Clay Pots Are hard To Make (From Difficult water..

My wife is a potter. As in she makes pots of many kinds. when I told her of this thread and the suggestion that you could create and fire a pot and then use it both as a water container and as a boilng container made her laugh out loud.

First of all, not all clay is capable of being fired, and if it is, that does not make it water-tight. Burnishing (rubbing) is one technique to make a clay pot that is not water-tight into one that is. We're talking about DAYS of rubbing, not minutes or hours.

Next is the thermal coefficient of the clay. Not many clays you find in nature can withstand the thermal shock that comes from fire on side and water on the other.

Lastly is the amount of time to fire. I've done a wood firing, it's a multi-hour process and it takes a HUGE amount of heat to really fire well.

When Brian made his initial post, I was inclined to repeat a suggestion offered in past posts. Brian lives in Texas. Before the Tejanos, before even the Conquistadores, the Comanches, Catos, Kiowas & Pawnee somehow managed to live there. They didn't have bottled water <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> I wonder how THEY did it?

There is an article on Native American Cooking Tools that mentions early clay cooking pots, ( not how to water proof them)
and boiling in hides hung near fires here:: www.journalofantiques.com/Aug02/hearthaug02.htm

I believe the Ojibwe cooked in a pots made of birch bark. As long as the flame doesn't touch the pot, liquids can be boiled in birch bark.

The Anasazi were making pots in the 1300's, but I suspect that a lot of their water carrying was done in gourds, and in baskets smeared with pitch. I believe they used the hot-rock method for a lot of their boiling. And I doubt that they ever set a clay pot on a fire to heat anything.

Bark containers can heat water as long as the flame doesn't touch the container ABOVE the water line. Below the water line the water itself, even if boiling, doesn't allow the container to get hot enough to burn. I would assume that this could hold true with gourds as well as birch bark.

I also suspect that the the Native Americans didn't do a great amount of boiling, and probably never boiled water just for drinking, since even the pioneers of the 1800s didn't realize that cholera & other diseases were usually passed around through contaminated water sources.

Sue

American indian basketry was, and is the finest in the world. With proper materials and skill they were self sealing when wet, if not allready watertight. There is a collection at L.A.s Southwest Museum ranging from showpieces so tiny they require magnifying glasses to view up to baskets the size of jacuzzis- and used as same! Water supplies were a lot cleaner back then, and I suspect people's internal cultures more in tune with their world. Indians did indeed do a great deal of boiling food. What they also did, was THINK and PREPARE. There is an erroneous myth of THE NOBLE SAVAGE who could be dropped in Death Valley and have a wickiup, rabbit skin robe and dinner cooking by sundown. Those people carried gear just like us, though a porcupine quill embroidered pouch looks better than a Altoid tin <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Along with gourds, other world options include ostrich eggs, large bamboo canteens, large leaves , leather bags( Bota Bags) and my personal favourite- a traditional chianti bottle with the braided wrapper suspended from a belt.

I didn't say it was IMPOSSIBLE - far from it - it's just a task that takes - at best -a full day with the right materials and the right treatment of the materials. You can make a pot that will hold water and you can make a pot that can withstand fire. But these are very often two different needs, with two different techniques. My point is that you can't reasonably expect to make, fire and use a clay pot with natural materials in the 8 hour scenariod described. It's physics - the clay takes time to fire, to change chemically to become something that will work. Further, to build a pot that won't explode in the firing, you really need to "wedge" the clay for a while to get all the air bubbles out. This can take about an hour even with store-bought clay, it takes longer if your clay is full of rocks, weeds and insects.

I think the magic word is SKILL.
Early native Americans caught fish without steel hooks; hunted with bow and arrows made with wood, feathers and flint points; and cooked their fish and game over fires made without matches.
They started out as children learning those skills. Asking me to make Pre-Columbian pottery would be like asking one of those early Americans to drive my car. We could both learn, but it would take some instruction and/or a lot of trial and error.

Sadly, they also didn't have to worry about giardia or Cryptosporidia when they drank the water. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Skill and knowledge - knowing what clay to use and where to find it. I get the impression they would sometimes travel long distances to find the right natural materials - I don't know whether that's because they just wanted the best, or because most locations don't have anything usuable at all. If the latter and they were dropped into the wrong forest, they might be as stuffed as the rest of us.

