Buff School Firing Clay, Earthenware/Stoneware – 10kg

Buff School Firing Clay, Earthenware/Stoneware – 10kg

£8.03
Product code: 75515X
Key Features:
•Highly versatile and easy to use - can be fired to either earthenware or stoneware
•Ideal for throwing, hand-building and much more
•Earthenware matures at 1120°C-1180°C
•Stoneware matures at 1220°C-1280°C
•Fired colour is a warm buff grey

The price, versatility and forgiving nature of this clay make it a natural choice for schools, hobby potters as well as established craftspeople. Compared to alternatives, it is smoother and more plastic, featuring a 10% addition of sand to give a slightly open texture. This makes it an ideal body for hand building, throwing, modelling and converting into casting slip.

Preparing the Clay
The clay is prepared by pugging and de-airing in a pugmill. This consolidates the clay and removes the air, producing a clay with a hardness of 5 to 7 when measured with a clay penetrometer. Clay of this type is soft enough for throwing, hand building and modelling, yet still hard enough to retain its shape for stacking and storing.

As a dual-purpose clay, it can be used for making either earthenware or stoneware pottery - the difference lies in the way the pot is biscuit fired.

Earthenware
Earthenware firing is known as the high fired biscuit and low fired glost route. The clay is fired to 1120°C to produce a mature but porous biscuit piece, which can then be glazed using the low firing earthenware glazes, and glost fired between 1000 - 1060°C. This is the temperature range that these glazes mature between.

If using as a once-fire clay, the clay piece will need to be coated with high firing earthenware glazes, which mature together with the clay at 1120 - 1140°C.

Stoneware
Stoneware firing is the low fire biscuit fire route, in which the clay pieces are fired to just 1000°C. The fired pieces are then coated with high firing stoneware glazes and fired to the maturing temperature of both the clay and the glaze, usually between 1200 - 1280°C.

Stoneware bodies can also be used with earthenware glazes. This requires a high biscuit fire to 1200 - 1240°C, followed by firing the earthenware glaze as normal to the glaze temp of 1020 - 1060°C.

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