Wheel running again

The pottery wheel is up and running again. I had the motor pulley machined this weekend and installed everything yesterday. I had to modify the belt and pulley system cover using a jigsaw, but that was pretty simple. The new motor is at least as smooth as the old one and is certainly more powerful.

Ice cream bowls

We started selling small ice cream bowls in the ice cream shop next door. They are really dessert cups and they fit a scoop of ice cream about perfectly. In the past we have had people buy a bowl and then go next door and ask to get their ice cream in it. So, we started displaying the bowls on the ice cream counter and people can get a bowl they can keep with their ice cream. Sharon (ice cream/chocolate shop owner) allows them to pick a bowl, she washes it, then serves them up. We just started and sold 2 today. That really isn't bad considering that it was a pretty slow day. I'll have to get busy and make a few more when the wheel is back up.

These pictures also show how we are spraying glazes. We are able to keep the lines from being quite as hard that way, though the colors are less blended on these bowls than most of our other sprayed items. We switched to spraying partly because the prettiest parts of the glazing was where the two colors mixed. Now we can put the "overlap" color in more places, more evenly if we want.

Blown Motor

Sunday evening the motor to my pottery wheel blew. Well, it basically just quit working. When I tried to center about 7 pounds of clay the resistance bogged the motor down. When I took every thing apart, I found that the motor was really hot and decided I had better get to finding a new one. I looked around and found that I could get a more powerful surplus motor for about half of what it would cost me to order a replacement from Brent (the wheel company). In fairness to Brent, their prices did match similar motors. It's just that I could get this particular one for much less. This wheel uses a permanent magnet DC motor, which is significantly more expensive than normal AC motors like you might find on most woodworking equipment. As I understand it, the DC is better at handling the variable speed control. As you can see it is much bigger. The only problem I have now is that the diameter of the shaft is 1/8 bigger, so Jason (older brother) is going to re-bore the hole to fit this weekend. He is a machinist, so hopefully it will be no big deal. I wired it up to the controller and it seemed fine. Of course, without having the pulley bored out I couldn't use it to turn the wheel. If all goes well, I will be back in business Monday.

Wax Resist

Yesterday we made our first attempts at using wax resist on the body of the pot. We always wax the feet of the pots, but this was our first attempt at wax resist to decorative effect.