Flatten them, squish'em, squash'em into jelly.....

      Some of you might remember this post (here) where I made my own bats to throw on.  I was pretty happy with them for a while, but I started to notice some things about them that bothered me.  One big one was that the bat pins (the little nubs that hold the bat in place) stuck up about an eighth of an inch.  I know that doesn’t seem like much but when your hands are pressed down on a spinning bat it gets pretty irritating, it also stop you from cutting off larger objects like plates, bowls, and platters smoothly.  I thought I could deal with it; I have a few other bats that I could throw those types of things on so I kept using them.  The second thing that bothered me was that they are made of masonite, which is basically like compressed cardboard.  So when they get wet they tend to swell a little, and then when they dry they warp a little.  I was okay with this, again for a while but when you’re ready to throw and flipping through your bats and cannot find a flat one it gets pretty annoying.  This happened to me the other day, so I thought I would try to flatten all of my masonite bats at once, prompt like.  I soaked them in water to get them nice and pliable, and then stacked a couple of five gallon buckets full of water on top of them to get them nice and compressed, and left them for a day or two to dry.  

The all important close-up.

So now I’m thinking that my problems are solved (well one of them) and my bats will be flat and ready to use when I want.  I take my seat at the wheel and reach for a bat, and the first one I pick up is warped far worse than any I have yet seen.  Luckily it’s just that one, and the next one is pretty flat.  

Now it’s been a few more days and my bats are starting to warp again.  I’m thinking it’s time to invest in some of the higher end plastic bats that never warp, just to save myself the grief that I inflicted upon myself when I decided to make my own bats.

Maybe next time I will use a treated/sealed, and thicker plywood….

A gaggle, a murder, a herd...whatever a bunch of vases.

  Here’s the first and second batch of smallish vases that I’ve thrown.  They range from one and a half to three pounds.  I had to Frankenstein the photo together, so if it looks a little funny that’s why.  I’m going to attempt to get some more variation in my shapes and heights in the next week or so.  I’m also going to start throwing some in sections and assembling them.  That will make it easier to get some decent height with this porcelain, also some shapes that I cannot seem to pull off any other way.  Well back to the studio I go, I have some trimming to do before I go to bed.  Thanks for visiting.

A Bowl with a Hook

Here are some yarn bowls I've been working on.  Keturah designed the hooks for me, and I cut them out of the bowls.  They look pretty good I think, I'm excited to see them finished.

Standing on their own.

Today I was working on some candle stand, or they could be used as tiny cake stands.  I used about 2 pounds of porcelain, and threw them upside down.  I threw them upside down for two reasons: first I wanted to make sure the top was going to be really flat, and second I needed to make two walls.  The outer wall hangs down off of the top and gives the stand a nice surface for future designs.  The inner wall acts as the stand or support and gives it some lift off of the table.  These are about 3 inches wide at the top.  I will also make some larger ones for actual cake stand that will fit something larger than a cupcake, but these will work for candles.  Thanks for visiting. 

Best thing since sliced Clay

I said in the last post that the new clay I’ve been using is really wet.  So I started to lay it out the day before I needed to use it so that it would be a little stiffer.  I did this by cutting the clay into four pieces and arching them on the table to get the most surface area to dry out.  I did this for a while by cutting it free hand but that gave me uneven slices, which dried at different rates.  What I needed was a way to cut even slices consistently.  So I looked around to see what I had to use for this project.  What I found was two pieces of 2 by 4’s roughly the same length.  So I measured the thickness of the 25lb bags that the clay normally comes in, and they are roughly 4 inches tall.  So I took the 2 by 4’s and measured three one inches segments, and then cut a shallow groove on those marks.  I now can take one of my wire tools and place it in those grooves and slice even slabs every time.  I just have to be careful I don’t leave them out too long or else they go from too soft to far too stiff.  

Now that I’ve taken care of that problem I can move on to the more enjoyable throwing bits.