new clay

So I have a friend that recently told me about some local clay they mine to line the waste dump here in the county and he brought me four barrels of it. Now understand that our region is not known historically for many potteries of note though there was one here in Vineland that I really need to research. At any rate, we have this bright yellow clay of which I assume the color is derived from an unusual amount of yellow iron oxide in the body. To tone this down, we added almost a full bag of Jersey Kaolin from an old factory which have a pallet of, and drilled the crap out of it with water and a big paint mixer to blend it. Without screening it we made a few test pots and put them in our wood firing last weekend and two of them in an area of substantial reduction turned a very dark chocolate brown but the one in a less reduced area was toasty. It took ash well so we are hopeful. We are going to try it next in our gas kiln with a white glaze over it in hopes of all that iron bleeding through into the glaze will be exciting. The batch pictured was not screened so it has sizable rocks and stones in it which made for some nice tea bowls but I look forward to making a batch of screened clay. It throws very nice on the wheel but I suspect that is because of the kaolin. I need to test fire a batch to see if it vitrifies, if not, I will add some feldspar to the batch. I hope to post some results from this asap. I feel the need to use some local clay to add some more life to my work. Boxed clay makes 'nice' pots but I want to make some more gutsy stuff. I only want to do it on small scale pots but I want them to be fired with local wood as well. I think on some level there will be a sense of honesty in them to be a few good pots I will leave behind.