Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Black Mountain Paper Clay - Part 3

Part 3 - Mixing the pulp and the clay slurry
The sequence of pictures correspond to the notes on the left side.


1. When I'm satisfied that my paper pulp is sufficiently broken down, it's time to strain the excess water out of the blended pulp. For this I used an ordinary strainer. I let the excess water drain out and collect enough "pulp ball" to fill about 1/3 of a 5 gallon bucket. (first picture)





2. Do not squeeze out all the water from the "pulp ball." (second picture down)





3. This was the extra pulp that was left over from all the paper packaging I used. (third picture down)





4. The Black Mountain clay slurry is in the left bucket, the pulp is in the right one. By volume, clay slurry is 2/3, pulp is 1/3. (fourth picture down)





5. Mix and blend the two together. Makes for a very delicious looking mousse-like consistency! (fifth picture down)





6. I use my concrete patio a lot for drying out the clay-pulp mixture. This will take a few days to get to a kneadable consistency. The next step will be testing this Black Mountain paper clay and see how it performs. (last picture)



























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