Clay - Tumbling Speed Additive

Billy inquired about a pit to extract Georgia red clay. The pit up the road was a shale pit go figure.
The tall hills along the Chattahoochee River running thru Atlanta have been shaved flat as there were some of the finest brick clay.
For miles. They shared the hills and industry set all the buildings down on top of the final grade.

I guess I could make an offer to dig and ship MFRB quantity. Bag, box and ship. I will do that if anyone is interested.
Not so much to make money but to cover my time and shipping.
I would guess an MFRB would hold 30 pounds.
How about $30 total, $13 for shipping and $17 for the clay.

I may not be timely, but would eventually get them shipped. (got unpredictable work schedule)

I would like to see if others have success with it.

I can go into a little about silt and clay for our use. We have no differation between clays only clay content. A good ratio for baseball diamonds is 1 to 1 silt to clay. Most soils people call clay is actually a high silt content. For instance in WI where I work the silt to clay ratio runs 2 or 3 silt to one clay. I did a job in OK where the silt to clay (red) was 1 silt to 2 clay. In Willis TX we went from a 1 to 1 to a 2 to 1 in just 30 ft in the pit. Why does this matter? Well you have to have the silt so it won't get too sticky and the clay so the water runs off the Baseball diamond. Depending on the professional level of play the silt and clay to sand ratio raises because it takes better management for the higher silt and clay to lower. City parks and high school vs professional and colleges.
Where this gets kind of tricky is the properties.
Silt is .05 mm to .002 mm 
Clay is .002 minus

If you take silt that is .0021 and a clay that is .199 (i think i got that right) it will perform like  100 % clay even though it is has silt in it.

Now for another wrench to throw in. Sand content in the clay. Most areas have a different sand to silt and clay ratio.
In Oklahoma depending on the depth profile we can go 60 percent sand to 10 percent sand. 90 percent silt and clay at a 1 to 1 ratio is almost impossible to work.

So if your tumbling and you have a 60 percent sand and 40 percent silt and clay you are going to some abraision from that grit. How much I don't know, would depend on if the sand is calcarious or silica. So all clays as jamesp says are not created equal. 

Most clay bricks are only 25 percent silt and clay the rest is sand. Adobe and cob is approx. the same ratio. 

I will think a little more about this but we deal with clay all over the usa and when I show up to process it the chances are it going to rain! Then the fight begins.

techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module06/SoilClassification.htm

Here is a size chart, kind of misleading because you can actually see the silt and clay particles with your eyes

i will send you a pm with my address. see if our lab will test it. small flat rate box will be enough.

What a oops-ing cool job!

Do you get good seats?

Yea, field work beats the heck out of hanging around with staff(infection).
Envy your work Billy.

You are blessed. Working for a great company beats self employment in many cases.

Here is the clay extraction site I sent you. Maybe 10 years ago they dug clay here for a large road project.
About 3 miles up the road from my house.

Clay must have been just right for road underlayment.

Best core report I've ever seen. Thanks for sharing!

"Chopping" - excellent name for a mass murderer . . .

We're pretty socked in with snow so it probably won't dry out enough to try any until spring, but yeah i'll give it a go. I'm using generic mexican kitty litter now which is pretty cheap, but free is even cheaper if it works.