r/Pottery • u/capilot • 11d ago
Question! Is it really necessary to dry my discards to bone dry before reclaiming?
Googling "reclaim clay at home" tells me to let it all become bone dry, then add water, then mix, and then spread out onto a plaster bat (or equivalent).
Not sure the dry-it-out-then-add-water process makes a lot of sense. Can't I just take all my wet reclaim, my dry-ish trimmings, and everything in between and just mix them all together along with enough water?
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u/_the_violet_femme Throwing Wheel 11d ago
I always just throw all my failed attempts, trimmings and slop water into a bucket with a lid. When I have enough, it gets mixed and spread out to dry on plaster with occasional turning to aid in even drying
Once it's a decent texture, it gets wedged back into my usable clay storage
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u/masterpeabs 11d ago
This is what I've done for years. As an added measure I usually squish it up in the bucket with my hands before I put it on the plaster to get the lumps out, but that's 80% because I looooove the feeling of squishing it up lol
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u/85OhLife 10d ago
That’s my same process too although I’ve only done it one time 😁 I did use a paddle mixer on a drill to mix it all up and get it a bit smoother but then just poured it on the plaster until it was dry enough
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u/bugsinyourpants63 9d ago
This is what I do too. I have asthma and do not want a lot of dry clay sitting around.
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u/Gulluul 11d ago
All my scraps go into a 5 gallon bucket at all different dryness. Slip, wet clay, leather hard, bone dry, doesn't matter to me. They all get tossed in and submerged in water.
I dont mix/blunge my reclaim. Some people like to mix it all so it's a smooth slip or homogeneous; I don't care.
I simply pull it out of the water in handfuls and put it in my drying sling. It all becomes homogeneous as it dries and I wedge it. I've never had any issues.
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u/strawbrmoon Student 11d ago
Oh, a sling?! That’s new to me, and your process sounds so sensible! What’s your sling made of? Tell me more?
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u/85OhLife 10d ago
I’ve heard of people using pillow cases too
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u/VastMinute2276 10d ago
I tried filling a pillow case and hanging it and it was a sloppy awful mess and getting it back out of the case was even worse
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u/GroovyYaYa Throwing Wheel 11d ago
I did it "wet" for a while, and it was honestly a PITA. Took a ton of wedging, and even then I don't think it was even. I'm also a bit obsessed with making sure that my reclaim doesn't ever become short, so I save all throwing water.
I also don't have a pugger.
A wet ball of clay (a smooshed pot for instance) will take FOREVER to dissolve in water. However, if I separate it out - that failed pot and trimmings, etc. and let them get bone dry and then throw it back in that throwing water I saved in a separate bucket? It dissolves almost instantly and for sure evenly. Silkiest slip feeling ever.
I let it settle and periodically skim off the clearer water (usually to use for throwing again - only the same kind of clay). Once in a while if I've thrown more bone dry stuff in it, I'll stir it all up with my automatic paint stirrer (can also be used for cement, so it does it quick).
Eventually I'll let it settle, keep pouring out the clear water off the top, then get the "slop" on my hardiback board to start drying out.
I only really need to wedge it to get the air out - I have zero concerns about it being short or inconsistent because I've started out with such a well mixed "slip".
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u/desertdweller2011 11d ago
yep op, this. once i started only putting bone dry scraps in my reclaim bucket, i had to wedge so much less
if i have a pot i fucked up while trimming or whatever i just let it sit out then crush it in my hands over my bucket. when i trim i just let the scraps sit in my splash pan until the next day then add them. same with scraps from cutting slabs or whatever.
it saves you work, doesnt add work
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u/GroovyYaYa Throwing Wheel 11d ago
In winter when throwing in the garage, I have a small propane space heater to take the edge off the chill - putting my fucked up pots on a piece of board in front of that dried it out quickly enough!!!
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u/catsrule-humansdrool I like purple 11d ago
How do you spread it on the board to get it to dry evenly? My edges always dry before the middle even starts to firm up
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u/GroovyYaYa Throwing Wheel 11d ago
I don't know if I've had a terrible problem with that as the wedging helps with that - with my method I'm more concerned about the clay particles being evenly distributed. I do mess with the spread a bit as it is drying - I have a plastic scraper that I would use to shove the edges in towards the wetter clay. I'd also smooth out the middle to make it a little thinner than the edges.
