Here’s a side project that I recently finished. Let me introduce you to the Trimming Shield!
The “SuperChuck” beta testing complete
It works! In my last post I described how I made a version of the SuperChuck. A couple days ago I got to try it for the first time. I threw a nice vase form and it turned out to be the perfect candidate to trim in the chuck. The black shelf liner material I used provided enough grip and I trimmed the bottom of the vase in no time. You can see an “in progress” shot and then a picture of the finished pot next to the chuck.
I only wish that I would have made the chuck a little taller because the other vase/bottle that I threw had a neck that was a little long for the chuck. I got around it by wadding up some of the extra shelf liner to make the chuck thinner in the middle so the shoulder of the pot would have a place to rest.
- Using the super chuck
- The finished pot with chuck
The SuperChuck (for trimming pots)
A while ago I got an email from one of the ceramics newsletters that I’ve subscribed to and it had a video of the “Superchuck”. In a nutshell, the device is attached to the wheel and used to trim the bottom of vessels with narrow openings or delicate rims (which would prevent them from setting upside down on the wheel). It looked pretty convenient and not terribly hard to make so I decided to give it a try. That was a few months ago…. I would like to think that the slow process was more about taking my time and getting it just right but that wasn’t the case at all. The process could have been shortened quite drastically but work and graduate classes and track season got in the way a bit.
I threw the main form a few months ago and maybe a month ago I glued that to a spare bat with Liquid Nails. Then a few weeks ago I started testing some material to glue to the chuck to prevent the pots from slipping as they rotate. The video suggests neoprene but I would have had to order it online and I didn’t want to invest too much in case I never use this thing more than once. I finally decided to try “Shelf Liner” material. Yeah, the stuff you line shelves with… It was pretty cheap and it seemed to have the attributes that I was looking for. I measured it out and cut it and then glued it to the chuck with Krazy glue. It seems to be on there pretty tight. And the material seems to offer pretty good grip. As soon as I throw something decent, I’ll trim it with this “Superchuck” and see if mine works as well as the one in the video. I’ll even try to remember to post my results here.
- The superchuck (pot trimming device)
- My version of the Superchuck