Posting about Posts

So last week I learned how we make Hydro-Bats and this week I went on another learning adventure! This week I spent some time with Duc, the man in charge of our post production. Oh, didn't I tell you? We make a lot of products at The Ceramic Shop and one of the things we make is posts for furniture kits. Duc is a BFA student at Tyler School of Art, and like a lot of the employees at The Ceramic Shop is studying ceramics. He has been working at The Ceramic Shop for about 3 months but he already has making posts down to an art (no puns intended).

Our selection of posts

We use a custom mix of clay to make the posts. This clay helps make the posts durable even after many firings. Duc portions the clay and extrudes it with a pug mill. The most difficult part of making posts is to make sure they dry without warping. If there is one thing anyone who has played with clay experiences it is that clay tends to warp while it drys. Duc takes extra care to keep the posts as straight as possible. He flips them multiple times so that all sides receive exposure to the air. It takes almost an entire week for the post to fully dry!

Extruded posts that are slowly drying.

The posts are fired in a single firing. When then are cool, Duc uses a wet saw to cut them precisely to the right size. We make 11 different sizes reaching up to 10” in height. This allows you to utilize your entire kiln, right down to the half inch (we make half inch posts).

Well, it's been another fun week at The Ceramic Shop. Hope you guys have been productive!  If you'd like to check out our posts please visit our website.

Pieces of left over posts after they're cut with a wet saw.

An Afternoon with Hydro-Bats

I spent the afternoon with Tracy, where I learned about her process in making the Hydro-Bats.  I knew already that Mark invented the Hydro-Bat while he was still teaching at University of Pennsylvania.  Most of the history of the Hydro-Bats can be found on our website if you are interested in reading about it.  Tracy has been making the Hydro-Bats for about 7 months now, so she's very skilled in the process.

Piles of Hydro-Stone

Mark used to make the Hydro-Bats himself, but today I was learning how they are made in the present.  First, Tracy mixes the Hydro-Stone with water.  She mixes 60 lbs of Hydro-Stone at one time!  Don't worry, the mixing is not done by hand!  Tracy uses an electric mixer to get the job done.  This allows the Hydro-Stone to mix properly and to its fullest potential. 

Then she pours the Hydro-Stone into the various molds we have.  It's a lot like pouring plaster, and in fact Hydro-Stone is very similar to plaster.  The difference?  Hydro-Stone is stronger than ordinary plaster which gives our finished product a longer life.  People as us all the time what types of tools can be used with Hydro-Stone.  Although stronger than ordinary plaster, we still recommend you use wood, rubber or plastic tools on Hydro-Bats.  It will help procure a longer life and a more even working surface.

  After the Hydro-Stone is mostly set she takes them out of the mold and trims them up to look pretty.  The tops of the Hydro-Bats are so smooth that it's hard to not touch them.  They are finally set out to finish the drying and hardening process.  Then they are shipped off to our suppliers or put in our store. 

Trimmed and ready to go!

I really enjoy working in a place that still makes some of it's products and learning about how Hydro-Bats are made was fun.

Drying Hydro-Bats

Conventional Recovery

How is everyone holding up? Did NCECA wear you down? We are still recovering from all the excitement ourselves. It was a lot of fun to see all of our suppliers and a lot of you in person! What was your favorite thing to do at NCECA? We spent a lot of time behind our own booth but managed to sneak away to watch some demonstrations and photograph some pieces.

NCECA has many different programs and I hope you all took advantage of all you could. One amazing goal of NCECA is show off a lot of artists from all ages and levels. They have various competitions including an Emerging Artist program for undergraduate or freshly graduated college students, a general ceramic artists competition, a K-12 exhibit, and  much more. We managed to get some photographs from the K-12 exhibit:

We were really excited to see some of the new tools coming in the following months from Mudtools and X-tools. They are going to be awesome and will be put on our website as soon as they are available so make sure to check back with us!

Skutt also has some new mind-boggling kiln technology that they relieved to their NCECA onlookers. We will be getting this exciting new product in our store and on our website just as soon as Skutt will let us. For now, we will just have to wait.

Well, we have a lot of photos and videos we have to sift through and will be posting them slowly over the next month so make sure to check back for new highlights from NCECA 2012! You can also check out our Facebook. Like us and check out our albums!

-Melissa