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Rejoice With Me For I Have A New Extruder!


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it is exactly what i have wanted for more than 25 years!   cannot wait to get it installed.  it is a scott creek, the round kind that is so easy to clean compared to the square ones.........................now i just need a copy of The Extruder Book by Daryl E Baird.  not in my library or the one in the next county or ......................  they are checking for one in any library in the state of wv now.    

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Congratulations, I haven't wanted one quite as long as you, but it has been several years. I got mine this year second hand. Mine is an Axner Avalanche which came with a dozen dies and a die holder for hollow extrusions. I love making and altering tubes into fun animal figures for raku.

 

Enjoy discovering all it has to offer.

 

John

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CONGRATULATIONS! You are going to love it, it's sounds like the same one I have. Yay now we can compare extruder notes lol.

I'm so happy for you. I have a book called Extruded Ceramics; I'll have to see if I can find a copy of The Extruder Book you mentioned.

 

Terry

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thanks all, Love the dogs!  who is the cartoonist who does dogs like that?  my dog has a few more black spots and draggy ears.  ah....far side.

 

cant wait to get it installed.  got to find the right spot, any suggestions from someone who has one?

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I dithered on about placement for weeks. One book said place it high so you can see up inside from the bottom another book said place low so you can see down inside from the top. One said place it so you can reach the handle when it's at it's highest setting to pull down and not have to climb up a ladder to reach it. Another said place high so you have loads of room to extrude long lengths of clay. Basically 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. So I went smack in the middle I'm 5 and a half feet tall ceiling is 9 feet high so went around 4 feet and I can see down from the top if I tip toe and up through the bottom if I duck I can reach the handle at all heights and have room for a 4 foot or so long extrusion using a board to hold and feed the extrusion out from the machine after it got a couple feet long.

 

DO place it on a beam. In fact I screwed a 2x6 to my wall beams with lag screws and then attached the extruder to the 2x6. Doing that sets it out from the wall just a bit and (again) according to the books helps if you ever want to add an expansion box to it.

 

I LOVE my extruder and was able to extrude 18 hollow test tubes on my first try. Even with adding the grooves and sprigs to each one like I do for testing glaze reactions to texture it only took me an hour to do all 18 including cleaning them up a bit before letting them dry. I read in the books that doing hollow extrusions is the hardest but I had no trouble getting good results my first try out its a really easy system to use. Cleaning the extruder was easy too just reached in and wiped out the aluminum tube with a sponge and rinsed off the plates in the sink.

 

Next I want to try the biggest hollow plate and see if I can make some round boxes. I also want to try using it to make coils but not sure if I have any plates with small enough holes for doing decent coils though I do have a couple blank plates just not sure how to go about drilling through steel.

 

Gee I'm so excited you got an extruder!

 

Terry

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thank you, all.  placement is the big thing now, with all that is already in my studio, fitting it in will be the hard part.  the really solid wall covered in 3/4 inch plywood was originally the brick back wall of the house.  it  is taken up with glaze ingredient storage tubs.  

 

it came with the hollow dies.  i will be able to make a variety of shapes for solid dies from the dollar store plastic cutting boards thanks, minspargal, or the 1/4 inch thick pieces of plastic i already have. 

 

pug, you can drill holes in the corners (round corners) to make coils.  after trying some square extruders in other places and struggling to pull the handle down,  i was told that having an extra hole allows the clay to go through the main hole  more easily.  a relief valve sort of effect.  (or maybe one of chris' outrageous untruths.)  the right size "relief hole" becomes your coil.  talk to marcia about coils from extrusions.

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Congrats, I also love my Scott creek.

I am interested in using the old cutting boards for making more dies. I have collected several but have not gotten around to trying it. Is there any secret to not having them melt while drilling? or is just going slow good enough?

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anyone else with die making suggestions?  i have a butterdish made by LuAnne Cory in 1993 when she lived in Va.  it is beautiful and has a bottom that is grooved with a flat top and slight edges.  once it was flattened in the middle, she treated the ends like a pulled handle, thinning and flattening a ribbon of clay that is curled up into a handle at each end.  graceful elegance.   i wish she had not moved away.

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anyone else with die making suggestions?  i have a butterdish made by LuAnne Cory in 1993 when she lived in Va.  it is beautiful and has a bottom that is grooved with a flat top and slight edges.  once it was flattened in the middle, she treated the ends like a pulled handle, thinning and flattening a ribbon of clay that is curled up into a handle at each end.  graceful elegance.   i wish she had not moved away.

If you are doing some glaze testing, you can make an "L-Shaped" die, to make standing test tiles.  When I was in college, some of the students in a glaze calc. class figured this out.  Prior to the die, they had to spend time throwing small vessels, and cutting them into sections, to achieve the same effect. 

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Rather than mounting my extruder to a wall or post, I mounted it to a 2 x 6 pine board cut to a length that works in my basement studio overhead.  I have two Harbor Freight ratchet bar clamp/spreaders that I use to temporarily attach the mounting board to my workbench.  After use the extruder and board can be stored elsewhere.  This allows the option of extruding anywhere the board can be clamped as well.

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-inch-ratchet-bar-clamp-spreader-46807.html

 

I was concerned that the pressure from extruding might tend to loosen the clamp, bend the board, or otherwise make the temporary clamping unstable, but it has worked very well with no issues.  I mounted the barrel at a height such that I can look into it on tip toes (I am right at 6 feet in height), which has been a good height for extruding a long tube, while still being able to inspect and clean the barrel.  I use a Scotch brand combo sponge/scrubby that just fits into the 4-inch nominal barrel to clean the clay out.  I reach up into the barrel from below and inspect my cleaning from above, which works well.  The only issue I have is that I have to make sure to line the handle up in between floor joists when the barrel is full to allow a full pull on the handle.

 

John

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Rather than mounting my extruder to a wall or post, I mounted it to a 2 x 6 pine board cut to a length that works in my basement studio overhead.  I have two Harbor Freight ratchet bar clamp/spreaders that I use to temporarily attach the mounting board to my workbench.  After use the extruder and board can be stored elsewhere.  This allows the option of extruding anywhere the board can be clamped as well.

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-inch-ratchet-bar-clamp-spreader-46807.html

 

I was concerned that the pressure from extruding might tend to loosen the clamp, bend the board, or otherwise make the temporary clamping unstable, but it has worked very well with no issues.  I mounted the barrel at a height such that I can look into it on tip toes (I am right at 6 feet in height), which has been a good height for extruding a long tube, while still being able to inspect and clean the barrel.  I use a Scotch brand combo sponge/scrubby that just fits into the 4-inch nominal barrel to clean the clay out.  I reach up into the barrel from below and inspect my cleaning from above, which works well.  The only issue I have is that I have to make sure to line the handle up in between floor joists when the barrel is full to allow a full pull on the handle.

 

John

Wow, that's a really clever solution.  I've been wanting to get an extruder for my classroom, but wallspace is almost non-existent.  I was going to have the Industrial Tech guys weld up some kind of metal frame, that I could bolt to a table, but this is a nice alternate solution, especially if I don't want to leave it out all the time.

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Congratulations! Youre going to love it. Only thing I would do different? Placement..Right OUTSIDE the door of my studio mounted on a 4x4 post sunk into concrete (in a tire, in case it ever has to be moved). Hate the mess...

Try having a classroom extruder, and getting the students, to clean up the mess......  Oddly enough, they were pretty good about cleaning out the extruder and respective pieces, but always skimped on the area directly underneath the extruder.

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