to find any information, almost like it's top secret.
It's a good question but I have no idea. I have never made bricks or had any need for fire bricks
Can you do a video on making clay pots with beach sand? Hawaii has beautiful black sand! There's red sand beaches, and also white sand beaches. That would be cook to see on video! :)
You can't make pots with sand, but you can add some sand to your clay. I do know that Hawaii has some beautiful red clay.
It's weird why people watching this video to find Clay. idk nice content though
A lot of people are interested in finding and processing their own clay. A lot of people spend a lot of money buying clay when they could just dig their own.
Mine's easy enough to find. Dig a hole in the garden, I can find pure clay, massive chunks, not even very deep. Entire area has it, down one end of the beach there's cliffs that are just pure clay (occasional pebbles & grit). (South east Ireland, I think it's the glacier that dumped them here?)
That is very cool. Bad for gardening but great for pottery.
@@AncientPottery yeah our garden is gorgeous & lush due to hard work my mom put into it. But when we moved in it was clay on the surface, grass & reeds! (marshland around here a bit I think?)
We used to play with clay chunks she dug up & make stuff to just dry in the sun! I did put a mini pot or two into our house fire. It did turn that terracotta red, so that was very cool!
I’d be afraid of digging up clay , the land is always owned by someone , the feds , the state the cities and hard to convince some people your just digging clay and not on their claim looking for gold !!!
True all land is owned by someone, but sometimes nobody really cares. I have been doing this for a long time and have found that roadsides are a great place where nobody will hassle you for digging up a little dirt.
Where would I find clay here in Ketchikan Alaska?
I've never been to Alaska, but clay is available in most areas around the world. Perhaps glacial clay can be found in your area.
I watched one of your videos and I was just recommended this one and I just wanted to let you know that the thumbnail looks like you are wearing someone else's face it's kind of freaky
I am wearing someone else's face
What is Georgia red clay? and would it be good for anything besides bricks?
I know people who make pottery from that red Georgia clay. I don’t know enough about it to tell you what kind of clay it is though. If I had to guess I would say primary but it’s just an uneducated guess.
To use as a slip, does the clay have to be levigated and only the very finest particles used? Or can the body just be thinned down enough with water?
It depends on the clay used. Some clays are rather pure straight from the earth and others need to be purified before they are suitable for slip.
man, the music.. not trying to be mean, it just gets so loud. I have to adjust my volume every time it comes on ..then back up when you talk again.
I was a potter and graphic designer before I was a video editor. I learned video as I went and audio was the last thing I figured out. I hear this a lot on my older videos but there's not much I can do about these old videos. I am doing better now though. thanks for the feedback.
I am seeking to find clay deposits in the Sedona, AZ area. Can you or anyone else point me in the right direction(s) here?
I have no idea but I am sure there is clay around there.
Question. Do you always get your clay outdoors or do you purchase clay? and where?
I rarely purchase clay. I recently bought some red micaceous clay from New Mexico Clay.
I will be driving atound now looking for places where i might find clay i havent done pottery since childhood but i did love the experience now im retired who knows where this might lead me thank you
You are welcome, the search for clay is fun and never ending.
Now I live in New York the city of Bronx It’s really kinda hard to find some
No doubt
hello :) i live in iceland sooo the dirt never really dries enough to crack or crumble. and tips on finding clay in cold climates ?
Well clay is clay, if it is wet it is easier to find because it looks and feels like clay. Look for tire tracks on dirt roads.
Thank you for creating these videos!
Glad you like them!
This is a wonderful intro to riverine minerology. Thank you!
You're very welcome!
Gracias, had fun watching the video :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
Now I am learning at a center so clays are store bought, but where do you get stoneware clay?
The "stoneware" designation just refers to the ability of the clay to withstand very high temperatures. Many wild clays can be stonewares and many melt at that temperature, you just need to test them to find out how high you can fire them. See this video on that process th-cam.com/video/lbVXOHO5TsE/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for sharing your knowledge we have a pond and a stream in our woods and that is where i find my clay for Yaki-ire=clay tempering of swords and knives. I found your channel by trying to learn how to remove the dirt from clay.
Great, thanks
Do you know of a place to find clay in the east valley of Phoenix?
No, and I have looked. The same issue exists in Phoenix as we have in Tucson, all the good clay is underneath parking lots or housing developments or covered with riprap. Try out by Florence, where Attaway Road crosses the Gila River.
You found limestone. You seem pretty unimpressed by it
Limestone will cause pops and spalls in your pottery, avoid it like the plague.
do your online class videos and information only pertain to what's found in Arizona or the U.S.?
I try hard to make the information usable to people anywhere and I have had many satisfied customers from all over the world. But, the examples I show and most of my experience do come from the American Southwest. There is also a money back guarantee in case you feel it is not useful to you after you buy it.
