A clay hardness tester (sometimes called a pig sticker) is a useful tool to assess the plasticity or workability of clay

The Anderen Clay Hardness Tester has been designed to offer a robust instrument that can be used on the factory floor to test pugged clay.
It has a spike that penetrates the clay and you can get an indication of how hard or soft the clay is from reading off the arbitrary scale

It is important to understand that the scale has no specific units and the instrument is designed to offer a repeatable test for clay hardness. The user must establish, by experiment, the reading that is obtained from an ideal material (with a +/- allowance)

Once this is established the unit can be used to show if the clay is of the right plasticity to be used or is too hard (usually meaning it is too dry) or too soft (too wet).

It is also important to note that if the point gets damaged (through accidentally dropping the tester) all previous readings will need to be modified.

If you want to have comparable readings from different clay hardness testers we can calibrate them against each other. In such a case you need to order multiple units at the same time

Clay Hardness Tester CHT