On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:36:09 +0300, Stelios Zacharias
wrote:

Dear all,

It is the height of summer here in Athens. I am the newbie who
posted a few days ago with firing questions.

I have my clay [1] in big plastic bins, but it has (after about a
month) got too dry to manipulate easily. Is there a short cut to
getting the clay useable again, or should I get it totally wet
and slurry-like pass it through seives and wait for it to
re-condense again? I don't want it to dry completely as the bin
shape will not allow it to come out easily.

Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

Cheers,
Stelios Zacharias

[1] this is the clay I collected in dry form, and passed through
seives, then decanted the top water off after a few days and left
to evaporate to a useable hardness.

It depends on how dry it is. If it is just a bit too dry, you can
just add a bit of water to the container and wait a week or so and
rewedge. If it is fairly firm, but not yet leather hard, you can
slice it 1" thick, dip the slices in water, restack, then wait a week
and rewedge. If it's leather hard or beyond, you'll probably need to
let it dry completely and then slake it down in water and start over.
It is very difficult to rewet leather hard clay.

deg