A hydrogen powered drone

Diy basic Clay recipes and then make it extreme

Sometimes in order to get people to understand something complicated you have to break them down into the basics, we are going to start with Clay recipes. Then we're going to make the clay waterproof. After that we're going to make it high strength otherwise what we will have at the end is a outdoor building material, let's start and understand the basics before we get complicated with it so here's the basics.
Homemade clay recipes are perfect for modeling clay projects or other clay crafts. And making clay and play dough is easy and fun!
There are lots of different recipes you can try. Do you want something quick and easy? Or would you prefer to bake your finished model for a more permanent effect? 

I have picked 5 recipes to suit your different requirements - and added some reader recommended recipes too. All of the recipes and tried and tested - but results vary a lot depending on the flour you use, how you weigh the measurements, and humidity. So be sure to read my instructions first.

Why not get your kids to help you make up the recipes?

Homemade Modeling Clay Recipes

Here are my top 5 clay recipes for you to try. These are perfect for your homeschooling crafts. Click on a link below, or scroll down for recipes.

Air Hardening Modeling clay

Baking Clay

Emily's Fantastic No Cook Playdough Recipe

Kool Aid Playdough

Homemade Playdough (Cooked Version)

                                                                                                                                                

How to Make Clay and Playdough :

Modelling clay can be made from a number of ingredients (see Wikipedia) but at home it is usually made from flour and water. Oil or cream of tartar is added to help with elasticity - and salt is usually used to help preserve the clay (and stop it going moldy). 
If you are new to making playdough, then there is a little more to it than just throwing all the ingredients into a bowl and mixing! 

Here are some tips on how to make clay that will help you get the best results. 

1. We all have slightly different ways of measuring things, different flours absorb at different rates, and even things like humidity can effect your recipe. So use the ingredients as a place to startrather than expecting things to be exact. Measure out your ingredients carefully - then slowly add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Keep mixing and then adding a little more liquid until you get a nice firm clay. If the results are too sticky, add more flour. To flakey and dry? Add a little more water.


2. Most of the recipes call for all purpose or plain flour but I have had good results with bread flour. I think bread flour has a higher gluten content which helps to make the dough hold together well. You may need to adjust the water quantities if you use bread flour.


3. If you want colored clay you can add food coloring or tempera paint. If you are happy for all the dough to be the same color then just add the coloring to the water before you mix the ingredients. If you would like different colored batches then make up the dough first, divide into portions and knead in the colors separately. This will give you more of a marbled effect effect at first, but the color will spread as you keep kneading it in.


4. Store in an airtight container and keep in a cool place. It should keep for a couple of months but homemade clay doesn't have the preservatives of shop bought stuff. If mold develops - it's time for a new batch!


5. Feel free to experiment and develop your own recipes. Try different oil or flour. The cream of tartar in the recipes is optional, but it does help with the elasticity. You can find in the the store with the baking ingredients (usually with the baking powder and bicarb).                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

   Air Hardening Modeling Clay

   
   
   2 cups baking soda
   1 cup cornstarch (cornflour)
   1.5 cups cold water
   (makes about 2 pounds - the recipe can be halved).
   
   
   Baking soda and cornstarch make a smooth, pliable play clay that can be colored with everyday food coloring - or left white and painted once it hardens. When you have made your model, leave it to air dry - turning every 12 hours or so.
   
   Place ingredients in a pan and stir until smooth. Set the pan over a medium heat and stir until boiling. Stir out any lumps and cook until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes.
   
   Turn out onto a plate and cover with a damp, well-wrung kitchen towel - let cool. Dust a work surface with cornstarch and knead until pliable.                                 

   Processing Clay the Easy Way: Water Extraction

   (As featured in the January 2008 issue of Practically Seeking)

   Today we usually think of clay as being used for pottery

   but in truth the uses are almost endless. For thousands of years man has used this substance for a whole host of things, from pigments to medicines. One of the most abundant materials on earth, clay can be found almost anywhere — just look for areas where the ground has broken into a bark like pattern (as on a tree) or areas where water tends sit longer after a heavy rain.
   Clay can be extracted from many of these sources quite easily, and whether you plan to use it for pottery or one of the multitude of other traditional uses, the goal is to remove as many impurities as possible and the process is the same. While some clay deposits are pure enough to be used raw straight out of the ground, these are the exception; most clay is found in conjunction with sand.

   Many people have never considered the idea that they could make their own clay

   Learn more about Harvesting,
   Processing and Firing
   natural clay
   in February's
   Primitive Pottery workshop.
   or are intimidated by the perceived difficulty of the process. One method, as suggested in many "living with the earth" books, is to pound the dry clay into powder and then winnow (sift) the fine clay particles on to a collecting surface. While this method does work, and in some circumstances may be the only method available to you, it is highly inefficient and requires a huge energy expenditure, violating the primary rule of survival — conservation of energy.

   The method I prefer, and teach, is the Water Extraction Method.

