Cleaing Your Clays

[johndsoares]

Hey I wanted to give my clay chips a good cleaning. I know there are good and bad ways of doing it and wanted to hear some of the ways you guys found works best! Thanks for any responce!

[dakine]

Try this link.

http://www.ccgtcc.com/cleaning.html

[tomb1]

Beat me to it....that's a good link.

I clean clay chips if they're real dirty. (Others I leave as is.) If there are big lumps of gunk, I gently scrape them off with my fingernail, or I've heard you can use an eraser. But usually I skip this step.

I use some non-abrasive liquid/creamy cleanser and rub it into the chips with my fingers, adding a little water. Lately I'm using some Orange Clean stuff that my wife had around, or use some of them mentioned on the web site. In a pinch, I've used liquid hand soap or even lather from a bar of soap with more water.

Rub the cleaner into the chip with your fingers, then put it in your palm and take an old soft toothbrush and clean it as much as you want. Use water to rinse it off, and dry as well as you can immediately.

Now you can leave the chip as is, or (better yet) lightly oil the chips with a drop or two of mineral oil on your fingers. This protects the porous surface and really brings out the colors. You want enough oil to get into all the cracks, molds, etc., but not so much that it's dripping.

After rubbing on the oil for a little bit, some people let it soak for a while (only a few minutes for me, cause I'm impatient), then wipe off all the oil with a cloth or a shop towel.

Don't use any petroleum oil or cooking oil. Get plain mineral oil or baby oil (if you're really into diapers and such).