DIY Berkey ceramic filter element

[bulrush]

Ok. So I bought a ceramic filter element online to make my own water filter. When I opened it, it was white and looked just like unfinished, baked clay I used in high school, just with a fitting on the bottom. Can a person make their own element from clay? I don't mean that manufactured plasticene clay or anything, I mean real clay.

Is there something more to the process, or is it just unfinished baked clay?

I would imagine that attached to the bottom fitting would be a round perforated tube to serve as an infrastructure to hold the clay while it is soft. Oh wait, they couldn't put the plastic fitting in until after firing the clay.

[Rick]

I would think you would have to maintain a specific pore size for the filter and I don't know how you would accomplish that with clay. There would be no pores just a solid mass of...well...clay.