Successful casting demands that during pouring of the foundry mould with molten metal the mould cavity suffers no deformation. This, in turn, demands the use of binding materials that can give the base sand adequate strength. The main bonding materials are clay binders. The foundry industry uses minerals rich in clay, such as kaolinite, halloysite, hydromica, montmorillonite, polygorskite, vermiculite and allophane. Due to their binding capacity, montmorillonites are the most interesting minerals of all the plastic clay rocks. The basic clay rock containing montmorillonite, used as a common binding material for traditional foundry sand mixtures, is bentonite. The domestic demand for raw bentonite materials is almost entirely satisfied by imports from Slovakia, Turkey, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic, in order of import size. In Poland, the bentonite deposits occur in very small quantities. The exploitation of bentonites is carried out only in the Krzeniów deposit, where they constitute a mineral accompanying basalt. Much more common are bentonite clays containing in addition to smectites also a large amount of other clay minerals. The article presents the results of studies of the physico-chemical and mechanical properties of moulding sand mixtures containing pure bentonite, pure clay or hybrid bentonites which are a bentonite-clay mixture. Melting was also carried out to determine the effect of the type of binder on the surface quality of iron castings.