My First Wheel
Sep. 6th, 2014 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrMy first potter's wheel was quite the deal, as we said back in Wisconsin. It was a homemade kick wheel. Welded pipe frame with a cast concrete flywheel, painted Ford tractor blue with a bright orange steel tractor seat. I bought it and a little 18" electric kiln for a couple hundred bucks from a student in the art history class I was teaching. She was going to move to Minneapolis and could take either her wheel or her loom. Fortunately for me, she chose weaving.
I threw on that wheel evenings and weekends for about four years, when not recycling clay or mixing glazes in exchange for studio space. I finally left it behind when I moved to Oregon for grad school with only what could fit in the trunk, back seat and passenger side front of my 1975 Dodge Dart.
My second wheel wasn't technically mine at all. I was resident potter at the UO Craft Center, throwing and demonstrating on a kick wheel because I somehow learned to throw left-handed and needed a wheel that could reverse. Then I took a job throwing nine dozen hummingbird feeders a week and really needed an electric wheel.
Fortunately, the Craft Center had a little Shimpo wheel that no one much used. It was a cone-drive wheel with a stick-shift-like hand control that actually pivoted the motor inside to change speeds. And because in Japan, everyone throws clockwise, it came with a reversing switch. I threw a lot of hummingbird feeders on that wheel. And mugs, luminaria, french butter dishes, egg separators and spoon rests. (Oh God, spoon rests.) I almost took it with me when I left the Craft Center eight years later, but by then I'd bought my third wheel.
My third wheel was a beauty, the only one I've ever bought brand new. It was a Pacifica/Laguna Clay model with the extra burly one-horsepower motor. I set it up in the semi-open carport of our duplex, and threw pots in the semi-outdoors year round, watched by neighbor kids during the daytime and raccoons at night. It was a lovely, quiet wheel with a lot of torque for centering, right up until the rotor rusted solid from being in the carport during the rainy Oregon winters. An electric motor shop turned down the part so it spun again, but it was never quite as quiet after that. Eventually I took it down to use at Club Mud, where it resides still.
I never intended to buy a fourth wheel. We'd bought a house with room for a studio, and my employer from the hummingbird feeder days was retiring and selling his shop, so I went to see what I could pick up. I was only going to buy some ware boards and throwing bats...
I'm not quite sure how it happened; Will always was a helluva salesman. I feel fortunate I didn't buy the whole business, the slip-casting forms, nor the home-brew electric kilns with the asbestos-board casing.
As it was, I found myself driving back from Cheshire with a back seat full of ware boards, a stack of bats passenger side front, and a used Soldner electric wheel with after-market reversing switch wedged into the trunk. It's a sweet little wheel, with better fine speed control than the Laguna, and a wider work table with room for throwing bucket, tools and clay. It has its idiosyncrasies, like the half-splash pan standard on old wheels, and the fact that the speed controller is in a box under the frame, attached by chain to a wooden paddle/foot pedal. It also had three bat pins in the head, rather than the standard two, so I filled two with JBWeld and re-drilled one. I also cleaned off the rust, varnished the table top and painted the frame, and it's been reliably spinning out pots for me for fourteen years. Barring a lightning strike or other act of God, I think it's my last one.
I threw on that wheel evenings and weekends for about four years, when not recycling clay or mixing glazes in exchange for studio space. I finally left it behind when I moved to Oregon for grad school with only what could fit in the trunk, back seat and passenger side front of my 1975 Dodge Dart.
My second wheel wasn't technically mine at all. I was resident potter at the UO Craft Center, throwing and demonstrating on a kick wheel because I somehow learned to throw left-handed and needed a wheel that could reverse. Then I took a job throwing nine dozen hummingbird feeders a week and really needed an electric wheel.
Fortunately, the Craft Center had a little Shimpo wheel that no one much used. It was a cone-drive wheel with a stick-shift-like hand control that actually pivoted the motor inside to change speeds. And because in Japan, everyone throws clockwise, it came with a reversing switch. I threw a lot of hummingbird feeders on that wheel. And mugs, luminaria, french butter dishes, egg separators and spoon rests. (Oh God, spoon rests.) I almost took it with me when I left the Craft Center eight years later, but by then I'd bought my third wheel.
My third wheel was a beauty, the only one I've ever bought brand new. It was a Pacifica/Laguna Clay model with the extra burly one-horsepower motor. I set it up in the semi-open carport of our duplex, and threw pots in the semi-outdoors year round, watched by neighbor kids during the daytime and raccoons at night. It was a lovely, quiet wheel with a lot of torque for centering, right up until the rotor rusted solid from being in the carport during the rainy Oregon winters. An electric motor shop turned down the part so it spun again, but it was never quite as quiet after that. Eventually I took it down to use at Club Mud, where it resides still.
I never intended to buy a fourth wheel. We'd bought a house with room for a studio, and my employer from the hummingbird feeder days was retiring and selling his shop, so I went to see what I could pick up. I was only going to buy some ware boards and throwing bats...
I'm not quite sure how it happened; Will always was a helluva salesman. I feel fortunate I didn't buy the whole business, the slip-casting forms, nor the home-brew electric kilns with the asbestos-board casing.
As it was, I found myself driving back from Cheshire with a back seat full of ware boards, a stack of bats passenger side front, and a used Soldner electric wheel with after-market reversing switch wedged into the trunk. It's a sweet little wheel, with better fine speed control than the Laguna, and a wider work table with room for throwing bucket, tools and clay. It has its idiosyncrasies, like the half-splash pan standard on old wheels, and the fact that the speed controller is in a box under the frame, attached by chain to a wooden paddle/foot pedal. It also had three bat pins in the head, rather than the standard two, so I filled two with JBWeld and re-drilled one. I also cleaned off the rust, varnished the table top and painted the frame, and it's been reliably spinning out pots for me for fourteen years. Barring a lightning strike or other act of God, I think it's my last one.