Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. Today I am going to be mixing this black mason stain into my red terracotta clay so that I can have some black terracotta to work with on an upcoming project. I'm going to wedge the mason stain into my clay. Got my safety equipment on, so let's get to it.
I've got my area set up here, and to start out I am going to weigh out three pounds of my red terracotta clay. I'm using some clay that I have already thrown on the wheel because it has a lot of extra moisture and I read that this is going to dry out the clay. I'm using best black 6600. I'm going to go ahead and aim for 3%, well I aimed for 3% of black mason stain to my 3lbs of clay at first. I read that you can use anywhere from like 3-10% on average, and that for darker colors like black, you didn't need to use as much. I started out with the 3%. I just put it on my clay and started wedging it in. Make sure you are wearing your respirator mask, because as I was wedging this in a lot of it was floof-flying everywhere, and you don't want to breathe this in. On this part here, I tried to put some one the board and wedge it onto it, and it created much more floof-flying than before of powder, so probably don't do it that way.
As I was told, and as I guessed, wedging it into the clay dried it out super fast. I wasn't sure if the stain was going to cause staining on my plater slab, so I wedged on a piece of hardi-backer. Man, kudos to all of you who like wedging on hardi-backer. This stuff dries out my clay so fast, and I had some sticking issues, somewhere in the middle. I ended up having to spray water into the clay as I was wedging it in, and it just kind of made a sticky mess. The clay was getting so stiff that it was hurting my wrists to wedge it in this way. I do not think that this is the ideal way to add mason stain to clay, but it was pretty fast. I had to fight with the moisture a lot. It was drying out, making it harder to wedge, making it stiff, making it crumbly. The more I wedged and the more mason stain I added the drier it got so I did have to do a lot to counteract and compensate that. It took a lot of wedging and a lot of time. I turned this up to 10 times speed so that we don't have to watch all of it, but yes, it took a long time. I ended up, after wedging in the 3%, decided that I wasn't sure if that was quiet dark enough for what I was trying to do, and I went ahead and took it up to 6% of mason stain. So I wedged in an additional 3% for a total of 6%, and that's the result right here.
So, there is another way to do this. I got my reclaim bucket and I took my Ryobi drill with the paint attachment and I mixed it all up until I had a nice, thick slip. I pour and measure out that slip into my pitcher. I think I ended up going with about 2 liters of slip, and then I mixed this one up to the 3% stain first. I measured it out for 3% and then poured all the mason stain into the slip mixture and used the drill attachment to mix it all up. I ended up taking this mixture to 6% as well. This one might end up being a little bit darker because I did 6% into the slip and a lot of this water is going to evaporate off which might make it a little more concentrated.
Once I got all of the mason stain mixed into the slip. Which by the way, did not hurt my wrists, wasn't that difficult. I laid it out on my plaster reclaim slab. Which is going to take a little bit longer, because now it is going to need to dry just like any other kind of reclaim clay. If you need to know how to make on of these slabs, or how to reclaim clay, I've got videos for that and I will link them up above and below.
I did set aside some of this slip in a little jar because I am going to be using this clay for sculpting and I want to have some slip to use for slipping and scoring, and gluing, and who knows this might be helpful. I'm not even sure how black this is going to be, but I did pull some to the side before I let it all dry out.
It's been about 24 hours and I'm just rolling this up now and working it out. It's still really sticky. It's too wet to use just yet, but, now I've got both here. The first one here that's a little more dry is the one that I wedged in. I actually let this one soak with some water overnight, because it was a little too dry. The other one I used the mixing attachment to blend into slip and laid out on a slab, is still a little too wet. I would say both of these methods work, but for me personally, I'm going to be mixing it into slip pretty much every time because I don't really think it's worth the effort on my wrists and the time, and my shoulders, to wedge the mason stain into the clay. I would rather just mix it into slip and wait. I'm not even sure how black these are going to be. They look like a dark chocolate brown right now, so we will just have to see.
This is experimental for me, I'm going to be moving forward with this project in my next few videos. If you want to see them you can subscribe to this channel. If you'd like to see weekly art videos, subscribe to this channel. I post a new video every Friday at 5:30 central time. If you'd like to support my channel and my artwork, and get early access to all of my videos, as well as exclusive content, you can find me on Patreon at patreon.com/bluenosetrading, and I will see you guys next week!
How to make a plaster slab:: https://www.bluenosetrading.com/post/how-to-make-a-plaster-slab-for-wedging-and-recycling-clay
Making Hardi-Backer Ware Boards:: https://www.bluenosetrading.com/post/how-to-make-ware-boards-of-hardiebacker-for-pottery
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