I thought I would write a blurb on here about reconstituting clays in case it might be helpful to someone and save some money. It is pretty rudimentary for those who are already familiar with working with clay, but for the benefit of the sculpting beginners I will elaborate.
Unfortunately I had a couple of whole bricks of clay go dry despite their packages never being opened. It’s my fault for leaving it sit for over a year I imagine. ^^;;; Anyhow, my clay was around in a greenware state. It was cool to the touch with a slight dampness and I could carve it with my fingernail, but other than that it wasn’t pliable at all.
Since these clays are expensive and I really didn’t relish the thought of having to throw out these clays I decided I would at least make an effort to reconstitute them. So far the method I have employed is slow going, but so far successful. Basically what it comes down to is this. I broke off a small section of the brick, dipped it in water, then wrapped it in a wet paper towel and sealed it in a ziploc baggie. After it sat overnight, the surface of the clay started becoming workable, while the core of the brick was still too firm. So basically I scraped off the workable clay and broke apart the brick even further. After I removed the workable clay, I sprinkled the remaining brick with water, re-wet the paper towel and wrapped the clay up again. For the workable clay I kneaded it and wrapped it in it’s own damp paper towel and kept it separate from the drier clays in the plastic baggie. If you keep the workable clay in with the very wet unworkable clay it will only cause the workable clay to become too wet and sticky. So in the end, just remember, keep them separated and you will have no problems.
So, as I said before, it’s pretty rudimentary stuff, and so far I have found no tricks to make the reconstituting process go faster. Basically you just repeat all of the above steps until you’ve finally turned all the clay back into a workable mass. My last bit of advice though is to change out your paper towels every so often because if mold starts growing on your towels it will contaminate the clay and well mold is just bad business! 😉