Will Pot for Food

Finally, we put some pottery up on our Etsy Shop.

Beanie for Your Thoughts

It’s been awhile since the last post. Having non art related jobs will do that to a couple of artists. Anyway Keturah has made me a beanie out of fishermen’s wool (this wool still has the natural oil in it, so it is water resistant). She also knitted a nine pointed star into the top. Here are a couple of photos, you can also see the beard I have been working on (it seems to be the only semi artistic thing I have been able to do). We also have plans to get an electric potters wheel so I can start making work again in my spare time.

Grave Treadle Wheel

I just wanted to give an update on the treadle wheel adventure we have been on. As you know we moved house (from Texas to Oklahoma). Because of this I had to disassemble the treadle wheel so that we could move it (it was rather bulky). A few days ago I decided to reassemble the wheel, and after an hour of confusion and silent curses (the wheel was not cooperating with me) I had the wheel reassembled. I now have the pleasure of reporting that the wheel is dead. Once it was put back together I realized that the fly wheel was no longer level, and no matter what I did I could not get it to level out. So we have decided to look for a kick wheel to buy for the time being. We plan on re-purposing the wood from the wheel to make another table. So if anyone sees a kick wheel (or a treadle wheel) for sale let us know.
Also my wife has finished (a long time ago, just haven’t mentioned it yet) the Greatest Name she was working on. So here’s a picture of it. It now hangs over the front door of her sister’s house.

Moved House

We have successfully moved from Texas to Oklahoma. No more apartments for us, we now can grow our own garden (pictures of that project soon to come), and have a studio space and office space in our own home. I am converting our one car garage into my pottery studio (pictures of that soon to come as well), and we are making one of our spare bedrooms into an office/studio for my wife. We also have unpacked all of our pottery and will be photographing it soon so that we can start putting them up on our Etsy account. We are currently looking for jobs to support our art habit until our art starts to support us. Now that we have settled in I hope to post more often, so keep your eyes out for our new posts. Here are some topics that I will be talking about in the near future: garage studio, vegetable/herb garden, treadle wheel (hopefully finishing it), kiln firing, and hopefully my wife will have some things she wants to talk about as well. I almost forgot we have made some new business cards, here they are; let us know what you think.

Done and done

I finished firing the kiln Saturday afternoon, let if cool all of Sunday and then unloaded it this afternoon. Here is a shot of the kiln with all of the finished work (well not all, I started unloading then remembered to take a photo. So there are a few shelves missing).



Here is a picture of all of the work sorted and ready for packing (shortly after this photo everything was wrapped and packed away for easy transport to Oklahoma).



Here are some close up photos of some berry bowls and some Milton mugs (I thought they turned out quite nicely).




Also I have been asked to make some bean pots/casseroles for someone. So here are a couple of shots of those.




Once we get settled in Oklahoma we will unpack all this work and take individual photos of everything (or group shots of stuff that belongs in a set) and start posting things on Etsy. There might be another long silence from us while we do the final packing these next two weeks, but we will start posting as soon as we start setting up our new studio.

A long time gone...

Haven’t posted anything for a while. We’ve been busy with work and trying to pack up everything so we can move. I have been able to glaze all that work from the last couple of posts. As you can see here in this photo it is quite a bit of stuff (this isn’t all of it either, the big platter/bowls are not on this cart (they haven’t been glazed yet either)).



I have also loaded all of this stuff into the big gas kiln and will fire it tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go well and I will have some pictures of finished work to share by Monday evening. Until then I need to get some sleep so I can be attentive to the kiln tomorrow.

Long Time, No Blog

It’s been a while since the last post. During the day I’ve been teaching little kids a little bit about pottery and sculpture at a local small town museum. Given that I do not have that much time to make anything new I don’t have much to blog about (hence the lack of blogging). We have finally been able to bisque-fire the work from the last two posts (although with a little difficulty). We first loaded in a car kiln (Elvira… two weeks ago) only to find out that one set of the pilot lights didn’t work. Irritated at this, we then unloaded it all a week later and reloaded it into the only other kiln that would hold that much work (we call this kiln Jezebel). This one is a front loading gas kiln (very nice, we hope to build a kiln similar to this one when we move). This past weekend I was finally able to babysit and fire the kiln, which we unloaded today, and stashed everything in my studio. Here is a picture of all the work we pulled out of the kiln, thankfully nothing broke.



