Great video Andy. I do this a lot. I fire test tiles and fire at 5 temperatures: 017, 015, 04, 3 and 6. Usually the red clays won’t survive come 6 but to date all of the gray clays have shown no problem at cone 6. Also, my second hottest firing (cone 3) have had no over firing signs including rounded edges, shiny surfaces or sticking. I really enjoy this part of my journey and even have found some consistent color after firing at 017 that I like. Those cooler firings don’t ring as good but the color is worth it for displaying my pot. My home clay (Hyde Creek) turns a beautiful green at cone 3 and is shiny at cone 4 but turns into a puddle at cone 6. Yet at 017 is a beautiful cream color. So, for me learning both ancient pottery and making things for family and friends, this is very rewarding. I have yet to fire outside but that day is approaching fast. We will see what new facets I find on this gem of a hobby. Thank you!!!

This is groundbreaking stuff here! I used a glass coke bottle set next to the fire to see if I am too hot, only there is no way to correct it by the time the coke bottle starts melting, and I do believe that to be around 3000F ... If my coke bottle melted my pottery sounded hollow and empty sounding, if my bottle didn't melt, I would either have good ringy pottery or underfired, but then I would use the carbon stains to determine if it was under fired... I had many successes before leaving the hobby in 2015, and when I found this channel, it was a new spark for sure! Thank you Andy!

I feel like this is video could be in response to a question I asked almost two weeks ago, as it answered it to a tee. Thank you either way.

It was a great experience to fire with you Andy, and fun to visit the gourd farm!! Safe travels.

thank you! in Finland, you cannot freely burn clay anywhere. and there are no places to burn. and here nobody knows anything about natural clays. this was really helpful. renting a burning place is insanely expensive. there really is no room for trial and error. this gives a good fork to start a little more safely.

Thank you for exploring this!

I'd really love to cut one of those pots in two to see the internal structure of the clay, and especially that added sand that you use as temper. I suspect that it would be more like a porcelain or a stoneware than an earthenware.

What a nice friend.

Andy, thanks to you and your (presumably) camera-shy friend with the kiln for this demonstration. I didn’t even know clay could melt at such a relatively low temperature.

So you went and took one for the team, and used an electric kiln. You saying you weren’t picky in your choice of friends was hilarious!❤️🤗🐝

A good lesson, do something till you fail, then you no your limits or what to work on. Thanks

That joke on electric kiln friends got me!

Was thinking about the possibility of making glazes with lower melting point clays and higher melting point ones for the main body. Maybe flux would help.

a very fascinating vid, there is so much to know

Could you use the one that turned to slag/glass as a slip/outer layer on the one that handled the heat well, to get a glassy-slaglike surface for decoration?

I regularly fire wild clay in my electric kiln, no major issues so far. I'm surprised the light coloured clay melted first. It was probably calcium carbonate that caused that. Slowly increasing the temperature in an electric kiln helps to extend the life of the elements, as wells as preventing pottery from cracking. Especially during a bisque fire when a lot of water and other gases are being released from the clay.

Been watching your stuff for about a week now. I've done lots of different things thanks to you, I tried refining my own clay with water ( thanks to you I know I should use a grinder and refine it dry.) I have a grinder for dry clay on the way. I like the outdoor style of doing things too. I only have brought my clay pots inside to dry over night on the heater vent. Thank you for all the knowledge and for teaching me a new skill! Btw I love your area I used to vacation in southern Arizona and would always go up north to see all the beautiful landscape.

Very interesting video thank you

Very cool video ! I have melted pots like that 😮 in my kiln and NOT on purpose!!

Thanks for this video. I did my first test firing outside/wood yesterday. Everything that could go wrong did. I made lots of notes and can't wait to try again. Four pots survived with heavy carbon. I know I can burn the carbon off in my electric kiln. Your video gives me a good starting point, thanks.

excellent - thank you

awesome stuff

Interesting information. I like the idea of firing like you do because I don't have the money for an electric kiln but it's fun to learn about other ways to do things.

I'm glad you're not too picky about your friends, Andy! 😁 My last firing included some melting, probably at a much lower temperature than the kiln's first attempt. But a different clay worked better. That wasn't electric, but it certainly does back up your results. You have some good clay!

I took a standard pottery class A few years ago. One day I brought in a piece that I had made from clay from my backyard and the instructor was really worried about putting it in the kiln. He humored me though and it came out just fine. I didn't wind up glazing it but I wonder if I could have?

