>>1523807You can make a slurry and allow it to settle. You can do this by just digging a hole, filling it with water then dumping in your crappy clay and stirring it up until it is nothing but soupy water. Not sludge mud, it needs to just be "dissolved" in the water. Then you leave and come back when the water is completely clear. The clay in the poor clay will settle to the bottom in a layer you can meticulously remove. Repeat until you have enough. As you do this you'll get used to how to tell what is okay and what is really good in the layers that settle on top of each other. This process is known as "slaking" which makes the clay into a, "slip", but those terms seem to be interchangeable depending on who you ask. Slaking clay chunks is easier when you use bone dry clay chunks to start with. Clay chunks that is already wet really doesn't like to slake very well and can be time consuming to slake. Slipping clay "mud" is pretty easy.
You may want to check out backroads for well sites, ATV trails, farm trails, etc. The vehicles tend to really churn up the ground and leave behind ruts that become puddles. These puddles, when driven through while wet, begin to do their own slaking and slipping of clay. During seasons that are dry you can just pick up chunks of okayish clay you can further process into better clay. Old ponds and lakes may be your best bet to dig up some clay. For streams and rivers, you may need to look for ox-bow lakes or places where the river/stream had meandered 100s-1,000s of years ago.
You can also slake/slip general soil to get clay out of it. There's more work involved, but it is doable. I've actually make pottery from clay soil from my yard after slipping it in a tub forever. You can also use a filter method by slaking clay chunks then pouring it through some type of fabric. The filtering may take a while if you don't scrap off the clay from the sides every so often. That will be a faster method of getting the clay from slip.