Also, we finally got the original driveshaft for the treadle wheel finished. Unfortunately we realized the whole thing needs to be a couple of inches shorter for it to be comfortable. This means that the driveshaft will have to be cut down as well as all the posts on the treadle wheel.



Another project that has been in the works is getting close. This is a Baha’i Greatest Name the wife has been working on for her sister. It has a maple burl base and shell cast bronze calligraphy. It needs a bit of drilling on before it can be patina’d and attached. Almost done in time for her birthday!



After the both of us graduated this past May we’ve finally decided that we will move back to Oklahoma (where we lived before moving to Texas for graduate school) at the end of August to work towards our dream of being studio artists. Wish us luck!
…Well back to trying to relax before another day full of teaching the little ones about the arts.

A Berry, An Acorn, and a Goblet walk into a Bar...

We’ve been working on some more stuff for our Etsy shop. The first picture is of some berry bowls (they’re upside down in this photo), these are basically small colanders made to wash berry’s and the like. These are about four to five inches tall and roughly five to six inches wide.



The next photo is of some goblets (they are upside down as well, I had just finished throwing the stem so they were still wet and could not support the weight of the cup). I have always enjoyed making goblets, I don’t really know why they are just fun. Anyway they are about six to eight inches tall.



Condiment Bowls are what we are calling these little fellows. Basically they’re two small prep bowls attached to each other with a loop handle added. They are maybe two inches tall and two to three inches wide (combined to be about six inches wide). You can see some other handles in the background, which shows that the handle isn’t perfectly straight (they have a slight twist to them (I enjoy them being slightly off like that)).



Also, here are two of the butter bells from the last post. These have been finished with a handle/foot ring added to the top of the butter part, and feet added to the part that holds the water. These little guys look like acorns to us.



Here is a group shot of the berry bowls and condiment bowls along with some plates that I have been working on (which will be slightly square(ish) when I am finished).



And last but not least is the new drive shaft for the treadle wheel. As you can see I switched to pipe instead of solid steel (this is so I don’t have to weld anything, just screw them all together). You can see where the other driveshaft broke, the upper middle on the left side.



Thanks for reading, and feel free to let us know what you think and any suggestions on what you would like to see us make, we always look forward to your comments.

Throw It and They Will Come

We’ve been busy making some pottery (not on the treadle wheel, it’s still broken at the moment). I thought I would show some pictures of the work we have been making, all of the photos are of green work. This means that nothing has been fired in the kiln yet, so it can still be manipulated or broken very easily. This first photo is of some mixing bowls with spouts and a handle on the sides to make it easier to pour from. Also, there are some small condiment bowls with spouts on them as well (I usually use these to put salsa in or mix a couple of eggs for scrambling). Let us know what you think of the handles, we still aren’t quite sure that they are what we want (some of them have handles on the left side of the spout while others have the handle on the right side).



Next is a jumbled stack of what we are calling Milton Mugs (because a man named Milton asked me to make some for him, and I had never made them before. He’s bought like thirty of them from us, so we’ve dubbed them Milton Mugs in his honor). These mugs are pretty small, only holding about a cup of liquid. Milton likes them because he doesn’t drink that much coffee and these hold the perfect amount for him.




I am also working on making a couple of different butter containers. The first are called butter bells, with these you pack a stick or more of butter in to the part that is closest to you in the photo. Then you place water in the cup in the back, turn the butter part upside down and place it in the water. This allows you to keep your butter on the table so that it can stay soft all the time. The butter doesn’t go rancid because the water keeps the air from touching the butter (the air is what makes butter go rancid).



The next type of butter container is the classic butter dish. Here you can see about six butter dishes, this is a new way of making them. I throw them on the wheel (sans tops and bottoms, those come later), cut them off and alter the shape to more of an oval with flat(ish) sides. Once they are leather hard or cheese hard (dry enough to handle with out distorting them) I add a bottom and feet to the bottom part, and a top and handle to the top part. I really like these; I would like to know what everyone else thinks as well (so please let us know what you think).



