Julie N. Spiekerman on wed 12 feb 97
First of all, I'd like to say that I've learned quite a bit from
all the great discussions on this list, although up to now I've just been
an avid lurker!
A couple of days ago I was telling my ceramics intructor about the
list and all the good info on it. So she asked me to forward a question on to
you all, since she doesn't yet have an email address...
She has a big old Brent slabroller that has seen many years of
intense usage, and the canvas shim on the bed is finally shot. What we're
wondering is if there is any way you can replace the shims without paying
the rather large price of ordering them. As in, could you just buy canvas
and use some sort of adhesive to glue it down? If so, what sort of adhesive?
Any other ideas or thoughts? She had heard somplace that they had to be
heat adhesed... is this true?
Thanks-
Julie in Michigan, where it snows and melts and snows and melts.....
=========================================================================
Julie N. Spiekerman Phone: (517) 790-5665
AIS Programmer/Analyst Email:jns@tardis.svsu.edu
Saginaw Valley State University
=========================================================================
Andy Keen on thu 13 feb 97
Having worked with various construction materials over the many years I
earned my living in the building industry, I offer this advice: This is a
rather unorthodox use for an adhesive (from a manufacturer's point of view)
so it is doubtful that you will have any recommendations from them for this
usage. Many products do very well in uses for which they were not intended
by their maker. Try a waterproof contact cement, but be very careful that
the canvas is taught in all directions when it touches the bed of the roller,
in order to prevent wrinkles in the fabric. You can facilitate this by
placing dowels or something like that on top of the bed just before you put
the fabric down, (which holds the fabric off of the cement) and then start at
one end and pull the dowels as you go, ensuring that the fabric is taught and
wrinkle-free. See diagram below, in which the top line is the canvas, the
zeros represent the dowels, and the bottom line is the slabroller bed:
__________________________________________
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Don't be afraid to experiment.......... Good luck.
Dan c Tarro on fri 14 feb 97
Another way that you can make sure that it gets stretched without
wrinkles is to let the adhesive dry totally on both surfaces so that
there is no tack left to the glue. Stretch the canvas taunt with the two
glued surfaces in contact, tacking it somehow. Then with a heat gun, a
hot hair drier may work, heat the surface of the canvas. This will
reactivate the contact cement and stick the two together. You will
probably want to rub the surface of the canvas to force the two together
to make sure that they are in good contact.
Good luck,
Dan Tarro
Oak Tree Stoneware
Ham Lake, Mn
On Thu, 13 Feb 1997 06:53:19 EST Andy Keen writes:
>----------------------------Original
>message----------------------------
>Having worked with various construction materials over the many years
>I
>earned my living in the building industry, I offer this advice: This
>is a
>rather unorthodox use for an adhesive (from a manufacturer's point of
>view)
> so it is doubtful that you will have any recommendations from them
>for this
>usage. Many products do very well in uses for which they were not
>intended
>by their maker. Try a waterproof contact cement, but be very careful
>that
>the canvas is taught in all directions when it touches the bed of the
>roller,
>in order to prevent wrinkles in the fabric. You can facilitate this by
>placing dowels or something like that on top of the bed just before
>you put
>the fabric down, (which holds the fabric off of the cement) and then
>start at
>one end and pull the dowels as you go, ensuring that the fabric is
>taught and
>wrinkle-free. See diagram below, in which the top line is the canvas,
>the
>zeros represent the dowels, and the bottom line is the slabroller bed:
> __________________________________________
> 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> 0 0 0
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>---------------------------------------------
>Don't be afraid to experiment.......... Good luck.
>
Marget and Peter Lippincott on sun 16 feb 97
Julie N. Spiekerman wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
> First of all, I'd like to say that I've learned quite a bit from
> all the great discussions on this list, although up to now I've just been
> an avid lurker!
> A couple of days ago I was telling my ceramics intructor about the
> list and all the good info on it. So she asked me to forward a question on to
> you all, since she doesn't yet have an email address...
