Rae Reich

So much care and thought has come from long experience and patience. Porthos are sculptures to be proud of and that mane is really impressive! Thanks for sharing more details. 

Do you have photos of the Akita or the mold by chance?  I don't do the ball and socket thing but nice idea.  If I want to move a leg around I'm just going to resculpt it (and possibly make a mold of the leg to cast it for reuse later) and then sculpt the new attachment as needed as well.  I've already sculpted and molded some alternate pieces for another neck and leg, and I'm going to do an alternate body that's not so bent so I can do the head and neck in other positions.  Just for fun variations!  I get bored easily so it is very tedious for me to do the same thing over and over again...

Noted.  And sometimes I use IPA - depends which one is handier.  I've never had an issue with either one since I literally only use a drop or so in my water spray bottle of the bleach.  The generic bleach I buy only lists one ingredient and nothing added for scent.  (I also incidentally use it for phytosanitary applications like tissue culture of plant materials.)
Yes!  This method of cutting up the piece is typical for casting porcelain and bone china in the UK and Europe.  Indeed it was a few photos shared here with me from another member (who may or may not wish to be named) that helped me figure out this problem.  I also worked with porcelain sometimes and I've been working on perfecting and testing English bone china slip I've made here in my studio.  So I went ahead and produced this multi-part mold for that purpose.  It works just as well for earthenware. 
As I knock some rust off I'll be pushing to try and make more complex molds that would allow me to cast Porthos as whole and as close to one piece as possible.  Body with three legs attached most likely, with the head and neck separate and that cocked back leg.  That would take less assembly and thus less time.  And problem solving with mold making is an excellent challenge to practice if you want to get better anyway.
One of my new sculptures I have started is the 'Spider foal' that is rolling.   I'm jokingly calling it my 'spider' sculpture for now because it looks hideous!  But it's in the early 'skeleton' stage where I flesh out the proportions of the bones and set the joints as points of reference from which I will build up tendons, muscle, skin, etc over top.  Anyway, you can see that I do not like to sculpt with molding limitations in mind.  So being able to mold them in pieces and assemble ANY kind of pose or complex arrangement really frees me up to do anything I want.  

Thank you!  Speaking of Fabio tails... With a really complex tail such as my hairy Pasture Porthos sports I may well need to cut the tail into at least two pieces and have quite a few mold pieces /and/ still have to flood, then redetail, some of the undercuts.  Oh well!  This boy will be my most challenging piece to mold to date (this is a 3D print that is mirrored to face the other direction and a different size).  For now I am cheating.  I sent this boy and his larger version off to England to be molded and cast in bone china bisque for me.  But I will be playing with cutting one up here in studio and trying to mold that tail myself just for the challenge.  BUT at least I know he'll be in production in time for Breyerfest in July even if it takes me a while to mold and cast this version on my side of the pond.
For scale I can do pretty much anything I want within the limits of my 3D printers and the quality of my scans.  Or in the case of the spider foal - larger than 'traditional' scale because I'm doing that one BIGGER than usual.  But 'traditional' scale is what most equine bronzes are normally produced in - 1/9th scale to the real horse.  Larger than traditional is usually about 1/6th scale.  Classic is about 1/12th, etc on down or on up!  Some of these scales are used so often for equine art that they have names (though often more than one name for any given size).  Porthos is considered 1/9th scale, which usually is about 7 inches tall.  But as he's a draft horse who's taller and larger his scaling down to 1/9th came to 8 inches tall.  Of course he'll shrink a bit in each ceramic media, that's just his resin size.    If you do internet searches you can find various 'model scales' or 'model horse scales' to compare.
'Venti' scale Pasture Porthos is a little smaller than 'classic' scale at 1/15th is shown with the larger roto cast white resin that is 1/9th 'traditional' scale.  Then micros are about 1/40th scale (around 1.5" tall).  Curio falls in around 1/20th scale for comparison (not pictured here).

I also posted this photo of first version 1/9th traditional scale Porthos with the docked tail.  This is a roto cast hollow white resin I have cut up for mold making.  I'm in the process of using colored oil clays to 'clay up' for pouring those molds in plaster.  Once the molds are poured, I test them to make a single casting like the curio bisque at the top of this thread.  This allows me to see where the mold is skimming or tearing clay off as I demold so I can trim those edges clean.  Tiny undercuts can be skimmed off the plaster mold pieces easily.  If there are air bubbles, I fill them with plaster paste or epoxy.  If there are details that are too soft, I can go back in and recut them much more sharply in my plaster master mold.
Then, rather than continue to use that first mold, I seal it with mold soap and then pour a silicone rubber mold of each plaster piece.  This will then allow me to cast as many plaster production molds as I want!  As the mold detail wears very rapidly (especially if I am casting porcelains) then I may need to be able to reproduce the mold several times over to keep every piece of my edition super crisp.
As usual, this probably belongs in the mold making and slip casting thread...

