Many time during the sculpting or pottery process, you will have the opportunity to recycle scrap clay. A lot of times you will have excess clay that you have trimmed off of a project or failed attempts at a design. As long as you have not fired the clay it can be reconstituted to a workable consistency, but there are some thing you need to know to do this. If clay has dried somewhat, but not all the way it is called leather hard. Leather hard clay will be stiff but not completely dry. Bone dry is what clay is referred to as after it has become brittle and fragile Bone dry clay is extremely porous. So the easiest way to reconstitute the clay is to let it dry out completely and then put it into a scrap bucket full of water, and that will immediately turn back to a slushy mush consistency. The next step is to lay it out on plaster bats to allow it to loose the excess moisture and get back to a workable consistency. If you have leather hard clay it is best to let it dry completely to bone dry and reconstitute before trying to put it through a pug mill. |
