| Soft pottery clay body – usually 10 – 15Kg per packaging. Ask for clay with more alumina content, stoneware clay, and it can be coarse not too fine. Normally it is whitish color. You don’t need to go for expensive clay, just pick one type for higher temperature and light in color. REMEMBER: don’t be confused, when you see the soft-wet clay in bags it can be darker but when it dries it’ll change to lighter color. Then there are also clay’s which are white when wet. Usually the shop has dry samples. Don’t forget to ask for clay which they stored for a long time, it’ll be harder in plastic bags, not too fresh in pottery terms, potters don’t want dry clay to work with when throwing on potters wheels so you can get a better price to pay for it too. Often they run discounted sales of these nearly dry clays to get rid of it. So you brought your clay home now … but what to do next you may ask? Take the clay out of plastics bags. Use wire or stronger fishing line to cut it in thin slices. Leave it to dry.
After about a week in an airy place the clay will be dry. Sit on some low comfortable soft seat on the driveway and use a hammer to brake it into almost powder. It’s not hard at all but it takes some time. You will need about a bucket to mix the mortar, and half a bucket for the sand : fire clay (50:50) bed to lay hearth floor bricks onto and level them up nicely into one smooth surface. |
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