In this photo are some large bowls that I have made. These are designed so that they can sit on a table as a center piece, fruit bowl, or whatever, but they also can be hung on the wall as a decorative piece when they are not in use. These bowls are made by rolling out a slab of clay (a flat thin piece of clay almost like rolling out biscuit dough), then laying the slab on to a upside down bowl shape to give it a curved form (bowls don’t do very well when they are flat). After they are leather hard I throw the foot (what the bowl sits on), you can see the foot in the bowls toward the back of the photo. When the foot dries to leather hard I then flip the bowl over and throw the rim of the bow, which you can see on the bowls in the foreground. Once again please let us know what you think of these as well (I believe these are roughly twelve to fourteen inches across).



My wife has also been working on some pottery. She throws mainly in porcelain, while I throw mostly in stoneware (more on this in a later post). Here are some of the pots she has been working on. The pieces in the front have been pierced and carved on so that they can now be used as orchid planters. The vase shapes scattered around the photo will be crystalline glaze, which is a glazing technique that actually grows crystals in the kiln (it’s a pretty cool process I think, I will post more on that later as well).



Thanks for making this far in to the post, I apologize for the length. Anyway, let us know what you think, and look for the finished pieces in our Etsy shop.

An Etsy Adventure

We have started an Etsy page, where we plan to sell the items that we have been making. We are starting out by posting some of the brushes we featured in an earlier post, the black bamboo ones. We will soon be adding some pottery and hopefully some knitting will be coming soon as well (she says probably not). Also, we have linked our Etsy page to this blog so that it is easy to locate our shop. So please take a look and let us know what you think, and any suggestions will be appreciated.

A Treadle Darkly

Working on this treadle wheel feels like I take one step forward and two leaps back. The last post I said that it was finished and I was getting ready to actually make some pottery on it. Well the next day we head into the studio to find that some time since we left the day before and arrived that morning someone had taken it upon themselves to break it (probably not on purpose, they probably stepped on the flywheel which broke my “awesome” JB Weld job). Anyway, today I go in hoping to catch our friend Maki so she can mig weld the “weld” that broke. Which we do and she does weld it for us, although after she has finished and left for Alaska I realize that the other JB Weld has broken (from the heat or something else I don’t know) and now I’m stuck with an almost finished treadle wheel. It seems that the driveshaft has been giving me the most problems, when I thought it would be the easiest part. That will show me to think something is easy before even trying to do it once. I think the hardest part for me is knowing that I have to rely on other people to weld these parts for me, if I could and had the equipment to do it I don’t think I would be as upset. Well, I guess welding gear is a good investment for the future if I plan on building my own equipment. I’m going to try another approach to the driveshaft, I’m going to use pipe instead of solid steel. This way I can use pipe elbows to make the ninety degree turns that I need for it to be a treadle wheel. I think I might try to do that tomorrow, I’m already feeling better about going back to work on this rollercoaster of a project.

And the Treadle Marches On

The treadle wheel will be finished this week (I have to keep reminding myself this, because I need to move on to other projects). Truthfully I am looking at finishing this project tomorrow; I just have to glue one more piece of metal into the frame and then make the seat (which I don’t see as taking that long (he says knowing he will regret it later)). So today I attached the drive shaft to the wheel head and to the flywheel, and it all spins nicely.



Here is a photo of the driveshaft; the part that is offset is what makes this a treadle wheel as opposed to a kick wheel.



I also made the piece that attaches to the foot peddle and to the driveshaft, I have used an old leather belt, some screws, a piece of two by four (cut in half and laminated together). In this picture there is a piece of metal bar sticking out of one side, I have since removed it because it was too long, I have replaced it with a hinge that I had lying around.



I also have cut the board for the foot peddle, attached the piece that attaches to the foot peddle to the foot peddle and to the driveshaft as well. I will have this project finished and will post pictures of the first pots that I will throw on this treadle wheel by Friday (I promise).

