How I Make Clay at Home | Pottery | Ceramics

[Music] okay but in all seriousness i'm gonna go over how to make clay at home how to make your own clay body from scratch my process my journey so far to get to this point and the pros and cons between buying your own clay versus making your own clay this process takes a while so i'm hoping to make a big batch today and then not make clay for i don't know a month or two we'll see okay so let's quickly go over what i have here in the garage to make your life easier all my raw materials are over here i've opened bags of things i've used before they have cups in them for easy scooping okay got lots of buckets over here five gallon buckets for multiple batches of clay um small buckets for mixing water or plasticizers we'll go over that um unlike logistical tools a couple of drills with a fan attachment paper towels or shop towels i got my mask in here i've got spatulas sponges small cups and i also have i also have some colorants i'll be mixing some colored clay today as well from scratch versus having to wedge in all the colored stains spray bottles this helps a lot for cleaning off tools without touching them or adding more water little by little extra batteries for the drill and an extra bucket oh duh scale for weighing second to last garden hose for water and then my handy dandy notebook this has my recipe in it so one thing that isn't listed a lot in clear recipes it is sometimes is a plasticizer either bentonite or v gum bentonite or v gum or a couple other ones maybe mceloyd are plasticizers that help your clay be more plastic makes it more flexible makes it more moldable bendable without cracking typically a clay body that doesn't have a plasticizer in it is going to be pretty short unless there are a lot of ball clays in it so for a porcelain clay you want to stay white if you use bentonite there's iron in bentonite more than other plasticizers so you'll have it be more gray or you'll see some iron specks in there if you want a plasticizer for a very white porcelain like i'm doing i have v gum it's actually kind of expensive and it's like five or ten dollars a pound but you only add about one or two percent per batch of clay per dry material so for 100 pounds of dry clay i'll add two pounds of egum i found that three percent is hard to get into the water it kind of gels up almost too much so two percent gives you enough plasticity enough stretching on the wheel enough bending for coils enough bending for slabs without gelling up making it like waterlogged too much v gum increases shrinkage and like it logs water pots take forever to dry so i found two percent or less for my porcelain recipe is best so yeah i think i think you get it i try to add materials into a smaller bucket first it's easier to balance on the scale then i pour that ingredient in my bigger bucket ten pounds of water bucket number two and bucket number three so 25 pounds of water for 100 pounds of dry clay 25 will help the v gum soak in it'll be like a very wet plastic clay i'll leave it out for a little bit it's not a big deal two pounds of vegan stir this in slowly so those chunks you see in there not a big deal work a little bit more and those should dissolve it helps doing this the day before but as long as you do it really well it's gonna be okay [Music] this drill is pretty weak so i'm gonna upgrade i promise i'm not a rookie that was kind of a rookie mistake i forgot i have this really sweet mud mixer this is for plaster and uh like carpentry stuff it's actually really great for doing this first step i forgot like i said with v gum it absorbs water and so it's hard to get it absorbed into the water this is already wet so it doesn't matter if i have the mask on or not so i thought it would be okay with 25 water but it was just so gelled up add five more pounds so this is about 30 water check it out now it's absorbing quite nicely this is good to go and then spin this in some water to clean it i'm going to use this in about 15-20 minutes so i'm going to leave that in the sun to dry so i'm not going to talk so much about my specific recipe but i'm making a very white porcelain so i'm using china clay it's a very white kalin it's called grolig you could use tile 6 which is a little bit less white you could use epk which is a little bit less white as well more iron in it you wouldn't tell the difference unless you compared it with china clay side by side there's one other kalin out there halos tonight i'm not exactly sure it's arthur nature from new zealand it's the whitest kalin in the world um and it's also super expensive so i'm just using china clay for this recipe nephilim cyanide which is a very white flux as well it's also good for cone six range custer feldspar is a typical flux for cone ten clays and then silica that's all i have for this recipe it's pretty simple the goal for this clay when i started making it this is probably version 3.0 was a very white you know cone 5 cone 6 translucent porcelain for coloring clays and letting the color show up as vivid and bright as possible and also for throwing thin and getting some translucency and i've tried to modify it over the last recipes make it