Reclaim, from start to finish, save the part that actually produces the waste anyway. I place all my scraps into the green bucket that sits beside my wheel, trimmings, leftover skims from thrown pots, everything, I even scrape my hands off against the buckets sharp edge as I throw, to remove the slip so I can pick the pots away neatly.
The only thing I don’t put into the bucket are larger masses of leather hard clay, as they can take weeks or even months to degrade properly - instead these are placed onto a heater so they can dry out thoroughly before being soaked - only then will they slake down.
All these slops sit in water and turn to slurry, sometimes for a week, or longer or less, depending on how quickly I need to recycle it. I then use a sponge to remove much of the excess water on top and then give it a thorough mix. I bring the bucket to the thick plaster batts, (each made from about 8 kg potter’s plaster and 2 kg casting plaster), and scoop the reclaim out onto them.
It’ll sit on these for a few days, or a week, again this really depends on things like the weather, if the kilns have been firing or not, if it’s winter, or summer and so on, there’s no one-size-fits-all technique, so you’ve just got to figure it out for your own studio. What I’m looking for though is for this recycled clay that was soaking to resemble the consistency it had when delivered in bags. It needs to be soft, so it can be easily wedged, but not so soft that it just falls apart as you knead it and sticks to the table.
Once it has that desired consistency I’ll peel the clay off the batt, cut in into more manageable pieces, and spiral wedge them up before blocking them off and storing them away, wrapped tightly in plastic and now ready to be thrown into new pots.
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