Sunday, April 3, 2011

This is for you puggers

Several bloggers have posted about their pug mills and I'm sure a lot of you have them. I have never had access to one, although they look pretty cool. Here's how I do it. I have pretty toned biceps thanks to this process :) When I have scrap clay, I toss in in the white bucket up on the table, it's filled with a little water. When I get around to it, I spread out the clay on the several slabs of plaster I have. Wedge it up, put it in plastic bags and I'm good to go. I kind of like this old school way of doing it, keeps me strong and it's one less piece of equipment I have to clean or worry about breaking. The red bucket is my sink haha! I store my clay under the table on pieces of the palate my kiln came on.
Reuse at it's best. The Artscenter in Carrboro was throwing away this table. I would say a lot of the paint on this table is from summer camp classes I taught and I love this table, lots of good memories. The shelf was tossed out in the trash behind the Cat's Cradle the night after Wesley played there. We were back in the alley checking out graffiti that Wes was photographing for her senior project and I found this. It's really cool, lots of graffiti on it as well. there's also some gum on there that I need to scrape off, ick. So that's my high tech system. Thought this would be a nice change from the heavy duty blogger thinking that's been going on over at Carter's place. Good stuff though!
I am still loving the Luxury book I got, and it is changing the way I do some things. Maybe more on that later. Are you reading, Andy :)

6 comments:

cookingwithgas said...

you are the smartest!
You have many great tricks and are so willing to share.
Thanks for your kind words about Lee.
And yep those glass folks are some fun to be around.

Hollis Engley said...

That's my kind of pug mill. I've never felt I had the money to buy one, let alone anywhere to put it.

Unknown said...

I am also a reuse and wedge up old clay. My recycled clay is the BEST for throwing platters and plates~ it just wants to spread out!

I do not use plaster though. I just let all my clay sit on a big piece of plywood and cover it with layers of old sheets and towels so it drys slowly. About every six weeks I wedge it all up. Lots of old plastic cat litter containers hold my dried clay and old water. And, like you, my "sink" is a pail of water!

Here's to good biceps :)

Linda Starr said...

My pug mill is a baggie, I put all the scraps in there to keep them fresh and use it up as I go for bottoms of vases, covers, small plates, bowls or sprigs. I pull a little out of the baggie and wedge it in my hands with a little moisture and away I go.

Lori Buff said...

This is the same thing I do, it's not as easy as a pug mill (I guess) but a lot less expensive. I call my reclaim "Lori's Buff."

Michèle Hastings said...

i have a very old bluebird pugmill - it isn't de-airing so i still have to do some wedging. the down side is it is big and takes up a lot of space. someday we hope to have a de-airing pugmill, but for now the old one is just fine.
i had no running water in my NH studio so i collected rain water from the roof. jz had made a rain barrel with a spigot. we screened all the water before use and added a very small amount of bleach to kill the germs.
no i have a sink and it seems luxurious :-)