It starts with the obvious, the bone-dry vessel being smashed to bits and submerged in water. Bone dry clay slakes down much better than leather hard clay so before anything goes in the bucket, save for wafer thin bits of leather hard clay, it’s thoroughly dried out, especially larger lumps.
After a few days the clay turns to slurry, so I remove the excess water with a big sponge and give it all a rough mix. These slops are then scoped out onto a thick plaster batt, (made from 8 kg potters' plaster and 2 kg casting plaster). This absorbent surface sucks out much of the excess moisture. I’ll flip the mass of clay if I can or peel it off and horseshoe it on my workbench, this is when relatively soft clay is rolled into logs and then placed in an arch shape, so there’s more surface area and therefore dries faster, a slab like these could be cut into a dozen horseshoes easily.
Finally, once the clay has returned to more or less its initial state, like you might find it fresh from the bag, it’s given a thorough wedge to remove any pockets of air or textural inconsistencies and once it’s lovely and smooth it can set aside, to throw with again.
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