If you look in the Community Marketplace someone posted looking for a used slab roller. (In Boulder no less.) 

Absolutely beautiful, @Hyn Patty!! I really appreciate the look behind the scenes into the mystery of assembling that challenging pose. Thank you for sharing and inspiring.
(giggle) Fabio tail!
How do you scale your creations?

Very minor point.
Domestic bleaches often contain a variety of substances in addition to sodium hypochlorite (generally known as bleach).  While baby products for sterilising nappies, bottles, etc tend to just contain sodium hypochlorite. UK brands include  Milton, which I use for purely sterilising purposes.

I find it best to thin the underglaze to a heavy cream consistency. (or slightly thinner)
When I open most underglaze jars they have a pudding like consistency. Even though the mixture is incredibly smooth I find it goes on incredibly thick. (Hence brush marks.)
As well, I apply coats 5-10 minutes apart. (That way the surface is still slightly damp.) If I wait until the previous coat is completely dry I find it hard to prevent brush marks.
 

Years ago I found a book about Belleek porcelain. (I had never heard of the company before finding the book. Apparently, it's an old Irish pottery.)
In the book they showed beautiful porcelain figurines. To allow for variety each appendage, arms and legs, were made with a ball end. The ball end fit into a socket on the main torso form. That way the arms and legs could be arranged in different ways. A huge pain to mold but I did this for the Akita mold. Each leg had a ball like end that fit into sockets on the main torso. As the piece was small there wasn't much room, to move each appendage, but it did allow the artist to play with it as he saw fit. 
 
 

Yes!  I've gone off and on to Breyerfest since the mid 90's and that is indeed the event I am attending this year in July.  So I want to have a few of these in both sizes and both main versions produced in time to take with me.  I'm also flying out to California to judge a show of equine art and of course want to take some there too.   I also do a number of fine art shows once in a long while but shipping can be VERY costly and I have moved away from paying gallery and show commissions on my sales.  I get plenty of people willing to fight over the pieces I post to public auctions online.
Thank you both for your kind words.  I would love to see your dog pieces, Denise!  I used to sculpt a few dogs as well so if I ever have time I plan to get back to doing that once in a while in between equine pieces.
You are right Jeff that molding a piece like Porthos /can/ be crazy - if I was determined to cast him entirely in one piece, whole.  The issue of his sharply turned head and neck, and the close proximity of his back cocked leg that actually crosses over partly in front of his other back leg, would be ... very challenging to say the least.   So I cut up my 'master' I was molding and I actually cast Porthos in a few pieces.  With practice, assembly and clean up of such a sculpture goes pretty quickly.  I can demold the pieces into a wet box, allow them to firm up a bit, then do the old score and slip-stick routine.  Since I'm the sculptor it is no trouble whatsoever for me then to clean up and redetail those areas I had to attach.  That way it's actually not that difficult to mold such a sculpture as long as you don't mind some assembly.  I can easily put a piece like this together and do all the initial clean up and resculpting in about an hour or less.  Then back into the wet box for slow drying to prevent cracking as he has some uneven thickness in some areas.
To facilitate easier molding I can also flood some minor undercuts such as the tail bow, and simply go back and hand detail those pieces again after casting and assembly.  It does mean I spend a lot of time with post casting but on the other hand I get thousands of dollars per piece once completed so it's well worth my time to make them the highest possible quality I can. 

I am so happy that you are able to spend so much time in your studio.   I hope you are able to get some big bucks for your works of art.  It is always nice to know that someone appreciates your work and are willing to pay for it.  I think I will make a sculpture of my dog when I finish making some repair tiles for a mural.  He is a Chiweenie  so he is on the small size,  I could fit a life size sculpture of him in the kiln.  My last dog would go crazy when I was working on a portraiture sculpture.  I'd better start taking some photos,  he looks like the dog in the old RCA ads.   I think I will try that pose.   Denice

Now, to give you a sense of what 'curio' scale means here is the same bisque shown in my hand.  Here I have airbrushed on underglaze in greys and black and I am now dappling him.  Once fired with a clear glaze over this underglaze, he will be a dappled grey!  This is a sales piece that I will be offering at auction probably next weekend while I'm at a live show event.  But for now there's a lot of work to do to him to get him ready to be the new sample of my sculpture in ceramic!  I'll post more photos as I go so you all can see the finished boy when he's done.  I work in many layers, fire a number of times, and will also work in over glazes.  The upright mane ribbons will be added later after he's completed and are going to be enameled metal but I haven't finished making them yet.  They each fit down into little  holes I have drilled down his neck.
I am also making mold pieces for a larger 'traditional' scale version of this boy that stands about 8 inches tall.  I hope to have that one casting by June in time for a huge international event I'm attending in July at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY.

