Bill and Sylvia Shirley on fri 2 feb 01
I got a wonderful present yesterday. A clay friend's mother
(Mary Kate Sullivan) built me a bumper jack extruder.
OOOOOOH is it nice! I had given her a copy of Pottery
Making Illustrated with plans for an extruder, and she
modified them to suit what we had available. There was no
welding involved! This consists of basically a 3-sided
wooden box, pvc pipe, a plunger cut from scrap wood, a die
cut from a piece of aluminum, and a bumper jack. I did
supply the jack, just so you don't think I just sat around
and let her do all the work. Later, we found our extruder
was very similar to plans in The Extruder Book.
This lady is amazing, and can build just about anything she
can imagine. She's my hero! I sent her home with pictures
of a slab roller, so I can't wait to see what she comes up
with next.
If anybody wants to see this extruder, I have drawn up plans
showing the way she built it. If you have Microsoft Word, I
can e-mail them to you.
Big thanks to David Hendley and Daryl Baird. Who's big idea
was it to use a bumper jack, anyway? Brilliant. The jack
does all the work, and makes extruding incredibly easy. No
muscles required.
My advice is, if you have any interest in extruding, this is
the way to get started. If you don't have any interest in
extruding, build it anyway, and you soon will. (You might
as well go ahead and buy Daryl Baird's book, cause it's a
"must have"!)
Sylvia Shirley
Pittsburg, Kansas
David Hendley on sat 3 feb 01
The bumper jack extruder was conceived by John Miller, my
ceramics professor at Texas Woman's University, in 1974.
I had just spent about 3 weeks making an extruder in the
welding shop. It was kind of a copy of a Brent extruder, the
only brand available in those days. (I'm still using this extruder
after 25 years, and you can see pictures of it in The Extruder
Book and also in Diana Pancioli's Extruded Ceramics book.)
Anyway, John looked at it for a couple of days, tried it out,
and the next day he showed up with the finished bumper jack
extruder. Said it took him one hour to make.
He was a great teacher. By the time I finished school, I had an
extruder, a wheel, a pug mill, and a hand truck, all built with
junk yard parts in the school welding shop.
I thought the bumper jack design was so great I wrote and
photographed the plans for an article in Ceramics Monthly in
September 1976, and they were reprinted in PMI in Winter 1999,
and in Daryl's Extruder Book in 2000 (the plans are all the same).
--
David Hendley
Maydelle, Texas
hendley@tyler.net
http://www.farmpots.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill and Sylvia Shirley
To:
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 12:27 PM
Subject: Bumper Jack Extruder - easy!
| I got a wonderful present yesterday. A clay friend's mother
| (Mary Kate Sullivan) built me a bumper jack extruder.
| OOOOOOH is it nice! I had given her a copy of Pottery
| Making Illustrated with plans for an extruder, and she
| modified them to suit what we had available. There was no
| welding involved! This consists of basically a 3-sided
| wooden box, pvc pipe, a plunger cut from scrap wood, a die
| cut from a piece of aluminum, and a bumper jack. I did
| supply the jack, just so you don't think I just sat around
| and let her do all the work. Later, we found our extruder
| was very similar to plans in The Extruder Book.
|
| This lady is amazing, and can build just about anything she
| can imagine. She's my hero! I sent her home with pictures
| of a slab roller, so I can't wait to see what she comes up
| with next.
|
| If anybody wants to see this extruder, I have drawn up plans
| showing the way she built it. If you have Microsoft Word, I
| can e-mail them to you.
|
| Big thanks to David Hendley and Daryl Baird. Who's big idea
| was it to use a bumper jack, anyway? Brilliant. The jack
| does all the work, and makes extruding incredibly easy. No
| muscles required.
|
| My advice is, if you have any interest in extruding, this is
| the way to get started. If you don't have any interest in
| extruding, build it anyway, and you soon will. (You might
| as well go ahead and buy Daryl Baird's book, cause it's a
| "must have"!)
|
| Sylvia Shirley
| Pittsburg, Kansas
|
Jennifer Assinck on sat 3 feb 01
Dear Sylvia:
Thank you for your very generous offer to share your plans for an extruder. Please
e-mail me the plans.
In exchange, I am passing along to you an idea for how to make a smaller extruder,
say for mug handles. I do not have one myself, yet, but I have seen a fellow
potter use one.
Take a used cauking tube and fill with clay. Make a die for the opening and
operate the caulking gun as usual. You can extrude a number of mug handles and
keep them moist in a plastic box (Tupperware, etc.) until you need them.
Jennifer Assinck
jassinck@interlog.com
Bill and Sylvia Shirley wrote:
> I got a wonderful present yesterday. A clay friend's mother
> (Mary Kate Sullivan) built me a bumper jack extruder.
> OOOOOOH is it nice!
| |
|