more you know user-friendly kind of jack-of-all-trades which is very difficult to do um you know best for casting best for throwing best for hand building trying to get it clear i can use for everything so this used to call for some cnc ball clay for a little extra plasticity and i used to call for some greasy borate as well um i found the cnc ball clay had bigger chunks in it you know more coarse particles i didn't like that for my porcelain and then the grassy bore it's just expensive super expensive so i started with four recipes to get this recipe that i started working with and then i did seven versions of that with a couple of different substitutions and changes in amounts and now i have a recipe that i like for what i do ceramics is all about testing double check the recipe yep it had been a while since making play at home from scratch the last time and so i thought i had a big enough bend but i quickly realized i needed a bigger bin for all my dry materials okay here's a little trick okay so i need 25 pounds of silica with a big batch like i'm doing 100 pounds here's a little trick if you're okay with a little bit of inaccuracy i learned this in college from the great tyler lots of illness to university you flatten the bag on the ground give it a few taps cut it down the middle lift it up it should split it in half almost perfectly there we go about 25 and 25. usually the bags aren't this tight this is going to be kind of messy [Music] nothing in here is really harmful to you it's all clay but some stuff's heavier and so to get it mixed up the first time give it a good mix now if i was mixing a slip or if i had a clay machine it wouldn't be as important to mix dry materials ahead of time but because i'm mixing it by hand with small tools it's very important to make sure all the dry materials are evenly dispersed in the mixture before i add water you can actually feel the difference between china clay and naphtha all right now one benefit to doing a big dry batch like this is if it's all mixed up like i can just keep this here and use it as i need it i mean if i was really ambitious i might take four of these tubs one day mix up like four full tubs just dry clay then all i gotta do from now on is to walk into my garage mix up some bee gum throw some dry clay in there and i'm good or to make some slip or some casting slip you know grab a scoop of dry materials two pounds five pounds whatever and i'm good to go i can tell you that making small batches you got to use all the same tools and the same everything so if you're making clay at home big batches are better this looks ridiculous 20 pounds of dry materials i can only fit 20. so avoid the urge to add water this is 30 water it should be good enough as you can see from this piece it actually came together quite nicely again this is about 30 water so it seems really crumbly i've done this before and i always add too much water think it's going to come together you can hear this listen even though it's crumbly there's a lot of moisture in here so i've done this about five times now and i've learned something every time 20 pounds dry is about the limit for a five gallon bucket and it was actually difficult the reason i started making my own clay body in the first place was that i was very used to a clay i was buying from manufacturer got my glazes down got my you know shrinkage down my colorants down everything and then they stopped making it the company actually went out of business and so that clay no longer exists and i had to redo everything i told myself you know what i don't want to be stuck with a specific clay that i had to figure out also if you're buying clay from across the country or wherever you're paying to ship water across the country you know 20 of its water so if you can find a recipe that works for you and the materials are pretty common you can always make it wherever you are in the world this state that state this country that country and it's kind of fun to make your own clay if i want to make slip out of this clay sometimes companies don't sell slip in the same clay body that you're using you can always dry it out smash it up soak it down and add your deflocculant or whatever for casting stuff that way but like you saw today if i have this big blue bucket of dry materials i can take some make a batch of clay take some more make a batch of casting slip so let's talk about pros and cons of mixing your own clay go to the cons first number one it's very messy i'm in my garage now i've got 10 buckets 15 buckets on the floor dust everywhere my clothes are a mess i'm glad i'm outside in the garage if i was in my basement it'd be a huge mess number two it's very time consuming you got to have a lot of tools and a lot of buckets and there's a lot of processes because a big machine does it at the manufacturer a huge pug mill mixes up probably ten thousand pounds at a time i don't know they shoot it out into bags and you're done at home you're doing a lot of it by hand with a drill so it's very time consuming number three it's physically demanding my back hurts my arms will be sore tomorrow so to summarize the cons it's messy it's time consuming labor intensive