Do It Yourself Clay Bodies
Clay bodies you can make yourself, from dry ingredients.
Recycling clay scraps so they can be made into workable clay again can be done without any machinery.
You want to try your hand at mixing your own clay body from dry ingredients. You may have even found a formula or recipe that sounds just like what you are looking for. Now what? How do you understand what you are looking at?
You may want to develop your own throwing clay body. Clay bodies used for throwing must be plastic and yet strong enough to hold up under the rigors of being thrown on the potter's wheel.
How do you find out what the characteristics are of a given clay body? There are several tests you can run on clay bodies to find out their suitability to your work.
Have you ever wanted to dig your own clay? Local clays can make wonderful slips and (when fired higher than the clays' actual maturity temperature) slip glazes. They can also be very interesting clays with which to create pottery.
There are a number of slips and earthenware clays that are available in dry form to be used in the formulation of a potter's own particular clay body recipe.
There are several dry fire clays and stoneware clays available to the studio potter. These dry clays are used to create custom clay bodies, using clay body recipes.
Ball clays are light-colored, highly plastic clays that are used to help clay bodies become more workable. They are also very prone to excessive shrinkage (generally between 12% and 15%) and warping. Because of these problems, they are no…
Kaolin clays are refractory, very pure clays used in creating porcelain clay bodies. They tend to be very non-plastic, sometimes to the point of being nearly unworkable. Even so, they are highly regarded for their whiteness and the translucence that they can exhibit.
