If you were stranded in the middle of nowhere, what would it take to create the building blocks of survival—clay? Dig down into the depths of the earth and see just what it would take!
48
CLAY FROM DIRT
SKILL LEVEL:
EASY
INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED
APPROXIMATE TIME:
1 day
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
+ Several buckets
+ Water
+ Dirt
+ Cloth/strainer
+ Towel/cloth
+ Paper towels
LET’S BEGIN
SETUP
1. To gather the materials needed, you can go to a local river or pond and start digging down into the dirt as close to the water as is comfortable for you.
2. You want to find dirt that has an almost plastic-like feel, so when you squish it together it will stick in clumps.
FILTERING OUT THE CLAY
1. Once you have your dirt, the first thing you will want to do is extract all the rocks and twigs. To do this, you will want to filter it through an easy purifying process. All you need is a couple of containers and some water. First, fill your container you have your dirt in with water so it becomes super muddy, like a soup. Feels like soup, but don’t eat it if you get hungry!
2. Next you will want to stir the mixture so that all the material separates, and then let it settle for about five seconds.
3. Then transfer the liquid on top into a separate container.
PRO TIP: While you can make clay from dirt in your backyard, it is much better to make clay from dirt near a body of water.
4. Stop pouring when just most of the heavy stuff (gravel, rocks, etc.) is left in the original container. You can now discard the container with the leftover rocks as you will not need any of that.
5. Next you will need to strain your liquid. You can use an old shirt, socks, or just a regular strainer. This process should remove most of the organic material. Before you pour your liquid solution through the strainer into a new container, it is important to stir it again to resuspend the clay particles in the water.
USE YOUR BEST JUDGMENT! Left in your strainer you should see leaves, twigs, and other organic materials. You can repeat this process to filter out any more material you may have missed.
6. You may notice some fine sand left in your container as you pour between buckets. If you keep doing this to clean the bucket each time, you will be left with a very fine clay solution.
LETTING YOUR CLAY SIT AND DRY
Now you’ll need to let it settle for a couple of hours. It takes quite some time to let the water filter to the top since the clay is so fine. Here is a way to help speed up the process:
1. First you need to remove the water you have so far from the top (which should have gathered after about an hour).
2. You can pour the water out very carefully, without pouring out any clay material. Or, you can siphon the water out. Using some tubing, you can suck the water, but before it gets to your mouth, pour the water into a bucket and gravity will continue to pull the water out.
3. Now to get even more moisture out of your clay, take a towel or tight-knit cloth; you want it tight enough where the clay will not go through, but the water will.
4. Once it’s all poured in, you can tie up the ends for a few hours and let the atmosphere suck most of the water out. After leaving the clay for an hour or so, you may notice that it is still pretty runny.
5. Taking some paper towels, scrape the clay from your towel/cloth and put it in the center of the paper towel and just flatten it out, squishing your clay between two paper towels to remove most of the remaining water.
6. You should be able to peel away the paper towels, and have some nice moldable clay. Now that’s the best part!
7. Add or extract water as necessary until it reaches a desirable consistency (the thickness is based on preference).
PRO TIP: If you want to save your clay to use later, just wrap it in some Saran wrap.
Now that’s an experiment where you can really feel the result. The smooth texture of success! You can carve your clay, roll it, or even fire it in an oven to make pottery, earthenware, or possibly even ceramic! Who knew that river mud could become full-blown clay?
FUN FACT: Clay is a soil that is unlike any other because of its natural plasticity. By baking or firing clay, it goes from being moldable to rigid, resulting in endless opportunities for creativity.