   The big benefit of this method is that usable clay can be extracted from the most marginal of soils. The clay shown below was processed from soil that was almost 70 percent sand and, using other methods, would have been considered unusable. For this exercise we started with 10 pounds of dirt that had a marginal clay content. It would barely adhere together when pinched between the fingers, but could certainly not be molded into even a basic shape such as a small log.
   However, by the time we were finished, we had a little over 3 pounds of high-quality pure clay — more than enough to make several pots.

   Step-by-step Instructions for how to Water-Process Your Own Clay:

   1. Fill a container about one-third full with the soil, then add enough water to fill the container. (Gallon jars or 5-gallon buckets both work well, depending on how much raw dirt you have. Using clear containers can be advantageous to the beginner.)
    
   
   2. Crush the wet mud between your fingers to as small a size as possible, breaking up all the clumps. Once your mixture is as lump-free as possible, allow the material to hydrate for several hours.
    
   
   3. Stir the mixture thoroughly, then allow it to settle for a few minutes. Clay is lighter, and floats above the heavier sediment. Look carefully as the mixture begins to settle and you will see a color change that indicates where the suspended clay particles and sediments meet. This "clay water" is what you want to keep.
    
   
   4. Pour off the clay water into a separate container. Watch carefully while you are pouring and when you see sediment starting to gather on the lip of the container, STOP! Repeat steps 4 & 5 as many times as necessary to extract the greatest possible amount of clay from the sediment. Stop pouring sooner rather than later! You don't want sediment sneaking through into your clay.
    
   
   5. Take the clay water you have collected and repeat the same process of diluting, mixing and settling, and pour this further refined clay water into a third container. This step will help to get rid of the smallest bits of sediment.
   
   
   6. Once you have removed all the sediment, leave the clay water to settle, undisturbed, for at least a few hours (a full day is even better). This allows the clay particles to settle to the bottom of the container.
   
   
   7. After the clay has settled the water should be virtually clear and there should not be any noticeable color change lines within the settled clay. If you see that a sediment layer has appeared below the clay (indicated by a layer of darker, coarser material at the very bottom), repeat steps 4, 5 and 7 until you have removed all the remaining impurities.
    
   
   8. Carefully pour off the suspended water, watching the lip of your container. When clay begins to pour off with the water, stop pouring, set the container down and allow the contents to settle for a few minutes. Continue this process until as much water as possible has been poured off and only clay is left in your container.
    
   
   9. Take a section of old bed sheet, t-shirt or other finely woven fabric, drape it over a bucket and, keeping the cloth secured against the bucket, pour the wet clay into the center. Pull the edges of the fabric together to make a "bag" in which to hold your clay while it dries. Tie the top of the bag closed, pulled snug around the top of your new clay ball.
     
   
   10. Use some sturdy rope or cordage to hang the clay bag some place where it can remain undisturbed for several days. You should see water dripping out of the bottom of the bag as the clay begins to dry. The water should be clear, or have a slight clay-colored tint. If you can feel any grit or see any particles, your bag material is not of a fine enough weave and you are losing clay. Find something tighter and re-bag.
    
   
   11. After two or three days open your bag and check if your clay is still soupy, or if it has firmed up. If you are unsure, scrape a small amount if clay into your hand and if it will form into a ball that retains it's shape easily, you're good to go! If not, re-tie the bag and allow it to hang another 24 hours before checking again. Once your clay has reached a usable consistency it can be removed from the bag and placed into a permanent container, ready to be tempered and molded for pottery, or used for whatever project you have in mind.
     

6. How to Make a Wood Ash Glaze

   

   Glaze Mixing

   Over the summer I've been doing lots of glaze testing, and one of these has been to find my own Wood Ash Glaze recipe. It's not an easy process. I gathered together several recipes found in pottery books. All of them had a different take on the process - and sometimes conflicting ideas! I tried out four of the recipes with varying success, but now I think have my own version.

   
   

   

   Wood Ash

   
   

   The first thing I had to do was get a source of wood ash. You need at least a kilo of good grey/white ash with as little rubbish in it as possible: the sort you get after a long hot fire. Luckily my sister happened to have some. This came from a mixture of wood species (Cherry, Eucalyptus and general woody plants from the garden) that had been pruned and burned over the previous summer in a chiminea. This meant the ash was very clean and without contaminants like soil, which you might get from a ground fire. Anyway, my sister had collected all this ash in a bucket with the intent on using it to mulch the raspberries; but instead I jumped in and she very kindly let me have it!

   
   

   First of all I had to clean the ash. This I did by sieving it to get rid of any last bits of twig, stone, carbonised lumps, leaves etc. I sieved it twice using the same sort of sieve as a normal kitchen/household size rather than a glazing sieve: and I wore gloves, goggles and a mask by the way as this stuff isn't too good for you if inhaled. The photo above shows the powder that was left. As you can see it looks very clean. I decided it looked good enough to use just as it was. Many books talk about washing the ash by soaking it, rinsing it and then drying it back to a powder. But this sounded obsessive and unnecessary to me! Instead I decided to use this powder as the dry ingredient in a recipe like any other.

