Monday, March 14, 2011

Break it down

I've got a few hundred pounds of cone 10 clay in my basement. I'm not currently nor in the near future am I firing to cone 10. I've decided to try and reformulate these clay bodies to cone 1ish. Looking at the clay recipes for cone 3 most have a mixture of similar components. One major component to these clays is talc. Some cone 6 clays have about 10% talc or less. Cone 08 clays have near 50% talc. So a happy medium is a low talc body I've been using that's white stoneware mixed with a nice ball clay and about 25% talc as well as a little bit of soda spar. So what I'm doing is cutting the clay up into thin slices and laying it out to dry. Once the clay is dry I'm going to mix in about 25% talc and rehydrate in about 100lb batches. I have several plaster and bisque molds with which I will dry the clay back out down in my basement. It will probably take me about a week and a half to get the clay dry and reformulated. I'm hoping to have 300lbs of clay ready to throw by the end of the month.

Buff color body made from ball clay, fireclay, soda spar, talc.
Porcelaineous Body - porcelain, ball clay, soda spar, talc
Red Body - stoneware, ball clay, redart, soda spar, talc

I'm going to try one of the Porcelain cone 10 bodies I have in a line blend with soda spar to try and bring it down to cone 6 nice and tight.

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