This is Porths, my first version of this sculpture I started way back about 2007, almost completed in 2009 before illness derailed my studio for a while.  At any rate, I FINALLY finished this boy last year and released him in a resin edition.  I've since gone on to do a 'hairy' Pasture Porthos who's a bit chunkier, and with more feather, thicker legs, long mane and swishy Fabio tail who's casting in a resin edition this year.
Anyway, I've been busting butt to make MOLDS for these two versions of my Porthos sculpture.  Currently I am having the hairy Pasture Porthos molded and cast in England in fine bone china, though I'm also about to start testing slip and settlers for fine bone china pieces here in my studio later this year.  Meanwhile I'm focusing first on using finely ball milled earthenware with talc to cast some pieces.  This first one I've molded right here in studio is what we call Curio scale, a large mini in size.  He's my test cast to see if my mold worked (it did first try!) and to help me figure out how I want to rework and clean up my mold pieces to work even better.  Then I'll be making rubber molds starting next week of each plaster mold piece so I'll have a master from which to cast as many plaster replacement molds as I ever will want, later.
So here's my first ceramic bisque of Porthos with his original docked tail version (mane flights to be added later), an American Percheron with tail bows.

I recently sold some Brent parts in the classified here. It was a complete motor controller foot pedal setup. It just needed the wheel frame and wheelhead and large pulley .(This sold with days o posting.)
I also listed it on a few of the ceramic sales sites on facebook for national coverage.
Long story short is a fellow full timer had been lugging a Early Brent frame around for decades with everything on it but what I was selling.
I shipped it to him in the SF Bay Area and within days it looked like this and is again a fuctional wheel.
This is the same very early 1969-1972 flat top formica Brent wheel that I to own-Mine looks justslike this one except the formica is a bit more worn from use. Its got a 14 inch wheelhead
These wheels do not have the flange that holds the splash pan down. ( I put an new wheelhead with flange on mine two or three decades ago) but this one is still orginal.
These wheels are built with thicker metal parts (the deck) and ground flat with grinders to the formican situation s flat and are a bit heavier than the modern ones from the mid 70s on except for the CXCs which for some  early years was also made with theis extra steel (my 1982 CXC is really heavy.
Just seeing this wheel takes me back as a kid to 1970 when I went to a converted 3 bedroom house in Santa Monica to buy my wheel from Robert Brent.. The garage was full of guys weilding stands and grinding them flat  outside..
Robert Brent had a small bedroom as an office and did my paperwork-in one converted bedroom was a room full of motors and the other rooms had the electronics and an assembly bedroom. No one lived in this house as it was all manufacturing.. From there they moved North to Healdsburg Ca. in Sonmoa County. Since I moved north myself to Humboldt county in 71 I used to stop all the time at that facility to buy clay as they expanded to clay making as I drove north and south  many times every year.. They fixed my wheel for free or low coast as well. I have some great stories as well about that place but they are or another time. When Brent sold out to Amaco some of the folks moved with them and I knew them for decades until they retired. Those folks sent me a  replacement motor or example to test out for free (still using it) as they where trying it out and needed it tested . They did not use it on any production wheels it turns out. Its now a new day and all the old timers are gone.I miss those folks and how they ran a great business and took care of customers like me.
 

A small wide plastic container on the wheel deck for throwing (just need a few ounces of water there), and a five gallon bucket full next to me. 

Most buyers of used studio equipment are hobby potters, and people looking for a used slab roller are looking for a deal. Unfortunately Brents are not one of the more desirable models due to the way you have to add or remove boards to adjust the thickness of the slab. It's also a very long, which can be difficult to fit in a lot of home studios, and the cable system is not fun to replace when they wear out. There are good new slab rollers with infinite dial adjustments and a smaller footprint like Shimpo or Northstar that sell for $1000-1500, so I think that realistically you need to come in under that.

