How to Make Clay From Dirt: Steps for Producing Natural Clay

Clay derives from the decomposition of rocks and soil. Made up primarily of alumina, silica, and water, people have long put this material to various uses. Today, potters fire clay to make both earthenware and stoneware ceramics for artistic reasons. In the past, clay served as the basis for tools, shelter, and more. Knowing how to make clay from dirt can serve you well as a survival method in dire situations.

Making your own dirt clay can come in handy when you’re out in the wild. Here are three survivalist uses for clay:

1. 1. Building shelter: With very primitive technology, centuries’ worth of human beings have been able to live in huts made with clay. It might take time, but sculpting a small shelter out of clay or using clay to glue together other materials can help you survive inclement weather.
2. 2. Holding materials: Use clay for pottery in a more rudimentary fashion out in the wilderness. If you’re in nature, it’s always helpful to have multiple makeshift containers on hand to store water, food, and other materials. Molding an open clay body out of your initial solution will also help you make more clay in the future since you need containers for holding clay slurries.
3. 3. Making tools: You can gain more power over your natural surroundings in a survival situation by making tools out of organic matter. Given this, knowing how to make tools out of clay is a very useful survival hack. Once you have dry clay, you can fashion it into basic tools to help you with any tasks that will help you survive.

You can make your own clay with just dirt, water, and a few rudimentary materials. Follow the seven steps in this tutorial to make clay from soil:

1. 1. Discard the topsoil. Creating homemade clay requires obtaining the right kind of dirt. If you can obtain natural clay-rich soil from a nearby river bank or damp region, that will shorten this task considerably. In every other case, remove eight to twelve inches of topsoil to get at any sort of dirt to make your own clay.
2. 2. Combine dirt and water. Grab a container of some sort and scoop in a hefty portion of dirt. At most, fill the container halfway and then use enough water to fill the rest of the receptacle. There’s no real minimum here, so long as you just pair equal amounts of dirt and water. Let it sit until the wet clay will float to the top of the surface, leaving the other sediment behind.
3. 3. Separate the clay layer. After your initially clear water becomes clay water, it’s time to separate out your slurry of clay from the rest of the sediment. Grab another container and pour the thin, watery sludge on top of your mixture over into the other repository. This will separate the clay content from any of the sediment resting at the bottom of your initial holder.
4. 4. Repeat the process. Now that you’ve separated the clay particles, discard the sedimentary remains from the initial container. Repeat this process until you have enough clay in the other container to suit your purposes. If you have a material like grog (clay you’ve already fired and then ground into fine particles), you can also include that in the mix to strengthen any clay you might have hit upon in the soil.
5. 5. Pour off excess water. Give the second container a day or so to let the clay settle at the bottom. After it does, you can discard the top layer of water carefully. Make sure to be very gentle here so you can hold on to all the clay you can.
6. 6. Wrap the clay in cloth. Take your clay and wrap it in any kind of cloth strainer you have on hand. A T-shirt, bedsheet, or window screen could all serve this purpose, for example. This helps strain out any remaining moisture from your solution.
7. 7. Hang the clay. Let the clay hang from a tree or other post to drain the rest of the moisture for several days. At the end of this period, you should have a pure clay mixture you can use to fire pottery in a kiln as well as to help you survive in the wild.

Prepare for any outdoor journey by grabbing a MasterClass Annual Membership and committing Jessie Krebs’s wilderness survival course to memory. As a former United States Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape instructor, Jessie can teach you everything you need to know about packing for a trip (neon is the new black), purifying water, foraging (crickets: the other white meat), starting a fire, and signaling for help (forget SOS).