Slip sliding

Mrs Mabel perusing the clay hoard

Bone dry clay/Slaking clay down in water

Sieving the resulting slip

A tub of sieved slip

Some of my designs lend themselves to being made via slip casting rather than throwing methods. I have gathered quite an amount of porcelain clay (from throwing and turning) that needs to be reclaimed.  At over £20 per bag of clay, I am not going to throw the used clay away. Therefore, I've been trying to make my own casting slip from it. Making the clay into slip is the easy part, the hard part is making it into casting slip. I  have done some tests but still haven't found the right amount of sodium deflocculant to use yet (this helps to keep the clay in suspension and fluid but not be saturated in water).  The photos above show how to make slip from dry clay.