Ingeborg Foco on thu 21 oct 99
Hi,
Today I visited a fellow potter, Ellen Currens, who uses little disks of tar
paper also known as 30# roofing felt. She had a variety of sizes and said
they work great as long as the tar disk isn't more than a couple of inches
larger than the pot you are throwing. (According to Ellen, they last for
years and years) They are applied with a little slip to the wheel head or a
bat. When you are done throwing, cut the slip with a wire and lift the tar
paper and pot off to something else. The pot will pop off when it is
ready...no need to cut it off she said. Sounds really simple and you can
store a lot of little paper disks in a very small space. Needlenose plyers
help in pulling the disk off the wheel or bat without distorting.
Ingeborg
Jeff Campana on fri 22 oct 99
I've got a rhetorical question for everyone:
If you are going to slide or lift a pot on something flexible, why not just
throw on the bare wheelhead and lift or slide it off onto a ware board?
I thought the point of a bat is to eliminate bending of the bottom of the pot,
causing warpage. Whenever I throw basic, easy to move forms, I simply rib the
surface of the pot to remove slip, then cut it off, dry my hands on my pants,
and close my hands around it, applying even pressure all around, and twist and
lift. It takes a few sacrificial practice pots, but after a few you will be a
pro. Just line them up side by side on the shelve boards of a ware cart, and
slide the shelf right into the cart, full of pots. I think, if you want to
forget bats, forget them entirely!
Jeff Campana
Ingeborg Foco wrote:
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Hi,
>
> Today I visited a fellow potter, Ellen Currens, who uses little disks of tar
> paper also known as 30# roofing felt. She had a variety of sizes and said
> they work great as long as the tar disk isn't more than a couple of inches
> larger than the pot you are throwing. (According to Ellen, they last for
> years and years) They are applied with a little slip to the wheel head or a
> bat. When you are done throwing, cut the slip with a wire and lift the tar
> paper and pot off to something else. The pot will pop off when it is
> ready...no need to cut it off she said. Sounds really simple and you can
> store a lot of little paper disks in a very small space. Needlenose plyers
> help in pulling the disk off the wheel or bat without distorting.
>
> Ingeborg
Ray Aldridge on sat 23 oct 99
At 10:32 AM 10/22/99 EDT, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>I've got a rhetorical question for everyone:
>
>If you are going to slide or lift a pot on something flexible, why not just
>throw on the bare wheelhead and lift or slide it off onto a ware board?
>
>I thought the point of a bat is to eliminate bending of the bottom of the
pot,
>causing warpage. Whenever I throw basic, easy to move forms, I simply rib
the
>surface of the pot to remove slip, then cut it off, dry my hands on my pants,
>and close my hands around it, applying even pressure all around, and twist
and
>lift. It takes a few sacrificial practice pots, but after a few you will
be a
>pro.
This works fine for forms that can resist distortion due to their
structure, like mugs or covered jars, etc.
But the rationale for using tarpaper or canvas bats for more extended
forms, like wide shallow bowls, is that by sliding the pot off the
wheelhead on the paper, you can get your hand underneath the pot, and you
don't distort the pot by lifting it by the walls. If you throw soft and
thin, it's very difficult to pick up a wide shallow bowl without folding it
a bit. On the other hand, your reaction to the idea will depend somewhat
on your attitude toward finish-- I've seen potters pick bowls up by the rim
and just treat the distorted edges as a decorative motif. That can work fine.
Ray
Aldridge Porcelain and Stoneware
http://www.goodpots.com
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