Beside refractoriness the most important industrial property of clay is its plasticity. This is nothing but the capacity of forming a fictile dough with water which holds firmly together during shaping and retain its shape during drying and firing. All this property depend on the traditional methods of shaping the clay on hand or by potters wheel. The origin of plasticity is considered to be based on the smallness of the grains in the clay. It is established that any substance ground to the same grain size as clay particles will develop plasticity when made up into a body.
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