Does natural clay air dry?

Question

I bought some " natural clay " from Michele's and it dosent say anything about how to drying it to make it hard I just dont know if I heat it up will it get ruined because it's a replica of a gun from a game

Answer 1

"Natural clay" is the stuff dug from the ground and while it will dry in the air, it is not "air dry" because that product has added binders to get around the fact that natural clay is very fragile and tends to be dusty when dry - it has to be fired in a kiln to well over 1500F to be turned into ceramic.

and if you made the gun as a solid model of any thickness, it is likely to crack as it dries unless carefully controlled as to how slowly it dries.

Answer 2

There are some air dry clays at Michele's



If the clay dries too fast it cracks. One way to slow the drying is to put in a used plastic shopping bag and just loosely close the bag. water vapor will slowly escape

Answer 3

"Natural" clay sometimes means earthen or pottery/ceramic clay (often gray or brown).

In that case it will dry to harden (over 24 hrs or so depending on thickness), but will be pretty brittle if stressed or dropped unless it's later also fired in a high-temperature kiln--that will make it stronger but the item will still be breakable if dropped/etc.



Other air-dry clays are based mainly on paper/wood or grains as well as various other fillers some of which are even earthen clays, etc.

They will air-dry too and be pretty strong if dropped/etc (depending on shape, etc) but can never be put into a kiln since they'd just burn up. They can be put into a very low-temp oven just to speed up their drying though. There are various qualities of air-dry clay however, with different characteristics and strengths.



(Other kinds of "clay" you might see are polymer clay which is a plastic, never "dries" but hardens with heat in a home oven, and plasticine-type clay which also won't dry but also can't take heat and will never harden.

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20110513163238AA5mFdh )



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Answer 4

It depends. If it doesn't have anything listed on the temperature though, how can they expect you to bake it? I suggest asking a Michele's sales assistant, just to be sure.