@@AncientPottery i was just wondering if the processing of clay would differ much from Oceania or pacific islands that have been known to be part of the lapita pottery region. but thank you for your prompt response!! i look forward to watching your videos.
Really interesting. I love how you've taken a bunch of people interested in craft and given us a nature documentary! I'd also be keen to see you do a follow up video of types of clay found in tropical, coastal or alpine regions (if you ever travel outside your state) . Thanks.
Thanks. The same clay types exist around the world, the only type of clay we are lacking here in Arizona is glacial clay. This is an old video and could use an update now.
North America here! I have a backyard full of redish brown wild clay, and I decided to try wet processing it for the first time, well I strained it a couple different times, and ended with a large bit of clay at the end, but it's grainy/gritty. Is this a good quality? Do I still have to add a temper or will whatever is in it work as one? Do I have to do the wet process all over again?
It depends on how much grit and how much shrinkage the clay has. Do some experiments and see how it does. This video can help th-cam.com/video/l4QjKYP3fGk/w-d-xo.html
@@AncientPottery the coil test proved harder than I thought it would be. I couldn't even make it into a pinch pot, it kept falling apart. The clay I left out to dry hardened up nicely, and had alot of strength strength, but it disintegrated pretty quickly once wet.
I tried burning a lot of paper that was sent to me, during a year.. The fly ash, mixed with water has very, very fine particles.. left it to dry in the sun and it´s pretty solid, it´s crumbly, but ok. I´m gonn try some pine-resin on it.. It seems... you can fire up this ash-clay really hot and it will calcinate.. if you add water again after that it gets quite solid.. that just takes a lot of time and I haven´t gotten it right yet. But as an easy source for clay... I think you should give it a go. I´d love to see your opinion.
You can’t make clay from paper ash. It may be clay-like but it’s not the same.
A Filipino friend has found a nice outbreak of what appears to be 'Kaolin clay' in her yard. She wanted to know how to determine if it would be suitable for mining, say for cosmetic purposes ?
thanks so much for these videos. just a suggestion, I'm sure it would be appreciated if you equalized the volume between the music and your voice? sometimes the sound pick up of your voice is very quiet and then the music comes in very loud.... had to keep turning my headphones up to hear you and then quickly back down before the music blew out my eardrums. just a small thing but makes a big difference so i can focus on the good info
This was super informative. Thank you!!
Thank you for this video, I had just sourced some wild clay prior to watching this without much of an idea what I was doing. Luckily my old foraging trick of using place names was also useful here, I collected from "clay wood" in my local area. Now to binge watch all your content so I can begin my experiments in earnest. What a fantastic resource you are providing, I am very grateful.
You know sow many things about clay and maby you know wich one clay, we use to make fire bricks?
I mean fireproof bricks. We mix the clay with cement for thoses clay or just clay? Thank you and hapy the new year sir.
I live near southern Utah and found red, yellow,red/purple, and white/gray. It seems like the yellow clay is a lot more gelatinous and thickens up real quickly. Reddish purple clay does the same but seems to have more body. The red clay has a lot more sand in it.
I'm wondering what the mineral content could be in these and if they are useful for pottery?. I suspect the yellow could have sulfur. I know the Reds have iron oxide. The whitish-gray possibly Lime but also a lot of silt. I found all these deposits on the steppes of a reservoir where there is occasional thermal activity nearby (hot pots). They were all found in the same vicinity of each other and in veins, if that makes sense? I also found chocolate brown clay in Colorado that settles really fast, not sure why this is? Also found green clay but no sign of BioLife as I have encountered in past clays.
Hey I'm so excited and I would like to know more about these!. I have recently become fascinated by Clay and came across your very informative video!
When I experimented with God Panning, rather briefly, in my own back yard (Seattle), I discovered during the washing and classifying of my dirt that...
I'd probably make more money mining Clay.
Lots of clay in that area, sounds like fun to me.
@@AncientPottery Something something Glacial Till imported from Canadia, eh?
It was shipped in a few millennia back. I remember it well, mom was SO happy! Well, once the glaciers and flooding subsided, that is.
@@TimeSurfer206 That's cool. One kind of clay we don't have in Arizona, glacial.
I don't know anything about pottery but I do hunt clay for my niece who loves everything pottery. Great video!
I wish I was smart enough to describe what I find or even ask the question I want to ask but I'll try. In some very old drainage ditches that have cut below the topsoil into the prehistoric ocean bottom (I live in the PNW) I will find a grayish-white substance that is harder than a clay but softer than a rock that can be crumbled into a fine powder. I would love to know if I can process this into clay... I found it last year and now the river is too high to extract any without significant effort but if it's usable I'd put in the effort...
I like this guy (:
I love this channel and I’m not that into pottery! But the production is phenomenal and the information is great!
