L HOBBS on wed 20 feb 02
Hi folks,
I'm promising myself, I'm writing this email, and then I'm unplugging the
computer and having my kid hide the power cable. I have GOT to go take care
of some errands.
Anyhoo, I've received a lot of very supportive and helpful info about my
centering problem. One thing that keeps coming up is my feet. It's hard to
explain, so here's a pic of a Thomas Stewart kick wheel:
http://www.thomasstuart.com/kwheel.htm
From that you can see, once you raise that seat high enough to level your,
um, groin area with the wheel, well for me at least, my feet are on tippy
toe on those steel bars just above the fly wheel. So, I find myself
actually standing on the bars, while pulling up a cylinder, to get up over
the clay. But it's a good wheel and popular, and I like the thing. But I
have no place for my feet as far as leverage. So, it really has to come
from my hips, which is what the general off-list and on-list consensus has
been: use the body weight God gave you! So I shall!
Okay, I'm walking away from the computer now! LoL! Hugs and thanks again !
Lindi
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Dave Gayman on wed 20 feb 02
Point one, the Thomas wheel reminds me, painfully, of my Soldner kick
wheel, which I gave to a school when I quit pottery the first
time. [/nostalgia ON] What a beautiful wheel to work on. I spent the
better part of five years on that wheel... if I'd only had spare,
post-pottery room for a big piece of steel and concrete that weighed
several hundred pounds... it could fit through a normal doorway... you
moved it by tipping it forward and rolling in on its flywheel. [/nostalgia OFF]
Point two, and more to your needs, on the Soldner wheel, I could adjust the
height of not only the seat, but also the height of the foot-brace bars and
the flywheel. Paul's wheel had a massive axle, so moving the flywheel up
would cause no vibration or wobbling. In my case, since I'm tall, I had to
LOWER the bars and the flywheel. I also found a great piece of very dense
foam rubber that I put on the flat seat and covered it with some
soon-to-be-clay-colored cotton cloth, thus preventing bed sores on those
days that I threw 175 mugs...
I worry about the open space between the brace-bars and the flywheel on
your version. Paul's wheel used 2- or 3-inch wide angle-irons for
brace-bars, and these rode very close to the flywheel, 1/8" inch or less,
preventing any possibility of pinching toes or ankles between the flywheel
and the brace-bars. I can't remember how it was arranged so that you
couldn't accidentally stuff your foot between the flywheel and the brace if
you tucked your feet back. I think there was a curved steel piece that
hung from one brace bar to the other that prevented access to the rear,
side surface of the flywheel.
Dave
At 07:17 PM 2/20/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>
>
> From that you can see, once you raise that seat high enough to level your,
>um, groin area with the wheel, well for me at least, my feet are on tippy
>toe on those steel bars just above the fly wheel.
L HOBBS on wed 20 feb 02
You know what?? In the midst of all this discussion, I was looking at the
Thomas Stuart website, and I noticed it says, "fully adjustable seat and
foot rests." So I went downstairs to look at my wheel, and whadya know?
the foot rest isn't bolted through the rails. It's bolted around the rails
with these whatzits grippy things! I never would have noticed if I hadn't
joined this list and gotten to thinking about it. So there we go. I'll
still have issues in class, but at least here I can set up the wheel a
little better. Thanks folks for your indulgence, and my apologies for being
such a newbie! Hugs ~ Lindi
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