I'm sure this has been suggested before, but just in case it hasn't, I'll post my idea.
In light of capped stats and not being able to push shit to insane levels that way, I have an idea for spiraling clay.
What if we could smash bricks in to silt using something like the smithy hammer, and then mix the silt with water to make new clay with a quality more relative to the bricks. Since you can push brick q with better fuel, this would allow a slight and steady spiral for clay as well. Could make water q, hammer q, or even something like drying table q work in to the equation of it all to make it harder, or just make it take a lot of silt for a small yield of clay.
Random example, 1 brick smashed = 1 silt, 10 silt in a bucket with water will mix and/or dry to 5 or less clay?