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Monday, November 17, 2008

Dorodango!

I'd come across this a couple years ago and it just resurfaced again last week on one of my favorite shows, MythBusters.

A common childhood pastime in Japan is making hikaru dorodango, or 'shiny mud balls' by taking a ball of mud and squeezing, packing and smoothing it, gradually drying it out, and slowly adding dry dirt to it, and finally rubbing it to a glossy shine.

The results are nothing short of amazing.

Looking at the process, it seems like what they're ending up with is a packed, smooth ball finished with an outer layer of finely burnished clay particles, probably not far from terra sig.


Image from: http://www.kyokyo-u.ac.jp/youkyou/4/english4.htm , which also has instructions for making one of these little gems.

There is additional information and instructions here:

and at Wikipedia here:

3 comments:

Deb said...

That's really amazing and bizarre. Are these all fired?

Brian said...

Deborah,
These are -not- fired.... just dried mud.

Erin said...

how fun!