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