Post #12

I just wanted to give an update on the T.A.R.D.I.S. and the treadle wheel, since it’s been a while since we talked about them. The T.A.R.D.I.S. first, the mission has been scrapped at least for a little while. We got a little busy with the end of the semester and accidentally let the slabs dry out to much. This is okay with us because we have come up with another way to make it that will involve much less carving, and will (hopefully) make it look better. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of knowing who Doctor Who is here is a link to Wikipedia’s Doctor Who page.
Now something completely different (the treadle wheel). We ran into a little problem with welding the drive shaft together, meaning we didn’t realize that we didn’t have the gas to weld with. Although we were able to get our friend Maki to weld part of it, we had to resort to J.B. Weld (a type of epoxy for those not in the know) for the rest of the “welding”. I think it will be strong enough to take the strain of treadling. This means that I will finally (this time I really mean it) get to put the whole thing together this week (I’m hoping tomorrow) and give the wheel a spin (or treadle...).
I will post some pictures of the finished wheel and the start of the new T.A.R.D.I.S. within the coming week. In the mean time please in joy this drawing done by my wife of the future me and our two hypothetical children:

Table for Two

We have finished our low Japanese style dining table (it look’s kind of like a coffee table I know).




In the last table update we had just finished staining the table, when I realized that I needed to fill in the holes with wood filler. Since then we have sanded the whole thing over again (because the wood filler we used didn’t take the stain that well), re-stained the table, and put a couple of coats of paste wax on it to seal and give it a slight gloss. We also made the legs for it, as you can see from the photo we have two curved legs. The first idea was to have a complete oval for the support the idea being that it would mimic the table top. This idea was flawed in a couple ways the first being that we didn’t have the wood to finish a complete oval, and the second was that when I set up the two ends we liked it much better than the oval idea. So on Monday I glued and screwed the legs together, Tuesday I sanded them down to get the curved look to them, and yesterday we stained, sanded, waxed, and put the whole thing together. Today we got to bring the table home, here is a photo of the table in our living room (we don’t have a dining area because we currently live in a small apartment). The final dimensions are sixteen inches tall by thirty inches wide by forty-eight inches long. And as promised here are some photos of the table in our small apartment (please ignore the mess...).

Where the Red Table Grows...

I have roughed out the shape of the table (as you can see from the photo below), and my other half has cut out the place for the star and place the star in the table. It’s really starting to look like a table now, very exciting for us.



. I have also sanded and smoothed out the corners of the table, and stained the top of it, which you can see in this photo.



Only to realize after I stained it that I needed to fill in all of the big gaps that were left after my shoddy construction (not really, the two by fours were not all the same size, which I thought was weird). So I will now go back and fill in the gaps, and give the whole table a good sanding once again. I am hoping to get this table finished and put into use next week some time. I will post some pictures of it in our home when we get it finished.

A Star is Born

We’ve (I say we, I really mean me) have started on a new dining table. We’re building it out of reclaimed two by fours and will have a Baha’i star inlaid (using a piece burl wood we had laying around) in the center(ish) of the table. Here is a photo of the table after we (I) assembled it but before we placed the star into the table top.



You can see the star sitting on top of the table; it’s about eight inches across (the star not the table). The table is roughly fifty inches by thirty inches, and will be about seventeen inches tall when finished. We are planning on sitting on the floor with a zafu as a cushion, that’s why the table is so low. The table has sharp corners in this photo, but we are planning on curving the sides and rounding everything out before we are finished.

[witty title here]

Well, I have really finished the frame for the treadle wheel (I noticed in the last post the photo was of an earlier incarnation of the frame, it is truly complete now). I was missing a few support beams, and had to move one that was in the wrong place.



I have also completed the splash pan, and my other half has started work on the drive shaft. Here is a photo of the steel plates that get attached to the drive shaft; this is before they were grinded and filed down to the right size.



Tomorrow it looks like the whole thing might finally get finished (I know I have been saying that but I truly mean it this time...I hope). I can’t wait to try it out and see all of the things that I can do better next time (they already seem to be mounting up (which is a good thing in my book)). I plan to build another one this summer, I am teaching a class at the college (Stephen F. Austin) this summer on brush, tool, and equipment making. And a couple of them seem really interested in making their own treadle wheel, so it seems like it will be a fun summer.

Memoirs of a Treadle Wheel

I just wanted to post a quick update on the treadle wheel. I’ve completed the frame (as you can see from the photo), and have moved on to working on the splash pan, treadle peddle (I don’t know what it’s really called), and the part that attaches the treadle peddle to the drive shaft. I’m still waiting for my drive shaft to be finished; I’m hoping that it might get finished (or at least started on) tomorrow.