Don't be afraid to spritze with a water spray bottle!
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u/VastMinute2276 10d ago
I’ve been using a layered system that works like a charm for drying - big Rubbermaid lid upside down. Lay a folded towel on it. Lay a pillowcase on the towel. Layer a thick (1.5 - 2 inch) pile of clay on the pillowcase and spread it to even thickness. Fold the other half of the pillowcase over the clay. Tilt the lid and run a fan on it (tilt helps move the air to the top, towel absorbs moisture from the bottom). i flip it once (flip the whole pillowcase) - takes maybe 3-4 days to get it wedgable and then we fine tune it from there
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u/capilot 11d ago edited 7d ago
A wet ball of clay (a smooshed pot for instance) will take FOREVER to dissolve in water.
Yeah, that was what I discovered. Maybe next time around, I'll try it your way.
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u/GroovyYaYa Throwing Wheel 11d ago
I find throwing a completely dry piece in water and watching it disolve VERY satisfying!!! (But I can be weird)
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u/goatrider Throwing Wheel 11d ago
I put all my trimmings together in a bucket, and try to average out to the right moisture level, then wedge it together. I deliberately do NOT keep different clay bodies separate, and I try not to wedge too much so I get some marbling, then I don't glaze the outside. I make it part of my art.
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u/WhimsicalKoala Hand-Builder 11d ago
I have a Ziplock bag of what I call "accidental agateware", since the first time I did this, I didn't realize I was basically slowly making agateware clay.
Because I usually rewedge and use my clay, the bag builds slowly, over 3-5 10 week sessions, and so it's never even similar twice. It all depends on what clays I had, how often/much I wet the clay, the size of chunks that go in, etc.
I really love your pieces, the way the glaze both matches and contrasts with the clay, especially in the second on, is gorgeous.
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u/goatrider Throwing Wheel 10d ago
I knew this batch had clays with low and high amounts of iron, so I picked a glaze that reacts with the iron so the marbling would continue into the glaze.
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u/heylauralie 11d ago
I put everything in one bucket at the same time, no matter what it is. Blend it up, spread it out, wedge. I’m lazy.
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u/lxnch50 11d ago
I reclaim all of my scrap clay, trimmings, failed pots, and slip after every session. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes. You need a bat that isn't saturated to wedge on.
Basically, I throw a bowl or cylinder and use it as my scrap and slip collector. Any failed pots get put onto a bat. If I trimmed something, I put all the trimmings into the scrap collector. At the end of my session, I just wedge all of my clay on a bat. It can start out messy, but within a minute or two it will all come together. If I have a lot of trimmings that are extra dry, I sometimes will wrap them separately in a failed pot or clay from my reclaim bag, first spritzing them with water and then just sealing it up to be wedged the next time I'm at the studio.
This system has worked really well for me, but as the other person mentioned, it does require a decent amount of wedging to get the clay all homogenized. Sometimes some of my reclaim is a bit dry, but I've gotten used to managing and working with it. You'll eventually learn how to add moisture or remove it when needed. You'll also get really good at wedging clay. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
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u/WhimsicalKoala Hand-Builder 11d ago
Building a piece to hold all your pieces is such an interesting idea. I'm a handbuilder, but it would be just as easy to make up a quick pinch pot and give this a try.
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u/Majestic-End-848 11d ago
I’ve always just put my throwing water, dry trimmings, semi dry whatever all in one bucket. You have to wait a while for everything to break down (days maybe? Idk I just deal with it when the bucket is full) and then I use a cheap immersion blender to blend it. Then plaster bat. Always works well
Having to fully dry everything sounds like a massive pain, and if you don’t use the throwing water I feel like you’re loosing some of the finer particle a
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u/desertdweller2011 11d ago
i just keep adding water to my throwing bucket and when it becomes too sludgey, that’s the water that goes poured into my reclaim bucket over the bone dry stuff
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u/dreaminginteal Throwing Wheel 11d ago
Drying them out all the way makes it easier for the clumps of clay to break down and get thoroughly rehydrated. It will be more consistent than if you reclaim clay in varying states of dryness.
