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| Clay Station: Skutt Thomas Stuart wheel with SSX upgrade; leg extensions. Speedball chair, and clay reclamation bin. |
Can I just say, I love my Skutt Thomas Stuart potters' wheel? It is a powerful but whisper-quiet wheel that makes throwing clay an amazing experience. I've got mine set up in our dining room for now. Together with my comfy Speedball Institutional Student Potters Stool (ST4), which adjusts up and down with the touch of a lever, I have a phenomenal clay station. A blue recycle bin, covered by a white kitchen garbage bag, sits nearby and serves as a clay-reclamation center. I always have a 5-gallon bucket with about a gallon of water nearby and a sponge to rinse my hands and keep my work area clean. Today I threw four mugs and a couple of large bowls.
My summer 2015 instructor is Wade MacDonald. His classroom format is different compared to instructors from prior terms in that he has specific assignments for us (students) to ensure skill development. Class started June 15, 2015. Our first lesson was to make cups with handles — two coffee mugs, and two cups. I ended up making four teabowls, because that's what I am most accustomed to making. I don't drink coffee, so I had little interest in coffee cups, but I am interested in mastering this skill.
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| Summer 2015 Term Instructor Wade MacDonald. |
Class 2 (June 22) required us to throw two bowls — a 2 lb. and a 5 lb. bowl. Wade's bowls flared and sat upon a small foot base. Mine were the shape of the yarn bowls I'd been throwing. And the 5 pounder was lopsided. I tried to throw another in my Wednesday lab, but as the lip flared out, it got off center. Bleh.
In today's Saturday lab, I pulled six handles and tried to attach them to my cups. My bowls were still too wet to trim. The handles I pulled were awful. They were thicker on the right side than the left, and they really didn't fit my teabowls. But I attached them anyway, and they look terrible. So I went home and decided to start all over. I threw four 1.25 lb. balls of clay into awesome cups. If I can pull some decent handles and attach them, that would demonstrate some real growth for me. Yeah, I'm excited.
I also threw two bowls. A nicely flared bowl from about 3.40 lbs. of clay. Another, slightly more than 4 lbs., got off center again, and while I was able to fix it, the flare opened up too wide and then started to collapse further outward. to correct this problem, I pinched sections of the pot's lip. Tomorrow, I'll try to smooth it out a bit.
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| Four mug bodies waiting for handles and two large bowls, all thrown Saturday, June 27, 2015. The mugs are 1.25 lbs. each.. The smaller bowl in the back was thrown from 3.38 lbs. of clay; the larger bowl in the foreground was about 4 lbs. of clay. |
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