So much for fixing it the other week, the computer has taken on a mind of it's own as is their want. So I can't get the pictures off my camera at the moment and nor can I compose a new email, I don't think the two are linked but you never know with these beasts do you.
Each day for the last week or so I have had to be restacking bags of clay. As the once neat and tidy stack of bags defrosts it is all getting heaved and shoved about, a bit like a miniature plate-tectonics really (which I love anyway, volcanoes, subduction zones, oh GCSE geology I loved it), and I find a dozen or so bags unceremoniously dumped on the floor each morning. Well it's either that or Alan's having a laugh.
I have been contemplating getting my pug mill cleaned out and fixed back together but never quite get around to it. The defrosted clay though I have discovered is pretty yuck, the bottom of the bag is like slip and the top is like brick. I know I could just wedge it all extra well but there's a ton of it, makes you quake at the knees with the thought. I brought an extension lead into work today as that has been one of the reasons never to get around to starting it up. I cleaned out the white clay that was in it and then plugged it in, realising as I did so that I didn't after all need the extension lead. It worked! So I started pugging the defrosted clay in with my bucket-fulls of reclaim which has been sitting there for what feels like years. I should have stopped about about 8 bags and a bucket and a half of reclaim but I was on a roll. Well I am certainly going to pay for that tomorrow, my muscles are aching already with all the lifting and shoving and pulling down on that handle. Ho hum, at least there is a good stack of clay waiting there and being just lovely.
oooh H what a drama is it worth doing all of it? you may have a cold snap and freeze it again! perhaps pug as you need it???????? i'm just thinking i do all of that and then the clay goes rock hard and ive wasted all that energy...hmmmpf!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on actually getting round to pugging up the reclaim and stuff, I confess to having a growing mound of sad looking odds and ends of clay that is threatening to collapse my studio floor (and that's just the stuff I have indoors), outside is another pile...... which may tumble down one day and squash the cat! Your heroic efforts in the frozen North ("I'm just going outside, I may be some time!" "Come back Mr Oats....") may even inspire me to sort out my mess (unless you would like to hop over and do a spot of pugmilling down here as well... the sun did actually break through today, so it is all nice at the moment!). Do I hear faint laughter??
ReplyDeleteI make sure I only have a very small container for reclaim, so I have to recycle about half a bag every few weeks (I don't have a pugmill so I wedge it by hand). My problem is the clay trap, which is completely full of slip and starting to overflow into the drain. I don't know how to get rid of a tank of slip -it takes ages to dry -what ever I spread it on rots by the time it's dried, and then I have to take what's left to the dump as it's too heavy for the dustmen.
ReplyDeleteI always go home with a great feeling of satisfaction after I have pugged a bin full of clay.
ReplyDeletewell worth the effort.
Oh believe you me Ang I'm only doing it as I go along! I have left the remaining 70 or so bags as they were. Gently gently.
ReplyDeletePeter - yes when do you want me, on my way!
Spooky Linda, just wrote you a card yesterday. Can't you dry it on plaster bats, that works well.
I don't have any plaster bats either (I usually dry clay on a wooden surface). I think I'll have to make some wooden drying troughs -I don't want to reclaim the slip as it's a mixture of clay, glaze, batt wash etc. I just want to get rid of it.
ReplyDeleteOH no, is THAT what it is going to be like? I was poking a sack yesterday and thinking, funny, this too hard clay seems to have turned into i may have lots of pugging ahead here too. Honestly, who can blame us British for being obsessed with the weather.
ReplyDeleteTry a large, thickly thrown biscuited bowl for drying wet clay.
ReplyDeleteIt gives a good surface area for evaporation through the bowl, and no worries about plaster contaminated clay.
Also you can stand it on top of the kiln(or Aga if you are lucky to have one!)
if you are in a hurry :-)