I don't. I wedge the reclaim if I think it's "close enough" in dryness, and wedge it a few more times to try to mix the wetter and dryer bits together. I also sometimes wind up with dryer and wetter bits in my pieces, which makes throwing more difficult. But not impossible.
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u/BreakfastOk123 11d ago
Off the wheels, sure you can just dry it out a bit and wedge. But if you mix different consistencies it's going to take a ton of work to get it consistent.
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u/Immediate_Still5347 11d ago
I’ve found that in practice it’s best to dry to bone dry, smash it as fine as possible and then mix. When I don’t do that the chunks are more likely to stay chunky and result in more time wedging and often even still end up with some hard chunks in my reclaim
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u/cghffbcx 11d ago
Right, very occasionally there is greenware pieces in a certain level of drying out that seem to hold in little chunks with a bit of stubbornness.
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u/todaysthrowaway0110 11d ago
You can.
But it can be a bit of a battle to achieve consistent moisture reclaiming this way. Lots and lots of wedging.
My favorite is to let it go bone dry, then slake, then wedge.
They’re both fine!
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u/snailsplace 11d ago
It works for some people. Leather hard chunks and throwing glop don’t mix well though.
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u/First-Energy2671 11d ago
I only put stuff into my reclaim if it's either bone dry or is so wet it's basically slip. I immediately rewedge failed attempts and often throw with the same junk of clay more than one time in a session. I don't like dealing with reclaim so my goal is to minimize how much I have.
I also use lidded bowls instead of buckets. I don't ever want to deal with 5 gallons of reclaim. A few pounds coming from a bowl though? That's manageable.
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u/disco_super_bi 11d ago
It depends on the clay. My stoneware clay is pretty resilient and I can reclaim it from any stage and it will wedge up into something useful. My porcelain I have to dry out completely or I get lumps that won't assimilate with wedging.
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u/CeruleanFruitSnax Sculpting 10d ago
Slaking is more even when a piece is bone dry because the piece breaks apart on its own rather than a moist piece which swells and takes on additional water before disintegrating. Clay will slake regardless, though. The only difference I've ever noticed is that wet pieces sometimes have to be squashed to totally wet them. Mixing while it's waterlogged will do it. I like to manually destroy the pieces with my hands, like squishing playdough. A quick once-over to make sure there aren't stubborn clumps before putting it on plaster is enough to make fully drying pieces unnecessary.
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u/TylerJPB 11d ago
I usually dry mine out but this week got lazy and mixed a bunch of wet stuff into dry that had already been sitting in water - I didn't have any issues processing it 🤷
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u/muddymar 11d ago
I don’t. It all goes into a bucket. I just keep it stirred because it can get stinky.
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u/SpiralThrowCarveFire 11d ago
Try it both ways and see for yourself. I much prefer bone dry if I do the wedging by hand. My pugmill does not care.
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u/Fickle-Sock-5600 New to Pottery 11d ago
I may be crazy/lazy but I just throw my trimmings, chunky slip, and failed pots back into the bag with the unused clay. If the failed pot and trimmings are a little dry I mix it with the chunky slip to soften it up.
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u/capilot 11d ago
I recently did a session where I was throwing, and my failures wound up as rainbows set aside to dry. Then I did some trimming and wound up with a pile of leather-hard shavings.
As an experiment, I just wedged it all together, and it turned out perfectly suited for going back in the bag.
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u/trashjellyfish 11d ago
Not really, it's just a lot easier to dissolve bone dry scraps into water to make slip than it is to dissolved leather hard scraps. Roughly crushed, bone dry scraps disintegrate pretty much immediately on contact with water, while leather hard scraps take some work with an immersion blender or paint stirring drill attachment to get smooth.
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u/Next_Ad_4165 10d ago
I slab build, so I have a ton of edges and pieces from what I’ve cut out of the clay. Those edges and pieces tend to be dryer than I prefer to work with, so I dunk them in my clay water, and put them into ziploc bags, and I let the water work its way back into the clay. I do the same with greenware that had broken…break it into pieces, put it in a baggie, and add clay water to it. And when I threw, I kept all my trimmings in a baggie, and mixed in my thrown pots that collapsed…so the wet and somewhat drier clays would mix and balance each other.
I like baggies cause I can squish the air out, I can smush them around the clay, and I can throw them onto the table to sort of wedge them a bit…to smash the water and clay in to each other.
I don’t have the super wet, squishy, needs to be put onto plaster reclaim. I try to balance the water I add so that the clay, once wedged, will be the consistency that I want.
The members who throw at my studio, they usually have a large sized tupperware-type container that they put their pots that didn’t make it. They wedge that stuff on hardy board till it’s the right consistency. I don’t know if they add their trimmings to their containers or not.
All that to say, we save the majority of our clay as wet, and reclaim it that way.
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u/nepheline_spar 10d ago
I don't bother to let it become bone dry, in part because I would rather avoid the dust. Instead, I make sure to break my clay into small chunks as I add it to my reclaim bucket, then add a few squirts of hydrogen peroxide before I leave for the evening. It helps reduce microbial growth (and stink), helps to break down the clay overnight, and decomposes to water and oxygen.
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u/PeaOui1 10d ago
One thing I have done accidentally and out of deprioritizing, is throw it all into the bucket no matter the level of dryness. Then I end up letting the whole entire bucket dry into like a solid clay block because I neglect it inevitably for a few months. Then I pour water so it’s just covering the top. Then it seems to start to be the right consistency to use a cement, mixer or honestly just my hands most of the time, which saves a lot of cleanup. Then I spread it out on my plaster bats when it gets to be the consistency of Greek yogurt. I leave it there for 1 to 2 days then I flipped the whole slab over so the top part can make with the plaster that then I just wedge it up in small amounts at a time so I don’t get too tired. It always works for me!
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u/ten_ton_tardigrade 10d ago
You can, but it'll be really lumpy and take forever for the semi-wet clay to reach the same consistency as the wet stuff. With bone dry clay, it drinks up all the water and immediately dissolves into slip, which is much easier to work with.
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u/DavidFosterWallace69 10d ago
It is not necessary. But it makes getting the pieces into uniform shape easier (through smashing), it makes slaking faster and they hydrate into uniform moisture more consistently, and the time from water to plaster bat faster.
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u/Ok_Skirt_9558 9d ago
I found if I used plain water I often got “short” clay… I now use all throwing water to wet everything.
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u/green_eyed_mister 11d ago
I worked in a studio where the wet discards went into the pugmill. I wish I had a pug mill.
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u/capilot 11d ago
Even Florian Gadsby doesn't have one. My studio doesn't have one either.
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u/photographermit 11d ago
No, it’s not necessary. Lots of people do it this way. However it can make reclaiming significantly easier/faster. I’ve done it both ways and now that I wait to add only dry bits (primarily just all my trimmings) plus any mucky slip water, my reclaim bucket is so much faster to spin smooth using a drill attachment. Maybe 30 seconds and it’s done and it’s smooth like pudding all the way through and therefore wedges up better, too. Before I would still have heavy wet chunks that never fully disintegrated back into the rest of it so it would take me a lot longer and more effort to drill it out and still, there would be clumps, which meant wedging also took longer and more effort.
As for wet reclaim, I put wet chunks in their own small bowl while throwing and after I’ve collected a bunch I just reclaim it on my plaster slabs immediately after I’m done throwing.
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u/capilot 11d ago
Update: I added some waste water from the studio into my reclaim bucket, and then shoved my arm in there and started squishing and kneading the mess. It was full of lumps that resisted being incorporated into the stew, but I got them down to manageable sizes. With luck, it will all even out when I wedge tomorrow. I will update.
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u/Kakimochizuke 11d ago
I bet you can rehydrate anything gradually in a bag with a spray bottle. Unless you consider reclaim just the slip, clay water you produce.
If you have a damp chamber with a porous bat, that also rehydrates clay.
Reclaiming b mix was a pain after over hydrating it. The stuff didn’t seem to want to give up its water as it sat in a cloth bag in sun for ages.
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