Bob Chance on thu 23 apr 98
Upstate South Carolina jug potter Billy Henson uses a trip hammer mill
which is constructed like a seesaw to grind the glass for his glazes.
Built on the creek that runs near his studio, it is operated by the
flowing water of the stream. On one end of a long center-balanced beam is
a bucket that fills with water from the stream. When full, the bucket end
dips, divesting itself of water and rocking the beam up, driving the other
end down. This action forces a steel spike with great force into a
container shaped like an upside down pyramid which is full of broken
bottles and glass mayonaisse jars under the spike end of the beam. It
fills with water again to continue another cycle. In a couple of days this
mill can create enough very finely pulverized cullet to make a 5 gallon
batch of glaze. He uses a glaze that contains cullet, clay, ash and "creek
settlins", the mud from the bottom of the creek that fires out in his wood
fired tunnel kiln as an ash type glaze at cone 8.
This is similar to a mills in Japan of which I have seen pictures that
process local clays by pounding.
Bob Chance
http://www.furman.edu/~chance/chance.html
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