{"id":2005,"date":"2014-05-28T20:01:07","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/?p=2005"},"modified":"2014-05-28T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T11:01:07","slug":"processing-clay-and-ash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/processing-clay-and-ash.html","title":{"rendered":"Processing Clay and Ash"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent massive cleaning around and in the studio, I changed things around to utilize some of the outside space more efficiently. One of the most important things is that I now, again, have a setup for processing clay and ash that I have collected and burned.<\/p>\n

I had been getting close to finishing off my stores of collected clay that I processed some years back, time to start doing it again. I think I have a better system this time, and I have an inexhaustible supply of pine ash for now, too.<\/p>\n

I have buckets, bags, and jars full of old collected clay and dry trimmings that need recycling. It should take some months to get it all blunged and pugged.<\/p>\n

\"Collected<\/a>
Collected clay that has literally been sitting around for years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Choppage ‘cho’ ‘pah’ gay’, is a traditional Korean tool for scooping off clay and other materials without disturbing everything underneath. It works much better than a ladle. I couldn’t find anyone who made them anymore, but my mentor still had one which is kindly letting me borrow.<\/p>\n

\"Clay<\/a>
Clay washing bucket setup, and scooping tool, called choppage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I just agitate the material in the bottom bucket, wait, and scoop off the stuff that settles last.
\nThen, later after it settles in the upper bucket, I siphon the water back down into the main bucket. When enough of the upper bucket fills with material, I dump it into cloth lined basket or plaster to get out the excess water.<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>
After returning water back into the main bucket from the ‘good stuff’ bucket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the ash, the process is the same, but after I get out the good fine ash I transfer it into another bucket and wash it some more to get out the nasties. The nasties cause problems with glazing sometimes and I don’t like them. I do save the water containing the nasties for other uses.<\/p>\n

\"Pine<\/a>
Pine ash bucket setup, main on bottom, fine up top.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The leftover rough ash stuff seems like a waste to just throw away, so I am thinking about ball milling it to see if it can be useful in some other way. We’ll see…<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The leftovers after the good stuff is scooped off.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Scooping<\/a>
Scooping with the choppage tool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sieve is 120 mesh, because I lucked into a cheap recycled sieve. I would usually use 100 mesh, so it is not much of a difference.<\/p>\n

\"Dumping<\/a>
Dumping through sieve which is sitting on the bucket mouth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent massive cleaning around and in the studio, I changed things around to utilize some of the outside space more efficiently. One of the most important things is that I now, again, have a setup for processing clay and ash that I have collected and burned. I had been getting close to finishing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,13,12],"tags":[88,145,144,65,5,35,22,41,143,14,74],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clay","category-glazes","category-pottery","tag-ceramics","tag-clay","tag-glazes","tag-japanese","tag-karatsu","tag-karatsupots","tag-pottery-2","tag-wood-fired","tag-wood-kiln","tag-14","tag-74"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/IMG01581.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1FneS-wl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}