|
|
|
When I've put bone dry clay into the slop bucket I've noticed a number of things happening initially which seem to be mechanical rather than chemical (please excuse my lack of familiarity with terms and so on). First, there is a lot of bubbling which looks like water forcing air out of the clay. Then the structure begins to fail and you see small fragments and some small particles fall off into piles. Ultimately it seems that the entire piece slumps into heaps - I'm not really familiar with the term flocs but looked it up and it seems to describe this well. Then the clay particles start to absorb more water and break down further.
One interesting observation is that fairly wet leather hard clay does not disintegrate as completely in the recycle bucket as bone dry clay does. This tends to suggest recycling bone dry clay rather than wetter clay is preferrable as it may mix better. I guess this makes sense as that's how you'd do it if you were starting from dry ingredients.