   
   

   

   Sieving The Glaze

   
   

   After lots of little test batches, I decided on my final recipe. This is based on one found in Stephen Murfitt's The Glaze Book. The main ingredients are:

   
   

   Wood Ash 38

   Feldspar 30

   China Clay 20

   Flint 12

   
   

   Although I've also added a percentage of Red Iron Oxide. 

   
   

   After measuring out the ingredients precisely using an electronic scale, I put everything straight into a bucket of water. Then stir! Simple really. Although it would be if I wasn't wearing goggles, a mask and gloves (the donning of which always seems to bring on fits of sneezing...) The pictures above show just a few stages of making up the glaze mixture, which include sieving it at least three times using a 60 mesh glazing sieve. The result is the lovely rose-pink colour of the raw glaze mixture in the last photo.

   
   

   

   Dipping Pots

   
   

   And then it's just a matter of glazing some pots. Above are a couple of photos showing me dipping a jug into the freshly made Wood Ash Glaze. And below are some photos of the latest batch of pots in their raw glazed state, ready to be packed into the kiln...

   
   

   

   Jug with Wood Ash Glaze

   

   Glazed Pots Waiting for the Kiln

   
   

   
   

   At the moment I have no idea if these pots have worked. As I type, I'm actually waiting for the kiln to cool down enough so I can open it and see the final results. It's a bit of a nervous waiting game: it could go either way. Below is a test tile of what the glaze looked like during the testing stages. As you can see, it's a very nice simple wood ash glaze fired in an electric kiln. But tests are only tests, and glazes can behave completely differently when put on a pot. So we'll just have to wait and see...

   
   

   

   Wood Ash Glaze Test Tile
   

   M

After you learn the technique in the video above, it would be a good thing to keep in mind that we're learning techniques to be totally Off the Grid. What we are seeking after buying our property from the land bank, was to use the Earth beneath our feet as a building material, very little had to be brought and as we get better that will go down to zero.

So what is this Alkaline substance

Keep in mind it is something you can find in nature.

In chemistry, an alkali (/ˈælkəlaɪ/; from Arabic: al-qaly “ashes of the saltwort”) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or alkaline earth metalchemical element. An alkali also can be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a soluble base has a pH greater than 7.0. The adjective alkaline is commonly, and alkalescent less often, used in English as a synonym for basic, especially for bases soluble in water. This broad use of the term is likely to have come about because alkalis were the first bases known to obey the Arrhenius definition of a base, and they are still among the most common bases.

The alkaline earth metals are six chemical elements in group 2 of the periodic table. They are beryllium (Be), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), strontium (Sr), barium (Ba), and radium (Ra).^[1] The elements have very similar properties: they are all shiny, silvery-white, somewhat reactivemetals at standard temperature and pressure.

Structurally, they have in common an outer s- electron shell which is full;^[2][3][4] that is, this orbital contains its full complement of two electrons, which these elements readily lose to form cations with charge +2, and an oxidation state of +2.^[5]

All the discovered alkaline earth metals occur in nature.^[6] Experiments have been conducted to attempt the synthesis of element 120, the next potential member of the group, but they have all met with failure

ChemicalEdit

As with other groups, the members of this family show patterns in their electronic configuration, especially the outermost shells, resulting in trends in chemical behavior:

Z	Element	No. of electrons/shell	Electron configuration[n 1]
4	beryllium	2, 2	[He] 2s2
12	magnesium	2, 8, 2	[Ne] 3s2
20	calcium	2, 8, 8, 2	[Ar] 4s2
38	strontium	2, 8, 18, 8, 2	[Kr] 5s2
56	barium	2, 8, 18, 18, 8, 2	[Xe] 6s2
88	radium	2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 8, 2	[Rn] 7s2

Most of the chemistry has been observed only for the first five members of the group. The chemistry of radium is not well-established due to its radioactivity;^[2] thus, the presentation of its properties here is limited.

The alkaline earth metals are all silver-colored and soft, and have relatively low densities, melting points, and boiling points. In chemical terms, all of the alkaline metals react with the halogens to form the alkaline earth metal halides, all of which are ionic crystalline compounds (except for beryllium chloride, which is covalent). All the alkaline earth metals except beryllium also react with water to form strongly alkaline hydroxides and, thus, should be handled with great care. The heavier alkaline earth metals react more vigorously than the lighter ones.^[2] The alkaline metals have the second-lowest first ionization energies in their respective periods of the periodic table^[4] because of their somewhat low effective nuclear charges and the ability to attain a full outer shellconfiguration by losing just two electrons. The second ionization energy of all of the alkaline metals is also somewhat low.^[2][4]

Beryllium is an exception: It does not react with water or steam, and its halides are covalent. If beryllium did form compounds with an ionization state of +2, it would polarize electron clouds that are near it very strongly and would cause extensive orbital overlap, since beryllium has a high charge density. All compounds that include beryllium have a covalent bond.^[7] Even the compound beryllium fluoride, which is the most ionic beryllium compound, has a low melting point and a low electrical conductivity when melted.^[8][9][10]

All the alkaline earth metals have two electrons in their valence shell, so the energetically preferred state of achieving a filled electron shell is to lose two electrons to form doubly charged positive ions.