Having decided that coal would be too difficult to process coal into a work materials that could made into a functioning mousetrap, I have selected the quintessential red clay (shale) which red brick is made of.
Was red brick was iconically used to build terrace houses in many of the now de-industrial towns of North West England. Isbstock are a manufacturer of building brick, who have over a dozen of shale quarries and brick kilns with the UK.
Ibstock's Ravennshead quarry and brick factory is just outside Skelmersdale, Lancashire, excurvates shale that is then moulded into a bricks which fire to a colour not too disimilar to kouper red. Alan McMcLaughlin, site manage was kind enough to post to 10 kilos of raw shale.
I have fire some samples to test what colour the clay turns and how much is reduces once it becomes a ceramic. The shale come in a dehydrate grounded form and that can be turned into clay simpley by adding water. The samples fired where made from clay that was either unsived, dry seived onced using a kitchen strainer and twice dry seived , using a glaze seive.
The clay reducing rough 9% from wet to dry and another 2 percent onced fire. The colouring is fairly typical of fired terracotta.
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