Good vid thanks

Very interesting 😊

This is great! We collected and fired wild clay in our college clay chemistry class with electric kilns the same way. I also recently fired clay I found around my house up to cone 5 with no melting at all. I was shocked it didn't melt! Thanks for the amazing video!

Love your content! I’ve been experimenting with wild clay here in central Ohio thanks to you. I’m also curious where you get your great music for these videos? So much better than all of the royalty free music I find!

I do reenactments and I like to do things like what your doing. Not necessarily with clay but other things. To experiment with things to see if they would work. I want to learn much more of your primitive type pottery making. I have done some in the past. But hope to make some useful things that I can teach or at least show people. As of now I have a red and grey clay. I love watching you find and work the clay. I'm currently in Australia for a few more months and have my eye on the ground looking LOL . Have fun at what you do! We enjoy your videos

As usual this is a great vlog Andy. Outdoors firing is not possible for many and this definitely helps as a starter for eKiln firing. What clay did you use for those slabs to protect the shelves? I also like to see the firing schedule for slip decorated wild-clay. Thank you for doing this.

❤thanks for these tips. I’m going to try experimenting with my earth oven and see what happens. That melted one looks like an eye. 😊❤

I wonder if the use of that much temper caused any problems? Still a great video. Thanks for going through all that trouble.

I wasn't too surprised the reds survived quite well (lots of iron one would think) though the fusing to the cover shard was interesting. It's at the right temp for elemental iron to get pretty dang soft if not right at the cusp of molten. Really makes me pine for that spectrograph I've been eyeballing but can quite swallow the cost for an occasional use large ticket item to find out what kind of additive minerals are in my projects. It's rather interesting when you get into the meat of ceramics that most everything is largely variations of alumina and silica (80-90%) with the minority elements in such fine concentrations, yet they make a huge difference to the end product. A dash of iron here but not there and a few traces of sodium or potassium and you have an entirely different type of clay. Good brain grease. 😁

Andy have you found any substitutes for the white slip used in black on white. Perhaps even commercial. I am from NE Kansas and have never seen a white natural clay

Hello Andy! I have watched quite a few of your videos lately and im just getting into wild clay pottery. Your videos are perfect because I can get started with little to no equipment and wild clay I can find many varieties of locally and as I also dont want to mess around with glazes and pottery wheels! I am sure you have answered this already before but, I am wondering do you think it would be a bad idea to fire wild clay in a gas kiln? I am a knifemaker and already have a gas forge for heat-treatment and i would like to use it. Thank you for all the videos and dedication!

Hi Andy love your vids and style of teaching..xx..one question...is it ok to use sharp sand (from the builders yard) as the grog mix in my wild clay..i tried 20% but the pots cracked before they even got to the fire..now i have used 30% sharp sand in a coil pot and (3 days in ) so far so good...anyway thanks for your time and effort Andy..keep up the good work..will be firing the pot next weekend..fingers crossed..

Could you please show us how to make round mug.greetings from moroco.

Great video. I know you only do earthenware, but did you happen to test whether the test pots vitrified after the cone 03 firing?

Thanks for making this video! What are your thoughts on how wild clays could affect the electric elements and soft brick? Have you heard of this concern with off gassing? Or thought about this? Curious about your thoughts and findings on this topic!

I guess you could make a glaze from the clay that melted by just adding water. Do you know what’s fluxing it so much? As far as I know the clay companies are adding talc and lithium to make low fire clays.

👍

Hi there, just checking, were the three clays that you tested just the pure wild clay or had you added temper to them?

😎 👍🏼

Did you ever fire wild clay up to cone 8 or 9?

Back before I knew what calcium carbonate could do to a pot, I fired some pots in a kiln to 1600F and, well, found out. They made great Chia pets, then fell apart.

"I actually have friends that use electric kiln. Yea I know I'm not very choosy about who I make friends with" hahahaah

Love your videos! Could I pay you if I sent you a sample of my ND Missouri River clay so you could tell me how much sand to add to get good results? Thank you

I've considered doing something in between. I've made various pots, and my thought was to primitive fire them in my backyard (which I can do at my convenience), then pay to have them glaze fired in an electric kiln somewhere. The question is, would the smoke clouds etc. from my primitive firing interfere somehow with glazing, or might there be any other problems of this type? Anyone have any experience with this?

I'm interested in the wild fire so this is so interesting that your viewers want something that you don't normally do.... so odd to me!!!