Some of my scrap clay I use right away and some I toss into a container to be made into "mud" later. I WAS moving right along working on the "mud" mixture until I hit a bad patch of old, really old, bad clay and there went my whole batch.
It was peeling and shredding right off of the sheets coming out of the pasta machine. What a mess and what a waste.
I thought some of it was kind of pretty...like rusty metal, so I tried baking it. Old dried out clay is old dried out clay. It does not like to be baked. It came out brittle, cracked and lost most of its color. I did find it a little humorous.
Some of my scrap clay I use right away and some I toss into a container to be made into "mud" later. I WAS moving right along working on the "mud" mixture until I hit a bad patch of old, really old, bad clay and there went my whole batch.
It was peeling and shredding right off of the sheets coming out of the pasta machine. What a mess and what a waste.
I thought some of it was kind of pretty...like rusty metal, so I tried baking it. Old dried out clay is old dried out clay. It does not like to be baked. It came out brittle, cracked and lost most of its color. I did find it a little humorous.
Just how old was it? I never knew clay could go bad!
ReplyDeleteYes, clay does go bad. "Bad" meaning "unworkable". If the green clay had been by itself, it would have just crumbled going through the pasta machine and I would have tossed it. But because it was mixed with other clays, it "sheeted off" the other clays. Yes, you can force it to blend by putting it through the pasta machine starting at your widest setting and then to about a #4. It looks pretty good, but after curing, it is not stable. It will crack over time or in moderate heat. I need to date my packages. The green was over 3 years old and who knows how long it was on the store shelf.
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