While I am waiting on that I’ve been working on making some more brushes. This time I have been playing around with a deer tail this time, it’s a little more difficult than the squirrel hair because I have to bind the hairs differently. It seems to be going pretty good (once I figured it out a good way to bind the hairs), I am ordering some more squirrel (grey and fox) tails, and another deer tail tonight. Hopefully they will get here soon, and I can get some more brushes made (oh yeah, and finish that treadle wheel project.....).

Time And Relative Dimension In Space

The other half has started on a T.A.R.D.I.S. cookie jar (it's more of a box really (a police box)). Here is a photo of it after it has been constructed but before any carving has been done, and before the heart of the T.A.R.D.I.S. has been put in (with out that you can’t travel through time and space...). Anyway, I will get some measurements so you can have an idea of how big it is, all I know right now is that it looks like it will hold a lot of cookies!!

Bamboo Snob.....

I just wanted to share some photos of the black bamboo after it has been cut down to length for the brush handles. They also have been sanded and de-limbed (meaning the limbs or branches have been removed). This first photo is before I take all the wax off of the bamboo, as you can see it looks cloudy. This is from the dirt and wax that coats them.



This next photo I’ve used my handy dandy propane torch to melt the wax off the bamboo. As you can see they are no longer cloudy, which makes the colors brighter and gives them a kind of gloss.



I fear that I’ve become a bamboo snob, because I no longer like working with the green bamboo. The black stuff seem so much more alive, I dread the day when my stock of black bamboo runs out and I’m forced to return to the green stuff. Although, I’ve acquired some black bamboo to grow, right now it seems to not be doing much. We are hoping that it’s growing roots, and will send up some shoots...soon...

Treadle Wheel (the saga continues)

Well, the treadle wheel is coming along nicely. Although I had a minor set back this past Friday, something to do with angles and me not being able to figure it out, and then me getting frustrated, followed by me going home... But after having the weekend to think about it I have figured it out, and will get back on track on Monday. I have constructed most of the frame, only a few more boards to cut. While I have been working on that my other half has been cutting out some steel plates that will attach to the flywheel and the drive shaft. She has a lot of grinding followed by a bit of welding to do in the next few days. I also seem to keep forgetting to take photos of the work in progress; I will fix that though and have some to post soon.

Treadle Wheel (An update)

Here is an update on the treadle wheel I’m currently making. I have made the flywheel, and that’s it.... I made it out of some plywood I had laying around, cutting eight rounds that were two feet four inches across and a half inch thick. I then laminated them together to create a flywheel that is four inches thick. This, I am told, will create a flywheel that is of average weight (I will weight it and let you know the exact weight), from there you can make it lighter or heavier depending on your throwing style. I’m going to keep this weight and see how I like it. Here is a front view and a side view of the flywheel as it is now, I still have some work to do on it to make it look nicer.




Today I bought the wood to make the frame of the treadle wheel. I’m using two by fours and laminating them together to make them a little sturdier. Tomorrow I will be buying the steel for the center beam that runs from the flywheel to the wheel head, as well as going to Onalaska to pick up some more black bamboo and hopefully a raccoon tail (we will see if it’s any good for brushes). Hopefully Friday I will start constructing the frame and start putting it all together, I would like to get it finished by next Monday, but we will see...

Black Bamboo Brushes

Here is a quick post about some brushes we have been making. These are not our first brushes, but they are the first ones we really like.



The handles are made from black bamboo, and the tips are made from grey squirrel tails.



Also, we have started burning an enso onto the back ends of the brushes to identify them as being made by us.

With a Bang...

I want to start this blog off with a bang.... as in the bang of a hammer and other noises made by other tools. Meaning I am going to start off talking about making tools and equipment for use in my (at the moment non existent) pottery studio. My first major project will be the construction of a Leach style treadle wheel built from the ground up. I will be posting pictures as the project proceeds, along with photos of other smaller projects that I will also be working on like brush making, and various tools for the potter. Stay tuned for more exciting episodes as we (my wife and I) slowly build our dream studio.