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.

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.