Hi Andy. I'm looking to find the appropriate clay for plastering straw walls internally, I'm based in Ireland and I have access to ' Macamore' clay. Is this ok or not the right type ? Thanks
I can't say I know much about using clay as a plaster. I have never heard of Macamore clay so I really couldn't say
Thank you
Great show
I live in a valley and clay is everywhere, if I dig anywhere I hit clay. Its both a blessing and a curse.
Wonder if you can pull it from marine beds before they’re dry… got a spot where my dad used to take me clamming…
If by chance you are continuing with your comments I would like to know if clay I might make can be formed into bricks
bro the font of "kinds of clay" made me think it was "kind of Gay" lmao
Can you make a video about finding white clay? I love gathering wild clay but i love the color of porcelain for delicate work
White clay is rare, there are no secrets to finding it, it is just where it is. Some areas have lots and some areas have none.
@@AncientPottery good to know! I just found that i can remove iron out of powdered filtered wild clay with a strong magnet, I wonder if it will significantly lower the redness. Have you ever heard of that?
@@2ndPortalinteresting
love your vids, but ffs please balance the music track with your spoken audio levels, music IS WAY TOO LOUUUUUUDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This video is over 2 years old. I am a slow learner but I do learn eventually.
I have come to an age , where I watch man looking for clay with excitment. And Im just 31. :) it would be awesom to find some clay here, I know there are alot in countryside. Greetings from Latvia!
Yes, fortunately for you and me, clay is found almost everywhere on earth, so there is probably clay near where you live. Thanks for watching.
Hey Andy, I watched most of your vids and tried to make my own clay from the soil I have here (northern Europe). For some reason the result doesn’t resemble clay but will break or collapse from just looking at it, a bit like a sand castle. I tired to add more or less sand or replace sand with ground pot shards, but all outcomes were absolute bulls**t. Any suggestions?
It sounds like you don't have clay at all. All clay is dirt but not all dirt is clay. You need to do some searching for a good clay to work with, this may be the hardest part of the process, finding a good clay bed to use.
@@AncientPottery I got it from a small stream, it’s yellowish and more dense than the soil around, I swirled it in water and took what settled down from the solution
Update: I just looked up some geological stuff and saw that silt can also float in water and looks clay-like when constantly conducting ground water. So, damn it haha
@@pascalbaryamo4568 if it’s not cohesive, won’t stick together and easily crumbles, it’s not clay.
@@AncientPottery ok I figure it will be more efficient long term to buy clay from an arts supply anyway ^^
Have you tried doing a clay test on soil in different areas? Get a mason jar and fill it half way with some dirt (literally any dirt you think might have clay in it) and fill it the rest of the way up with water. Shake it up until everything is broken apart, and then let it settle for a couple of minutes. Everything that isn’t clay should settle pretty quickly.
So if you filled half the jar with dirt and only 1/2 of that settles you have about 50% clay in that soil. Then you have a rough idea of the clay content
How do you find the cone, these clays should be fired at ?
Thank you.
im pretty blind and read the title as "types of gay".
Just watched a few of your videos on finding and processing wild clay and I have no idea if I'll ever use this knowledge but I love that these videos exist and that I have learned something new. Thank you!
You are welcome
Thankyou... a very informative vid about wild clays.
Firstly, is that the same Benson, Arizona as from song in the movie 'Dark Star'?😎
I'm going out this weekend near Newport, Wales, UK to get some lovely red soil that I know has clay in it to see just how much it yields. We don't have the same climate or geology obviously but there's clay everywhere so it's good seeing your tips... I have a few river banks in my sights too.
Yes, it must be as there is only one Benson in Arizona. I was unaware of this song before your comment. And yes, our geology and climate may differ but clay is found everywhere and many of the same principles apply in finding it.
Where can I find the shale I live near Maricopa AZ I wld love to find some ll let me know if you can show me or tell me that wld be great
Does the dry color of clay indicate the fired color?
Here in Deep East Texas we have red clay and blue, "Gumbo Mud"...clay. I didn't grow up here so I was familiar with the Gumbo mud until I helped my husband dig a well. We started hand digging but eventually resorted to pushing a steel pipe into the ground passing through gumbo mud. Husband told me if I wanted some out of the pipe I'd better get it while it was wet because once it dried I wouldn't be able to get it. Of course, I didn't listen. Yup. Next day when I attempted to retrieve the now dry substance out of the pipe...it wasn't budging. That pipe got used for a gate...with gumbo mud still intact. For all these years I've threatened to collect our mud and try my hand at firing some pottery. You've inspired me to get off my duff and get it done!
Sounds cool, I hope that gumbo works good for pottery
Nice video, but the music bursts are too loud. (In my opinion)
Sorry about that, I am learning and this is one of my older videos.
Thankyou
My boyfriend just picked some alluvial clay up for me. He found some that looks like it was washed up on the side of the road with the rain It looks really pure with maybe a little bit of plant matter. I'm so excited!
Great!