Text book foot wedging

I bet this wasn't the first try -

After about 30 hours of this

At about 55% humidity in the studio I had to bag up the clay. The necessary wedging to assure uniformity of the open body stoneware was minimal, each 1/3 of the original 30+ lbs. of clay has so far only been wedged 1-2 minutes, 3 times each.

Roseville Out of the Bag

I mixed this up a few weeks ago see my previous posts - this is the same batch - mixing time by hand was about 15 minutes. It has been aging and the mixture in now about uniform; not as lumpy as it was going in the bag. It is still sloppy, but that is oakey-dokey as it is now drying back a little before wedging. Since I wedge all clay anyway this is not an additional step. Nothing is going to happen too fast with 100% humidity a few hours ago and 52% humidity currently.

Progress report. 12 hours later had to wedge for a few minutes. Formed 3 of the inverted "U". Still sticks to the stone surface. 60% humidity in studio.

Tea Bowl by h a n s e n

glaze is half clay from my backyard and half wood ash from the grill and/or fireplace; & high temperature reduction wood-fired by Loren Scherbak.

Bagging the Clay

The amount of time I'll let this set may be a few days minimum, what with no clay mixer or pugmill. It will need wedging and more drying back naturally. See my earlier posts on images of this. Mixing your own clay means you know what is in it, and having only one ingredient eliminates the likleyhood of formulation errors. If you plan on using body clay in your engobe and glaze formulation, you aren't working with an unknown.

Mixing Clay

Basically I worked it up with the trowel for 10-15 minutes, slowly adding the water. I made it up as thick as I could stand, however this is still wetter than what it should be. This is intentional, because the first 24 hours of maturing, the water continues to wet dry clay particles in the mixture and it will stiffen considerably.

Hansen's Clay Mixer

The single-component clay body is extensively researched by the manufacturer. This will be an open-bodied mid-fire stoneware cone 4-8. I added plenty of grog as this aids the process when using no machinery.