Mixing Hewitt's Clay

Last Friday we ground clay. Thursday Joseph and I moved materials out of the clay shed by wheelbarrow and piled everything up and then Friday morning we started grinding. As you can see there is a mix of raw materials and processed. The primary clay is the pile in the right corner and there are other raw clays mixed in as well all of which are on the right. On the left are the bagged materials. In the center is the belt driven hammermill which is powered by the PTO on Mark's tractor. It can be quite a chore to line the drive on the tractor up so that the belt rides well without either slipping off or moving to inside where it starts to smoke against the mill. Once everything is lined up Joseph and I start to shovel the materials into the mill in a specific sequence that attepts to keep the ratios correct while at the same time mixing the materials as they fall into the trough underneath the hammermill. Mark stands at the mill and with a shovel pushes the clay down the hopper into the hammers.



The pulverised and mixed clay then falls into the trough pictured below which has been filled with water. At some point we stop mixing and rake the clay out from beneath the mill and then continue milling the rest of the clay. When the clay is mixed we clean up move any leftover materials back to the clay shed and then drill the slurry to an even consistency with large handrdills. We then pump the clay into the drying beds using a sump pump and sieve the clay before it goes into the beds. It will take a number of cycles of filling the drying beds with clay before we will reach the bottom of the trough.

Joseph took this picture below of me in the clay shed filling a wheelbarrow. Its been a few weeks away from the wheel but we should get back to throwing on Monday. It will be a short week before heading down to Asheboro to the North Carolina Pottery Conference and then just a three more weeks before we fire the salt kiln again. Things stay pretty busy around here.