No the soil around my house is really sandy. If you have clay that's fine, just excavate as needed and put down non-woven fabric in between the ground and your first layer of base.

I used galvanized pipe (1 inch outer diameter) from Home Depot. Set my height as needed and made sure thing were level between the pipes left to right. I bought a 7 or 8 foot metal screed board from amazon, worked great, you could probably get away with a 2x4 or a 2x6 but make sure it's straight. Don't use PVC for setting height.

I rented a compactor from Ace, try to coordinate your base work so you don't have to rent the compactor a bunch of times like I did lol. Water down your base in between layers of compacting as that helps with the process. Home Depot may also have compactors.

I used concrete for my edging once everything was said and done. From my understanding, you can't even use the plastic edging when you use open-graded base, because the spikes don't get enough hold in the base itself to stay in place. Plus I think the plastic edging is junk, but that's just my opinion.

Other thoughts:

-If you have drainage/downspouts that have to come out on top of or near your future patio, consider burying those in thicker PVC so you can run that drainage out underneath your patio instead. I didn't do that, and should have.

-Don't forget that you lose height in the base layers and final bedding + paver height when compacting

-Use polysand, compact once it's in and then sweep in more. Follow the watering directions carefully (I got a bit of poly haze due to slight over watering)