> She has a big old Brent slabroller that has seen many years of
> intense usage, and the canvas shim on the bed is finally shot. What we're
> wondering is if there is any way you can replace the shims without paying
> the rather large price of ordering them. As in, could you just buy canvas
> and use some sort of adhesive to glue it down? If so, what sort of adhesive?
> Any other ideas or thoughts? She had heard somplace that they had to be
> heat adhesed... is this true?
>
> Thanks-
> Julie in Michigan, where it snows and melts and snows and melts.....
>
> ==========================================================================
> Julie N. Spiekerman Phone: (517) 790-5665
> AIS Programmer/Analyst Email:jns@tardis.svsu.edu
> Saginaw Valley State University
> ==========================================================================
While we are on the topic of Brent slab rollers, I have another Q. Has
anyone else had a problem with uneven thickness of the slabs. The shims
seem to warp down in the middle when I start (dry shims) and eventually
warp up in the middle (wet shims) when I have rolled a few. Has anyone
ever used a large sheet of plastic for the top shim -- with cloth glued
to it of course. That might be more stable. I always put a removeable
piece of canvas down on the canvas covered shim so the clay will not
stick to the shimface. I can pick the clay covered canvas up quite
easily, transport it vertically to a resting place and lay it down with
very little bending that might result in warp-memory in the fired tile.
Anyway, thickness... has anyone else encountered this problem and solved
it?
Peter
Vince Pitelka on mon 17 feb 97
When I was at U-Mass we eliminated the canvas from the Brent slabroller
shims, and we have done the same thing here at the Appalachian Center for
Crafts. All of my students are required to have have their own canvas
sheets (7 oz. or preferably 10 oz. canvas duck, from a fabric store, works
great) for slab work, although we do have several heavy-duty strips of
canvas (about shim-size) which are labeled "for slab-roller use only" and
are kept with the slab roller. I do not see that the canvas attached to the
shims is any advantage at all. In fact, it's a pain in the neck. As an
earlier post pointed out, if you roll a series of slabs directly on the
canvas, it warps the shim, whereas if you are changing canvas with each slab
this does not happen. Also, soft clay tends to stick to the canvas coating,
especially if several slabs have already been rolled out. When slabs are
rolled on a separate sheet of canvas, it is a simple matter to flip the slab
over onto another sheet of canvas, and peel the stuck sheet off. Then it is
very easy to lift the slab.
I too have experienced problems with irregular thickness in Brent-rolled
slabs. The steel supports beneath the heavy particle-board sheets beneath
the masonite shims simply are not heavy enough. Eventually the
particle-board sheets crack, and the steel supports warp. An ideal solution
is to eliminate the steel supports and replace them with a solid array of
2x4s on their sides. This creates an immoveable backup layer, and will
significantly improve the uniformity of the slabs on the Brent slabroller.
I don't worry about it very much, because I always true my slab-roller slabs
with a rolling pin anyway. This also helps to neutralize the unidirectional
stretching (and resulting memory in shrinkage) which characterizes
slabroller slabs (unless special precautions are taken).
- Vince
Vince Pitelka - vpitelka@DeKalb.net
Phone - home 615/597-5376, work 615/597-6801
Appalachian Center for Crafts
1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville TN 37166
Dannon Rhudy on tue 18 feb 97
----------------------------Original
message----------------------------
......I too have experienced problems with irregular thickness in
Brent-rolled
slabs. . An ideal solution
is to eliminate the steel supports and replace them with a solid
array of
2x4s on their sides.......
Vince,
I did the same thing; works great. Though, in truth, I don't
care whether my slabs are absolutely uniform, it doesn't matter
for the work I use slabs for; minor differences are just - minor.
But the slab roller needed this and that done anyway, was pretty
old, and the 2x4 set-up was what I'd seen/used in grad school.
So I just did it while doing everything else; it has been
completely satisfactory.
Dannon
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