Again With the Terms
Sep. 11th, 2014 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrRib. 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.
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.