With This Rib

Writing a blog is having an interesting effect on me. I'm finding unexpected significance in everyday objects.

Take this rib. I bought it in 1980 or so, while taking pottery in college, from Studio Gallery on Market Street in La Crosse.* It's my go to rib for soup bowls, serving bowls, pastas and bakers. I use the tip against the wheel head to undercut clay, before using the curved edge to raise the wall of the bowl the last time and adjust the profile to the perfect, hemispherical shape I crave. The point comes into play again on the rim, tracing a spiral outward to the lip.

Long ago, it was teardrop shaped, perfectly symmetrical with a beveled edge and a pristine point. Over the years, clay has blunted the edges, and I've had to sand them sharp again. The tip wears down asymmetrically against the wheel head, but regrinding it makes the whole tool blunter, messes up the curve. I really should replace it.

But I can't. I've never found another one like it. All the ribs in the art supply store bins are too skinny, beveled wrong, and have a different curve on each side. This is to give you a wider choice of curves you can make, but I don't want a wider choice. I want to be able to grab my teardrop rib and know the curve is perfect, whichever way I pick it up.

I've tried making a replacement in the Craft Center wood shop--several times, in fact. They warp. They crack. Wood grain won't sand smooth on the edges, and will leave tracks around the curve of the bowl. Some day, I'll have to take the time to research the proper wood and finish, get it right. For now, I use my precious, dwindling tool.

*Studio Gallery was the nearest art supply store to Viterbo College, but it was a challenge to shop there. Bill Vafeas, the owner, refused to sell crap, so students who were hoping to buy the cheapest art supplies possible found themselves walking out with a much better grade of paper/canvas/brush/pottery rib than they'd budgeted for. Most of us were grateful, eventually.

Again With the Terms

Rib. A stiff or flexible tool whose edge is used to shape, compress or smooth the clay. I suspect the original ones were flat pieces of beef rib bone. Now they come in wood, metal, rubber and silicone, in an almost unimaginable variety of shapes.

Kick wheel. An acoustic (i.e. not electric) potter's wheel. Basically a frame holding a heavy flywheel at the bottom connected by shaft to the wheel head at the top. Most flywheels are cast concrete, though the Tuscarora pottery school had some with a three-foot disk of plate steel that would spin nigh on forever. We used to kick up the wheel then go have coffee and a muffin on the front porch; when we came back into the studio they'd still be spinning.

With European style kick wheels like the Lockerbie or my homebrew first machine, you kick your feet directly against the flywheel. Treadle wheels like the Leach wheel have a wooden kick bar whose back-and-forth motion is converted to rotary motion by a a crank built into the drive shaft.

I never liked Leach wheels much; the point where the treadle changed directions always introduced a little bump into the pot that I never managed to erase.