Recycling Clay!

Baby diaper with a recycling symbol? Weird and gross. Like my clay recycling.

Clay recycling. It's a love hate relationship.

On the love side, there's so much good. Waste reduction, cost reduction, saved trips to Atlanta Clay, guilt free throwing, trimming and experimenting. The environment loves it. The clay angels praise it. The potter gets pounds and pounds of seemingly free clay out of the process.

Yet, on the hate side there are these two evil, dependable forces. Work and a Mess.

However, I recycle with a passion, gaining assistance from wherever possible. Paid labor, family members, guests, children, Daisy. No one is safe really. You come in my studio, you will be tricked, charmed, guilted or subconsciously wooed into reclaiming my clay for me.

And for the record, I'm not kidding. Daisy eats clay off the floor which counts as cleaning up the mess and recycling it. In a gross doggie digestive way. At least she doesn't wear the baby diaper.

So this is my method, learned from the world wide intranet with a little bit of Lisa Pizazz. It doesn't include fancy machines, just time, muscle and effort.

Step 1. Grab a bucket. 3-5 gallons preferably, and lay an old shirt or two, towel, rag, etc. on the bottom of the bucket. These will soak up extra water. And mildew really grossly. Line the bucket with a pillow case.

If you don't take me seriously about the mildewy rag precaution, just be ready for your pillowcase bottom to rot away and then the bottom will fall out on you like a massive wet clay explosion you have never experienced before. And if you try and save this clay, just enjoy all the rock and crud you will be throwing along with it. This never happened to me or anything. But rocks do explode in the kiln and bust your pieces up. K?

Step 2. Put all your scraps in the pillow case bucket. This includes throwing/hand building bucket slurry, and dry clay. To reclaim clay that is hardening and past being able to wedge it back up for use, lay it out to dry. This can be thrown wares you don't want to fire, trimmings, random hard clay wads, etc. I lay mine on a small piece of bisque slab covered in canvas. This helps suck moisture out. Then beat it up with a rubber mallet into small pieces (Mask on!). My drying board could be bigger but then I would stall on getting it into the slop bucket and just take up space. I give dry clay at least 24 hours to slack down in the bucket before recycling it unless its thin tiny trimmings.

Canvas bisque slab used for drying clay

Step 3. Mix it up. This part does require equipment. I use a jiffy mixer attached to my drill. Charging the drill before hand is good. As is plugging in the charger to the wall. Don't know how many times I have to remind myself of that. Jiffy mixer attachments cost about $10-15 from a ceramic supply store. I use mine all the time for clay and glaze mixing. Love it. The drill was a k-mart special and cost me $25. It is not nice but it works and I'm proud to own such a high powered spinny tool. Guests ask, Jon, do you have an electric drill? To which he replies, no, but my wife does.

And, I used to bribe this guy at work to let me borrow his drill and he hated doing it since I'm a girl. How sexist. So he let me borrow his cheap one from time to time. Now I have my own and he can keep his little toy drill.

When you are done mixing, it should look really smooth and not chunky. I also add a bit of vinegar to help keep the clay plastic (like gumby). It doesn't make your clay stink, promise.

Step 4. Hang it. This is when you thank yourself for the mildewy towels and kick yourself for not recycling 10 or 20 pounds ago because a full 5 gallon bucket of clay slop is HEAVY. The website I learned the pillow case technique from recommended hanging the clay from a tree. HA. Ok, mental illness runs RAMPANT in my neighborhood and I would certainly be added to the ranks if I had this hanging from the trees. Not to mention the rain would be a quite frustration for the drying process so I hang mine in an out of the way corner of the basement from a nail in a joist on a rope (or a bungee cord). Actually, Jon hangs it. And he's the one that didn't have a full bag of clay bust open all over him while hanging it. Poor guy.

One note- hanging it out of the way is important. I once had several bags going at once and we thought it would be good to use a nail in the middle of the basement. Hmmm. Yes, I walked into that bag REPEATEDLY. Which is like walking into a mud puddle head first. UHG! It's gross even to a potter.

This probably weighs 40 lbs.

Step 5. Wait for it to dry and start a new slop bucket. In a dark, damp basement, I can leave mine up for weeks before it dries. Probably a good month to 6 weeks. If you have plenty of clay on hand, it's not a big deal to wait that long. I check it every week. Once finger prints start staying, you know you are getting close. The tricky part is the outside hardens much faster than the inside clay. So I let it dry a few days beyond what feels like the correct hardness and that usually works for me.

Clay bag after taking it down. Weighs less- maybe 30 lbs.

Step 6. Wedge. This part is the messiest. You will flip the pillow case upside down and pull it off the clay. (No, my clay did not transform from white to brown, these are different batches).

The clay takes the exact form of the pillow case of course and I always think it looks like an Easter ham. I shake the pillow case outside to get the worst of the dry clay chunks off and then throw it in the wash with my pottery towels.

Then I cut the clay up into smaller pieces and wedge it up. If it's the right consistency, I put it in a bucket ready for use. If it's too wet like this batch was, I go to the next step.

Step 7. (Last Step!) Inchworm. If your clay is still sticky wet, it needs more air time. So, the best way for your clay to dry evenly is to inch worm it. So I wedge best I can, roll and squeeze it into a tubular shape and then set it on it's ends on a board and let it dry until ready to use. Takes a couple days depending on your studio's conditions. Then, wedge it, and reuse away!

The End!

A couple variation options:

1. You can take a small amount from the slurry bucket to make slip for slip trailing. I throw it in the blender to ensure smoothness.

2. With white clay, you can add colorants to make colored clay or slip.

3. Plaster can remove the whole pillow case thing. My friend Toby makes fun of me for this process. Then again, he makes fun of everything I do. If you have plaster wedging boards, you can just lay your slurry out on plaster and let it soak up the excess moisture. It speeds up the process a great deal.  It takes up space but if you have space and stay on top of it, it's a really good option. I have a bag of plaster with my name on it ready to be made into boards but I've not gotten to that just yet.

4. If your clay gets too hard, you can wrap it in wet towels, place it in a plastic bag and let it sit a few days. Same idea as this video.

And a bonus:

If you lost a tool, you will probably find it in your recycling. I've found sponges, a tip to my slip trailer, and other random objects in this process. Careful with those needle tools and metal ribs. No one wants to find one of those while wedging.