that scares you run away now the pros number one complete control of your recipe if you want something more white more translucent more plastic stiffer better for carving better for throwing you can modify it as you wish number two you always have it it's always available to you the company you buy from doesn't ship to where you're currently living if you move somewhere you're out of luck if the company stops making the clay that you use you're really out of luck so wherever you go in the country or wherever you go in the world you can make your clay body as long as you're using common materials everything in this video is pretty common china clay nephilian cyanide silica nothing rare about those wherever i go if i move anywhere in the country or in the world those will be available this clay can always be made by me number three i'm calling this flexibility so if i want to add about 20 water i can make clay with this for hand building for throwing or if i want to make a casting slip i can use the same dry recipe but add more water add some deflocculant and now i can cast with it if i thought that i wanted to make some more sculptural pieces with i wanted more strength i could add five percent grog to the recipe to make it stronger so i can modify this recipe however i see fit that kind of goes under the complete control category but you get the point it allows for flexibility number four this is just my personal belief like i like making my own clay i like the process i like being connected with the materials and then when i use it if i mess up being more careful with you know how wasteful i am it sounds really nerdy but like it i feel like i'm one with the clay i know i know but that's something that you can't replace when i make this piece from dry powder to finished mug finish plate finish whatever i was in charge of the entire process i had a hand in every single step and that to me seems really cool if you're not afraid of these cons and if these pros intrigue you i highly recommend making your own clay reach out to me if you have any questions i'm not an expert but i've done it before and i've made a lot of mistakes that i could help you with very quickly i'm going to make a batch of blue and kind of show you what i would do to measure it just a little bit easier to mix it into a small batch first it doesn't get lost as easily yeah this is going to be 10 blue and so for 20 pounds i'm gonna add two pounds of blue mason stain to this okay and then if i feel like it's a little dry from the mason stain i'll spray some water on it that's just from experience go by feel at this point you're probably wondering why you would do it dry instead of like liquid and put it onto a plaster slab i mean it's preference but also my workspace is in the basement it takes much longer for it to dry out and it's harder to predict shrinkage if you don't know how much water is in your clay in the first place so unless you soak down your slip to a exact ratio of water and then pour it out on your slab and then weigh it out after it dries to know how much water is actually in there then you're like fighting with two soft clay to dry clay this way i know it's about 30 water and then i'll wedge it up together i'll let it dry i'll weigh it again until it's at about 20 water because i've done it before where i mix it to like 40 50 water to get it slippy and it took like days and days drying in my basement and it was really hard to manage so this i know is going to be good in the bucket close the bucket let it sit wedge it up i know it's about 30 water so i do the same for red or black this is 10 blue when you add mason stains to clay typically it dries it a little bit and so if you're doing it with existing clay or with slip or dry clay from scratch more water will be necessary for it to kind of soak in it's been about two days since i made that clay here's the white clay now remember it was really dry and crumbly like i said but that was 30 water which is more than you need for clay i kind of took my fist and pounded it down the bucket i spent about 10 minutes digging it out and kind of wedging it together [Music] i did a little bit of throwing it out to a long piece chopping it up and stacking it to make it the same consistency but you can see from here maybe you can't it's still a little crumbly that happens with your own homemade clay it takes a while from wedging it letting it sit for a little bit for it to be workable and usable if you soak it down to liquid and let it dry in a plaster bat you can use it quicker this is really soft you can hear maybe you can't this is really really soft so let me dig out the blue and the red i had more water for the red blue and the black but i'm guessing you didn't believe me when i said this would be good enough i learned a new trick today i learned a new trick today from how i store these packing it down tight like that is great for letting it soak up and kind of form a block not great for getting it out of the bucket so i think it would have lined this bucket with the plastic bag in order to easily kind of you know dump it out the last time i did this it was small batches and the time before that it was