Where is Clay Found? | Top Q&A

When I first went looking for native clay, it seemed to be something rare, like gold or silver, I couldn’t find wild clay anywhere. But I know it must be much more common than it appears because ancient people made pottery wherever they lived. So I did a bit of research to determine where the clay was found and now that I know where to look and what to look for, I see clay everywhere I go. So now that I am sharing the results of my research with you, keep reading to find out where the clay is found.Because they are the smallest particles of soil, clay particles stay suspended in water longer than sand or alluvial particles. Its tendency to float in moving bodies of water and to settle slowly in still water allowed the clay to form layers of soil where water was stationary at some point in the distant past. Therefore, the best places to find clay are along floodplains of rivers and streams or at the bottom of ponds, lakes, and seas. Even if these features existed millions of years ago, long after the water was gone, the clay would still stay where it was left. Read: Where to Get Clay Finding clay often requires hiking, climbing, and exploration, so get ready to get outdoors and exercise. You may find it helpful to consult a geological map or Google Earth to locate potential nearby areas for clay searches. You’ll want to bring something to dig with like a shovel or hammer and something to hold the clay, from buckets to zippered bags. Trying to find native clay in your area will be an adventure to remember.

Find clay in alluvial flats

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Clay that is deposited by rivers or water vapor is called alluvial deposits. These clay deposits need not be near the river as the clay may have been deposited by the river aa millions of years ago. However, if you want to find clay, near a river is a good place to start looking. Clay can be at the surface or it can be many meters below the surface, so where the floodplains cut by rivers are the best places to look for clay. Places like a cutoff or where steam has cut a deep channel are great places to look because they can reveal ancient alluvial deposits. Much of what you’ll find in alluvial deposits is not at all clay, sand, gravel, silt and loam all common in floodplains so you may have to explore and experiment. a little bit to find the good clay.Along the riverbanks are good places to look for alluvial clay.

Find clay in marine and river sediments

Seas and lakes are sediments left by seas and lakes, respectively. Obviously you wouldn’t bring scuba gear to find underwater clay, so in this case you’d be looking for places where bodies of water have long existed so these sediments could be practically anywhere. anywhere. Some can be seen on hills and others can lie below the surface of a dry lake bed, cuts in the road are some of the best places to find clay as they expose strata Ancient oceans may have been hidden under land or vegetation. Read more: Hulk Hogan’s House | Top Q&AMarine or sediments in river water are often recognizable by colorful strata, such as those seen in the Grand Canyon. Like any other sedimentary sediment, not all are clay, many are sand, gravel, limestone, or other types of marine or reservoir sediments. So you will need to explore and test the different layers to see which one is clay.Dig out clay from a dry lake bed.

Other Clay Deposits

Another type of clay that is quite common is the primary clay mine. These are clays located where they have been weathered from the parent rock, where the rock is slowly being formed into clay. These clays are often mixed with other materials such as rocks and sand. The processes of formation of alluvial clays, seas and lakes, suspension of clay particles in water, cleaning and concentration of clays, primary clays are not subject to these processes so they may require more more work to be usable. The last type of clay I will mention is glacial clay. Even if there aren’t any glaciers where you live right now, it could have been during an ice age a long time ago. As glaciers pull through the bedrock, they create clay by abrading the rock into fine clay particles. This clay is left at the bottom of ice valleys after the glaciers melt or recede. Both are commonly found at the surface, at or just below the topsoil. They can sometimes be located by looking at car tracks on dirt roads, where the most sticky and slippery roadbeds are most likely areas with a lot of clay. In dry soil, a cracked texture such as a crack in the bottom of a dry puddle may indicate a clay surface.Students dig clay from an arroyo bank in Arizona.

Handle the clay you find

Read more: HISTORY | Q&A back to top Once you see clay, you have some work to do before you can use it to make pottery. There are two main ways to process native clays, the dry process and the wet process.Dried Process – In this process, the clay is completely dried, then ground into a powder. The powdered clay is then mixed with between 12% and 25% sand depending on the natural quality of the clay, this “property” will allow the clay to dry without cracking.Wet process – With this process, the clay is put into a bucket and covered with a quantity of water, after a few days is mixed into this slurry and poured through a sieve to remove large jigs, stones and rods. If there are a lot of impurities in your clay, you may have to do this several times using finer, finer sieve plates. At this point you need to decant the excess water, let the clay settle and then pour the water on top, then pour it into the pillowcase and let it dry for a few days. Once you’re able to do this, knead the clay with 12% to 25% sand to let it dry without cracking. You have the right to brag to your pottery friends and your art will have a unique connection to this land.Moist clay and sand ready to mix

looking for more information

Clay hunting has been something I’ve enjoyed doing for most of my life and I’ve been known to stop my car anytime and anywhere if I notice some telltale sign of clay outside the window. This article deals with answering the question “where is clay found” but it doesn’t go into what clay looks like in the wild, how it can be tested, or how to treat it. when you find it. If you are interested in learning more about how to find and process natural clay then you can enjoy my online video-based class called Native Clay 101. There are also several related videos. finding clay on our YouTube channel here. Read more: Quick reply: Where are Text messages stored on Android phones?