[GSBN] Tall walls and wet clay

[Derek Roff]

Hi, Laura,

I'm wondering if the clay and/or pottery industry has a machine that 
would be useful to you.  I remember that the ceramics departments at 
both my high school and university had a machine called a pug mill, 
which could process hundreds of pounds of clay an hour.  These machines 
weren't large- about the size of a trombone case, plus a supporting 
stand.  Of course, bigger versions of this machine exist.

As I remember it, this machine was useful for many aspects of clay 
preparation.  It could mix clay, including dry with wet, and get 
everything to an even consistency.  It was easy to make the clay 
wetter, by adding water during the processing, or drier by adding dry 
clay powder, or chunks of dried clay.

I don't know if you could find a place that would rent this kind of 
machine.  It's possible that you could rent time on one from a local 
ceramics supplier, school or university.  I just checked the web, and a 
new machine of the size I am familiar with costs a bit under $3000 (and 
up).

There is probably an equivalent machine focused on the construction 
side of clay work, rather than fine art ceramics.  Perhaps an aggregate 
supplier could give you some guidance on that side of things.  They 
might be too big to be interested in the kind of volume that you need.

I hope this gives you some useful ideas.

Derek


--On Wednesday, April 1, 2009 9:06 PM -0500 laura at greenweaverinc.com 
wrote:

> On another project, an office building in PA, they have located great
> clay, with little expansiveness, but when sourced, is very wet and
> not easily processed. Living in the dry west, this is not something I
> have much experience with. I remember Sam Droege's comment in TLS
> about breaking up wet clay by soaking and using a mortar hoe in a
> garbage can. Projects on a larger scale in areas with very wet local
> clay might look to some more mechanized proces - either spreading out
> the clay and turning, or soaking and processing with mixing
> equipment. One builder in NY once told me that he gave up using his
> local clays because of this and uses bagged ball clay. If we are
> hoping to see projects use local material, this may be an issue to
> address (or perhaps has been already in those damp climates unlike
> mine).



Derek Roff
Language Learning Center
Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek at unm.edu