all liquid form and that was its own disaster so this is my first time doing it in bigger buckets or 25 pound batches so it looks like it's really crumbly but just watch as i wedge this up it's going to come together quite nicely you're going to find dry pieces and soft pieces in here and so you kind of have to make yourself a couple of wads of clay here's one that i'm going to make right here just kind of pack it together on all sides this is going to feel kind of hollow maybe you can even hear it i feel like there's hollow space in there it's because there is in between every molecule of clay there's like space and there's a gap and over time the moisture fills it in and then with proper particle packing and wedging it comes together tom coleman has a website talks about making clay from scratch um i think it's tom coleman pretty sure and you know whether you make it from liquid scratch or kind of dry scratch it'll tell you to let it kind of add just enough water help it kind of come together and then let it sit for a while some civilizations would leave their clay in caves for i don't know decades for years for months but all that good bacteria kind of grow let the moisture kind of soak in let it coat all the silica particles all the clay particles i don't have 10 years i know about you guys but how about this custom scraper it's a nerikomi custom scraper you can't be as aggressive with your wedging at this point because the clay wants to crumble still a little bit short so just kind of you know give it a couple of wedges after stacking slabs throwing it out cutting it stacking it you can see it's actually quite a quite nice blob right now a little bit of wedging i'm sure this will be fine so again avoid the urge to over water it i'll let this sit for uh maybe another day or so i might wedge it a little bit today to see if i can get some air bubbles out of the clay there and then let it sit for a couple days let it really solidify and then i'll start working with it added a lot more water to the red clay compared to the white blue or black clay i made it easier to mix up in the first place because it was easier to squeeze it wasn't as crumbly but you can tell from listening and watching this clay is too wet to work with tell you what though it's easier to get out of the bucket when it's wet black clay i also added more water to but a little bit less than the red [Music] oh yeah it feels much better too maybe i didn't add more water to the black or tons more at least okay let's get this out of here here we go now this wasn't ten percent mason stain added by dry weight this was only seven and a half because i find that black is much more powerful when it comes to stains and 10 is kind of overkill and it saves you some money so this is 7.5 percent mason stain added by weight you can see it's really crumbly but with a little bit of maneuvering this is going to wind up being super nice besides mixing your own clay the most effort goes into wedging up your own clay getting all the air bubbles out making sure it's all the same consistency an easy way to make sure it's all the same versus watching it over and over is making a couple of blobs stacking them throwing them out cutting them stacking them throwing them out and repeat this saves you time saves you energy and allows multiple layers to form and even out your entire batch of clay something very satisfying about this bowling ball size piece of clay probably about yeah this is about 20 26.5 pounds but i know with the proper water this should weigh about 25 pounds and so if i were to let this dry cut up into pieces and weigh it out once it gets 25 pounds i know it's the proper water consistency for me to work with let's get a bag fast forward two months from the initial mixing day and i've added a yellow clay i'm still working on my red blue and black clay i've made more white clay and the clay is more plastic it's come together it's better for throwing better for hand building it's just what i was hoping for and if you'll stick around just a moment longer here's a quick compilation of the pieces i've made recently with this colored clay i post a lot more pieces of in progress work on my instagram if you want to check it out it's at ceramic gym i very much enjoy the short and condensed format of instagram you know for works in progress for process videos and so if you're interested in more than just surrounding gym on youtube feel free to check it out so that's how i mix home for pottery and ceramics thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Ceramic Jim

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Keywords: ceramics, ceramic arts, pottery, pottery videos, pottery making, how to make pottery, clay, jim fazio, ceramic jim, ceramicjim, artist, handmade ceramics, ceramic artist, pottery studio, how to make clay, how to make clay from dirt, how to make clay at home, how to make clay at home for pottery, how to make pottery clay at home, how to make pottery clay, how to mix clay, how to mix clay powder, making clay, pottery at home, ceramics at home, how to make porcelain clay, porcelain

Id: o8-HWvwBpms

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020