playin with dirt on sat 29 jan 05
after some years i've worked in a large variety of pottery studios and
clay-related enviroments.
recycling your clay or not is all a matter of scale.
I've worked in huge production studios, places that make 1000s of pieces a
week, and we recycled our clay. but of course there were conveyor belts and
a semi-automated recycling process. at that scale it was cost effective,
but not everyone works on that level.
I've worked in medium scale production places with crews of full time
throwers, and it was not worth repugging the scraps after they crunched the
numbers. but of course, efficency was the name of the game, and the small
amount of scrap we produced was suprising anyway. and we donated the scraps
to a local high school and community center anyway. i think they even got
it as a tax write off.
and now i'm working on just about the smallest scale possible, and no scraps
go to waste, everything gets recycled. which of course is a bit of a pain
as i have to keep about 4 clay bodies seperate from mixing. the iga doesn't
take shinos well, the shigaraki has to be near the front of the kiln, the
hand dug stuff has rules i'm still trying to figure out, and the reclaim is
for the back, glaze only. start getting them mixed and things get ugly.
but procuring them is enough trouble that recycling is worth every penny,
hell there might even be money being made.
one thing that i will say though, if you are gonna pug, get a vacum chamber
for that baby. recycling clay, if you want to count the dollars on it, is
ultimately a building up of cents/lb. but in terms of time spent working,
wedging takes a huge monetary bite out of it all. i've been part of
time/motion studies and wedging is a big killer. being able to slap that
stuff on the wheel head fresh out of the pugger is one of the best
money-savers that there is.
its all a matter of scale, whether your recycling is cost effective or not
can only be determined on a case by case basis.
and lets not forget the other factor to all this, we all spend our time in
different areas. some people trim more than others, some people fire longer
than other, some people spend more time mixing their clays. different
strokes for those different folks.
later,
O.K.
(initials)
the gaijin potter
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