Hmm, well tell her not to laugh to loud because I did it this week. I went over this a little in the thread that started the discussion to begin with. I will explain in detail soon once my pics are ready for posting.

Ask your wife to look at this tutorial from BCUK. this is exactly how I did it. The only difference is that where he uses sawdust I used dry grass that I ground up quite finely. Obviously I did not have access to or wish to use saw dust since I was doing the entire project with only a knife and a firemaking tool. I actually never used the knife even. The only "tool" I used for the entire process was a single solitary match and a match striker. Believe me, with all the dry grass I had on hand on match is all it took.

BCUK Tutorial: http://72.36.134.230/community/showthrea...ghlight=pottery

I would add (and I think I already mentioned this in a previous thread) clay selection is only important if you intend to have your pots last for long term usage. If you only need to boil a gallon or so then good ole mud (though the less sandy/gritty the better) should work fine though after a few uses it's probably going to chip, flake and/or crack on you.

I'm still waiting to get pics developed. I dont usually take my digital camera in to the woods so I have to develop the cheap disposable camera that I used.

You can indeed dig up clay that is "pottery ready." No sticks, or insects invovled unless you are careless. You just have to know where to go for the good stuff. It comes out of the ground nearly ready to use, though some conditioning is necessary.

My former brother-in-law has been a hobbiest potter since the early 70's. He went to a spot near the Kentucky River several times to "mine" his own clay. The biggest problem from his point of view was that it was much easier to buy it, especially after the novelty wore off.

Most modern potters aren't taught the same skills used by indignenous pot makers. Sort of like comparing using a compound bow in hunting to what was used in history.

I had enough sand and debris in my "clay" (maybe better referred to as clay-like mud in my case) to make any potter giggle, and though what I made was not pretty and would not have lasted throughout the ages, it would hold water (had I not been careless and cracked it) and sufferred no ill effects by being put over an open flame for long periods of time.

Well since several threads spawned from the same discussion which I started (under another thread), it was tuff to decide under which thread to put these pics. Since there was a hint of skeptisism in this particular thread I figured why not here. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Sorry this took so long. I just got back the disposable camera from CVS that I thought I had taken on our trip but it was a totally different camera. Who knows how long it will take me to find that camera now. Anyway I didnt want you folks to think I made this stuff up and I did promise pics, so here are some pics I took when we got home of the two pots I made on our trip. I also went out and tried to find some clay similar to the stuff I used on the pots so you could see what it looked like. It's really more "mud" than "clay" IMHO. Sure I could have done better, not in the eight hour time frame in my particular environment.

I took the large pot... the one I cracked badly while adding wood to the fire and smashed it up when I got home so we could really get a look at how well (or not) it fired.

Okay... on to the pics.


Mud/clay similar to what I used.


View 1 of large pot.


View 2 of large pot.


View 3 of large pot.


Nice view of the nasty crack I put in the large pot.


Here's where I started chipping away at it. Also a nice size comparison.


Breaking up the large pot some more.


Breaking out the bottom.


Closer view.


Totally broken up.

[img]http://img153.echo.cx/img153/9990/s10dh.jpg[/img]
Small Pot view 1.

[img]http://img153.echo.cx/img153/7767/s35rl.jpg[/img]
Small pot view 2.

[img]http://img153.echo.cx/img153/698/s43zp.jpg[/img]
View of the small crack I put in pot 2.

I learned a lot from this. I learned, among other things, that 5 small pots are better than one large one. I also learned that these pots will hold water and do fine when put directly on an open flame. And most of all... I learned to be careful when adding wood to the fire! Personally I think if I can do this (the small pot) in eight hours with glorified mud rather than even decent clay, then this is certainly doable in a wide variety of situations. Remember the only man-made "tool" I used was a single solitary match to start my fire (believe me, with all the dry grass I used one match is all it took <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />).

FYI: If youre wondering why part is black and part is brown (obviously you didnt read the BCUK tutorial linked above), it is because part of the pot (the black part) was robbed of oxygen during firing and part (the brown part) was not.

BTW: The small pot is still in tact, sitting on my book shelf. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />