Monday, August 31, 2009

plates.

Dessert plates, admittedly not the best angle.
The soundtrack is just for you Kent.
Maybe I'll do a trimming video when the plates are ready.

Cheers!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

here come the pots.

Okay I lied...there's only one, but there are surely going to be many to follow soon. Here is the first pot on my new treadle wheel. I've never actually used one of these before so this was a whole new world of weirdness for me. I read somewhere that throwing on a treadle wheel is the potting equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your belly, I found that to be true. The great joy for me was more about building the thing rather than using it, though I'm sure that will find a special place in my heart soon enough.


The plans I had were pretty rough to say the least, there were a lot of things left to figure out on my own. Rather than calling folks up who have one of these I sat around and tried to figure out on my own what I needed to, that sort of thing is a great pleasure for me. So there are a few things that are different on this guy, what I thought may be improvements...only time will tell.

The wheelhead has a slight wobble to it due to the shaft being slightly out of alignment. The top part of the shaft and the wheelhead are from an old kickwheel. The shaft wasn't long enough so I cut off the top six inches to keep the taper that fits into the wheelhead and welded it onto the new shaft. I welded it 3 different times and no matter what setup or jig I used I couldn't get them perfectly aligned. This last time I figured out the high spot and stood on the wheelhead and stomped on it a little, this improved the wobble to about 1/16"...good enough for me. The rest of the crankshaft was a piece of cake, though my torch cutting skills are not what they used to be!


Time to go teach my night class, pinch pots here we come!
Cheers!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

it works-sort of.

I've been working a little bit on my treadle wheel this weekend while cleaning the classroom. I can't believe school starts tomorrow, summer just flew by! I'm teaching a full class load but none of my classes are full and my advanced class is only a handful of students so things shouldn't be too rough. I'll have plenty of time to get pots made as we have decided not to do any shows for the remainder of this year. We're going to wait things out a bit and shoot for local and internet sales for the remainder of the year. If you were expecting me at a show this fall my sincerest apologies, but I'm still making pots! Check out my etsy page or send me an email if you're looking for something specific.

Is it blurry? Nope, that crazy thing works! The flywheel isn't attached to anything, it's just sitting on the lower bearing with the shaft running through it. I was checking to see if the shaft was properly aligned and that the flywheel ran true. It does...and I didn't even have to tweak anything. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon I can work on the offset for the shaft and then this bad boy will be done!


Kick bar receiving its last coats of finish. Ware carts double nicely as places to hang wood being finished.


I've upped the technology a bit on this wheel(though not as much as these ones.) I'm using rod end swivel bearings in a couple places. This will allow the Kick bar to arc(as it should) instead of staying flat while kicking, putting less stress on the part that meets the shaft. In theory anyways...more technology means more things that can break.

My advanced class starts tomorrow afternoon, I'm excited to get that class going, it should be a good one.
There is a special going on over on my etsy page...check it out.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Whoa! Hey!

This may be the longest I've gone without posting! Hope I'm not losing too many folks out there! I don't have much going on in the studio at the moment, I've spent a lot of time preparing for school to start. I've been giving the clay studio a bit of an overhaul which has of course taken longer than I planned. I'm itching to get back on the wheel, it's been over 2 months, yikes!

Here are some pots from the most recent firings, earlier in the summer. These pieces and many more are available on my etsy page. I've loaded a bunch of new work from the most recent firings. Dig in.









Cheers!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

well...

My wife's korean automobile has been giving us a a lot of trouble this last year, it's only 3 years old and of course whatever happens to be wrong is not covered by the joke of a warranty. Instead of dumping anymore money into it we decided to cut our losses and trade it in for a small Toyota Yaris. We've had a lot of Toyota's in my family and we all have nothing but good things to say about them. The sad thing is we had to use our Minnesota vacation money for the down payment, bummer. It's nice to not have that crappy car hanging over our heads anymore though. Hmmmm....I'm dying to make some pots, soon...soon.