Do you apply the paperclay before or after you've assembled the nest?
 I seem to remember people coating wire mesh with paperclay by repeatedly dipping & drying.
http://antjhfoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/paper-clay-and-wire-mesh.html
... and organics such as cloth
https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/pottery-making-illustrated/pottery-making-illustrated-article/Impressions-Imprints-and-Dipping#
Googling making nests (again with the images option) shows the appearance of nests made from various substances -- including twigs, straw and coir. I wonder if something less substantial than twigs would burn-out better after coating with paperclay.
PS Birds get revenge by using anti-bird spikes in nests
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66163943
Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra says the birds seem to be using the spikes as humans intended them - to keep pests away

These images look great! And prove that it can be done. I've just put about 15 individual sticks in the kiln. Will post images when they come out. 

Try a google for paperclay nest, then click on the images option. It may at least give an idea of the state-of-the-art.
Hits include
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdeniserouleau.com%2Fworkshops%2Fadventuresinpaperclay&psig=AOvVaw24dMc2zyf9RW6-ztQqTML1&ust=1711619956846000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=2ahUKEwj2n7Wtl5SFAxUqVKQEHdaCBYoQr4kDegQIARBi

 
https://judithrosenthal.com/section/125628-Sticks and Stones.html

 
https://judithrosenthal.com/section/125628-Sticks and Stones.html

Reflecting on Alex's questions, again, how does one assess dust generation?
Given that one is mopping the floor and wiping down work surfaces daily, and wiping storage and secondary work surfaces regularly, and opening the area to air movement only after cleaning - to minimize dust blowing around - how to gauge, how to quantify the dust situation?
How much dust accumulates on horizontal surfaces in the area? How quickly?
How does the dust compare to other areas? Typically, one's dressing area, and where shoes and socks go on and off gather dust quickly.
Depending on cooking preferences/methods, kitchens can get dusty quickly as well.
Monitoring and comparison may help with sharing workspace, particularly if the evidence indicates that clay dust is well controlled, as in look, the Studio is less dusty that the closet!
When I'm keeping up, most of the Studio's dust comes from having the rollup door open and what the cars bring in.
When I'm lax, the wedging station and the floor are main culprits.

Hi Alex,
Welcome to the Forum!
Good questions.
Moisture:
Water is driven off (as vapor/steam) during the firing process, true, however, the majority of the wet clay's water is lost via evaporation whilst waiting on the kiln.
In addition to drying raw ware in the Studio, add evaporation from clay trimmings; open throwing, cleanup, mopping buckets; just glazed wares; damp - just cleaned - surfaces; any other open containers of wet stuff.
Fumes:
Several gasses (besides water vapor) are produced when clays and glazes are fired.
Kiln fumes (digitalfire.com)
The typical powered kiln vent (that pulls a stream of superheated kiln atmosphere from a small hole in the bottom of the kiln and expels it outside via a duct) gets most, but not all the fumes. With provision for adequate make-up air*, a kiln vent may be adequate.
Better, imo, would be to open up doors and windows whilst firing and run a powered kiln vent.
Even better, a powered kiln vent and an overhead hood with a powerful fan**.
Dust:
Working with clay, some dust will be generated, however, dust can be minimized via consistent housekeeping and "low dust" practices.
Number one culprit, typically, is dry clay on the floor.
Next might be the wedging station.
A wet mop for floors and a bucket and sponge for work surfaces can make a big difference.
There are several archived threads on fumes and dust here!
*air coming in to replace what is being pushed out by the fan.
**an overhead system can help with accumulated heat - firing a kiln indoors will heat the space, a lot!

Hi Alice,
Welcome to the Forum!
Please post an image of the wheel's nameplate (if any, particularly the model number), and images depicting the parts in question?
Is it this one?
cowley_wheel_manual.pdf (bathpotters.co.uk)
Glancing over that ^ manual...
...the bearings specified for the wheel shaft and pulley assembly, 6203 and 6201 (respectively) are fairly common.
My bikes definitely use the same bearings, also with the double seal, "2RS"
Typically the are press fit, which takes some careful doing.
  Removing the old ones, important that they come out straight, for if they take a slant, they bind up.
  Installing the new ones, also important that they go in straight, and, force applied to the outer race edge only.
  There are tools for pressing in/out bearings.
  Getting help from someone familiar and with the tools may a good choice?
Removing the wheel head, "To remove the wheelhead lift upwards..."
Likely it's stuck? Perhaps start with some Liquid Wrench, PB Blaster or somewhat similar...

I like using a small shallow bowl and have a 5 gal bucket near by to wipe scraped clay into.  I was also taught to throw dry and like to use a thin slurry starting with warm water.    Denice

I like a broad shallow bowl with room for wetting, scraping both hands at once and for pulling handles over. I throw pretty dry, using slip/slurry and a chamois. Big water bucket for more washing and rinsing of tools.
I just recently got one of those paint buckets with a handle, for painting, and then saw them being used by potters. Too narrow for me!