| Sorry, couldn't resist, Jane Morehouse
suggested this name and it's just too fun not to play with. "Pardon my Slip" may
be the name of the Pour Horse slip division, or it may be "Carlsbad Slip"
(dignified) or "Bob's Slip" (utilitarian and rather amusing). I'm going to
"give" the slip division to my son Bob (who's 14) on his fifteenth birthday. Of
course I will still oversee it, test all of the batches and do the bookwork. But it seems
to fill a growing need, and looks like a good opportunity to give the boy a taste of the
world of business. We're getting slip orders almost every week, and I can't keep up with
the demand. A nice young strong back and a willingness to play in the hose, are
requirements for slipmaking, at least at our house.
The story of the slip... Kristina and I were buying clay slip, once upon a time, from Eric Renaker, whose father Jim was the Renaker who ran the San Marcos Hagen-Renaker factory. Eric and Jim had a factory just over the border in Tecate, Mexico, and were making the slip down there. Eric would put some on the floor of his car, (in jars) when he had some to spare, and would drive it up to Jim's house in Valley Center (that's north east of us, on the California side). Eventually, Kristina and I would jump into the old station wagon and pray all the way up the hill, hoping not to overheat, usually just making it to the top, to get to Jim's and pick up the slip. We would spend a lovely few hours among the old olive trees and goats, once tasting Jim and Freya's home marinated olives, and hear from Jim more stories about the old days at Hagen-Renaker. We ate it up, and so did he. Jim enjoys people who respect him for his knowledge and admire him for his accomplishments, and just generally likes to tell a good story. (Ask me sometime about The Captain.) Some time later, there didn't seem to be any slip forthcoming. Jim kind of stalled us and we were getting nervous. I usually buy something for the factory at the end of the year, for a last write-off, and offered to buy a whole truckload of slip from Mexico, including the customs and paying the driver. I mean, we were really worried. Jim was noncommittal and we sweated. Finally, Jim told us that the Tecate factory had been closed for several months and they were making decisions about whether to start again or close entirely. Anyway they decided to close and he offered to sell us the whole remaining slip batch. He also offered us some equipment, including a ball mill. We scraped together some money, well, Kristina scraped together money, I was darned broke, and up to Valley Center we went. Jim has a big old outbuilding there, with everything in it from engines, to boats, to kilns. He sold us the ball mill and a fiber kiln (which never did work). Jim delivered the ball mill and eventually I put up a little Rubbermaid building for it. It took six adults to move it to the back yard and put it in the building. It is basically a really big rock tumbler, it rolls these porcelain jars on their sides, and inside the jars are porcelain balls of different sizes. The balls crush the clay slip. When we had used up all of the last slip batch, (took years) and I had to face the music, I called Jim for his recipe. He said he would look for it, and finally called me back. He read me the recipe, and I asked all the questions I could think of. It's hard to ask questions about something you've never done, never seen done, never read about doing... I'm not going to give the recipe here, it
is Jim's, but I will tell you the ingredients: filtered water, soda ash, sodium silicate,
New York talc, Kentucky ball clay, Tennessee ball clay (Old Mine #1) and fire clay. These
clays come in 50 pound bags, dry. The only thing that is already liquid is the sodium
silicate. You put the water in a slip mixer (don't you have one of those?? Mine is 30
gallons) and dissolve the soda ash into hot water, and add that and the sodium silicate.
Then you put on your mask, get out the scoop, and open a No, that isn't it yet. When the slip is good and mixed, you then pull a bucketful from the mixer and you strain it through a 200 mesh sieve. The mesh has 200 holes per square inch. Your common clay slip is strained through a 60 mesh sieve. These holes are fine, like a nylon. You put the sieve over a 10 gallon bucket, and pour in the slip, and then slowly drag a rubber blade against the mesh to encourage the slip to go through and not clog. This takes forever, and you watch the birds fly by and the ants crawl over your feet, and after you have strained a batch you empty it into the ball mill jars. These jars hold about a gallon and a quarter, with the balls inside. You secure the jars with a rubber lid that has a strong metal ring to keep them in place, and lay the jars on their sides between the two rods that roll them. (What is left inside your sieve is a bunch of little black grains, like black beach sand. This is anthracite, or coal. Coal is formed in the same beds as ball clays, like the bottoms of rivers and lakes. You wash the coal out, and sometimes you find pieces of wood also. These are from the pre-Civil war mines where the clay was originally brought up through shafts. Now it is strip-mined, but apparently no one ever took the wooden braces out of the mines, and little bits of wood get through.) The clay slip is milled at a constant rate for three days, eight hours each day. I can mill 3 3/4 gallons at a time. When the ball mill is running, it makes a constant, musical, grumbling sound and really gets on your nerves. When it is done, we decant it into buckets and put it into yet another little Rubbermaid shed. Clay slip likes to sit and ferment. The longer it sits, the better it is. It is more plastic and cohesive. I like clay slip that is years old. It isn't good for it to freeze, however, so it must be kept above freezing. When the slip is used, you must mix it really well. Our slip is made 30 gallons at a time and is a messy and backbreaking job. But once you've tried it... just like a small brewer, we have better control and I use it myself, so I care a lot. Slipmaking is not for everyone, but if you want to try it, they sell tabletop ball mills and smaller slip mixers, and the ingredients are very cheap! It is as rewarding as baking bread, except it doesn't rise, and it doesn't smell good, and you can't eat it. Okay, it's not like making bread! Joanie from Pour Horse
|
