Natural Pottery

Pretty nice,RWB.A very useful skill to have.

I learned by trail and error,And a few things I found out. Dout make your project to thick, Around 1/4 thick, dry slowly, When you fire you pots start out with a small fire around your pots to drive out the last bit of water then build up the fire to finish the firering.

Here is a fairly easy project to start out with. Try making clay beads. I made these a while back,the arrow head is made from a trap spring, Hardend and now is a striker for Flint n Steel.:thumbup1:

Sorry Crash, I didnt under stand what you were talking about untill today, LOL. This is the frog oil lamp the wick lays in the mouth:tongue_smilie:

I did read the section on tempering in post 22, was looking for more. the link you posted looks pretty good. thanks gryff.
They clay might be too wet, but as it dries it cracks worse, so I'm leaning towards the need for temper.
thanks for the tips and links guys. I'm learning and trying!

oh yeah.. today my bowl was in several pieces.. it dried itself into destruction.. rewet the clay, and molded it out again.. will see how it does once more, then I'm going to crush some bricks or fire some of this clay to crush and use as temper.
I'll start with the suggested 1/5 and make a couple plates increasing to see what holds up to drying best then firing.
thanks again gang!

It's been many, many years since I worked with clay. Could it be drying too fast? Maybe wrapped in a slightly damp towel to slow the process?

I'll give that a try on one of the pieces my son made, but I'm really leaning toward too much shrinkage. I did a really REALLY good job cleaning it out. I think this slaked clay is just too thin to hold together without something to reduce shrinking.
I'm really eager to try the clay from my BOL. Got a nice ball drying in the chop shop now, probably 2 lbs, and I got it from the same exact place I got the stuff 13 years ago that I made into a bowl at school (Man, that seems like forever ago!)
I did it a little differently, reducing the number of pourings needed.. I'll post on it all when I get to the point of no return... pieces that hold together in drying lol. got about 1000 pics lol.. you know me, I like pictures!
And I really have to thank you again Mr. Crashblade, for this most excellent camera. THANK YOU!!

RWB, Way cool stuff...awesome frog!

Lots of good info here ,thank you gentelman!

that was some good info on that texas link gryff, thanks.

Okay, I think, now, that it was a combination of both factors +1. The clay was too wet when I set it to dry, that is, when I made the bowl out of it, it was still tacky. Then I let it dry too quickly, but the worst part, was it stuck to the mold hahaha!
So I took it out and reworked it as mentioned before, adding only a little moisture, and it became like play-doh. it still cracked at the edges when molding, but this time, I lined my bowl with an old thin rag so it wouldn't stick.
since it wasn't stuck to the bowl, when it dried and shrunk away from the mold you could lift it out by the rag, and set it in the open to air dry slowly. I covered the rim with the damp towel, as per suggested by crash, and in a few days I had a leather-dry drinking bowl.
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2580.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2643.jpg

the dish was treated in the same manner. I have not yet added any temper to the clay. We shall see how they hold up in the fire.

I also made a bowl out of the BOL clay today, had some in process for a few days now. It had a better feel and was much more plastic. It felt like the clay I remembered from school.

I took a lot of pics of what I've been doing, with the refining of these 2 different clays. If anyone would like to peruse all the pictures, they are located here

I'll be glad to answer any questions I can about this, but be warned, I don't know what I'm doing!! hahaha!
Thanks for the tips guys.. this might turn out yet!

Nice work YCC. I'm interested in seeing how the firing goes.

by some odd chance, I found the tempering info gryff suggested on practical primitive.
http://www.practicalprimitive.com/sk...tempering.html

WELLLLL,

the firing went pretty well. my drinking bowl blew to smithereens but the waiter dish fired perfectly. I got some real nice colors, light through dark orange and some black spots.
I'm just tickled pink!

It was much too windy to fire them in an open firing, so I built a small fire in the chop shop, let it die to coals, all while getting the pieces nice and 3rd-degree-burn hot. stuck the pieces in the hot coals, covered them with a layer of hot coals, covered that with dry wood from pallets, and stuck a small green log on top, just to keep the heat directed down. I sat there and watched as the bowl exploded and my heart broke a little, too, but when I took out the dish it more than made up for the bowl.

Success!.. well half success anyway :D
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2667.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2671.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2673.jpg

you might notice the thing that looks like an ice-cream cone. That's my youngest son's "cup" It was of inconsistent thickness, but fired perfectly. I guess that changes success / failure to 66 / 33%. at least now I have some fired clay to use as temper if needed. This looks to be viable clay if treated with care (no neanderthals!!)

YAY!

so, who wants a write up on the super easy process of making your own containers in a wilderness situation? I'd like to employ RWB in the posting if I may. As this is my first attempt, I'd like input from someone with a lot more experience.

The creek pot is still pretty wet. Thats the one I'm really excited about!
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...y/DSCN2664.jpg

Well done YCC.

Very Cool !!

Did it fire hard enough so that you can knap the piece that exploded?

I'm a little disappointed that my bowl cracked, but at least I got plastic clay.. now to adjust for shrinkage.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Of course you have to adjust for shrinkage!

The water was cold????

I haven't dug into the ashes to really get at the shards, but I'm gonna try knapping the bowl itself (gonna break it anyway for temper) when I get over this pulled muscle thing I got from knapping for 8 days straight lol. got myself a nice knot between my shoulders and one in my chest OW!

hmj, I adjusted my drying method rather than adding temper. This was really just a test of the clay itself before I start adjusting variables.. change too many at once and you don't know what you did that made a difference. I needed to know I had firable stuff first. Also, this will give me grog that is the same color my fired pieces will be, so colors will match.

Crash, If we're on the same train of thought here. the picture with the bucket on the heater was that day last week when the cold front pushed through. I don't like cold fingers!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by your_comforting_company

Crash, If we're on the same train of thought here. the picture with the bucket on the heater was that day last week when the cold front pushed through. I don't like cold fingers!

---

I was commenting on Huntermj's post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cUNNKzj_Nc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm3F9piwnTU

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