QotW: Sit or Stand, and on what type of Surface/Furniture?

[Pres]

Hi folks, last week was pretty specific about floor covering to assist in alleviating pain, and trying to stay healthy. This got me to thinking of the discussions that involved working on the wheel, and even working in the shop on various projects. I am one of those that still sit to throw, using a chair designed for throwing (Speedball) yet, I have a stool in the studio that is of variable height that I use often when doing detail work at the wedging table, or when glazing or other sorts of table work. I especially like the stool when doing slab assembly and detailed incising in clay slabs. This stool is heavily padded with an easily cleanable surface and also has a foot ring for when the stool is set higher.

QotW: Sit or Stand, and on what type of Surface/Furniture?

best,

Pres

[Kelly in AK]

I throw sit-standing. The wheel is belly button height when I’m standing, slightly higher when I’m sitting. The stool is an ordinary stool with adjustable legs set high so I’m upright with legs extended, but weight rests on the seat. There’s a wedge shaped cushion, thick and comfy, tilting me toward the wheel (carved out of an old memory foam mattress). The thing I like about this posture is the ease going from sitting to standing. It’s a seamless enough transition I couldn’t say how much time is on my butt vs. me feet. I tried angling the stool by adjusting the legs and it didn’t feel good. The angled padding with a flat seat was better.  Everything else, so far, is done on my feet. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of hand building, if this continues I may explore some more seating options. I have two table heights, one for wedging and rolling slabs that’s around crotch height and another six or eight inches higher the banding wheels sit on. Once a piece is assembled I raise it closer to my face to do more finicky operations. 

 I was impressed long ago by John Glick’s article, https://studiopotter.org/sciatica-and-back-potters-journey, to consider throwing standing up. About the same time I read that I was researching North Carolina potters from the 19th century and noticed they threw standing. There were itinerant throwers who would go from place to place, throw the ware, then move on. Throwing was all they did. I figured if these guys wanted to stand while throwing five gallon crocks there may be something to it.

Revisiting Glick’s article makes me think more about that back support. My back is telling me it really looks helpful. 

[Mark C.]

I sit to throw in this -I have two of them

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/133208101456186331/

I trim on another wheel and use a rolling office chair with a good back support as well.

I have been thru lots of throwing chairs in my 50 plus years at the wheel. I have had this current set up for over 20 years now.My wheels are up a bit with Brent booties and my trim wheel is a model A which is low so Its on a wooden platfore to raise it up

[Min]

@Kelly in AK, John Glick's article is a good one, it's what got me started on standing up while throwing. When I made the switch to standing I had lower back pain but my main reason was pififormus syndrome from leaning against my throwing stool and the edge of it pressing into my rear end. Took a few years for the sciatic leg pain from the piriformus injury to go away but the lower back pain was gone long before that. I don't use a back support/post like in Glick's article, just stand up and brace my arms against myself while centering. 

[Denice]

Most of my life I had thrown on a kickwheel with a tractor seat,  when I bought my electric wheel I had to figure out seating.   I first tried an regular padded wooden stool with the front legs shortened.   I quickly figured out I need something that swiveled.   I was looking at the ajustable  potters stool when a near by Menards put some garage work stools on sale.  They  looked like the potters stools and about half the price and if I didn't like it my husband could use it in his garage.  I shortened the front legs and have been happy with it for many years.  I still miss my kick wheel  but I am  to old and cripple to kick anymore.    Denice

[Roberta12]

I throw sitting but I am going to have to make some adjustments.  It's my butt and hips that are complaining.  And probably the piriformis that @Min mentioned.  I throw a few pieces and then stand to move pots or something so I am not sitting for so long.  I have thrown like @Kelly in AK described, at some workshops but when I come home, I am back in a sitting position.  I priced the extension legs for a Brent and they are OUTRAGEOUS in $$.  I will find some cinderblocks and start there.  And then try to find the "perfect" chair or stool.   

Roberta

[Rae Reich]

The extension leg kit for my Brent C is really too tall for exactly the seated position I need for scoliosis, but I use it anyway. I have a padded stool (not swivel, that’s not stable enough for me) that’s the right seat height and I put boxes on each side for the foot pedal and a foot rest.

I need to keep my legs extended more than they are when seated at the shorter Brent, but about the same as when seated at the Lockerbie kickwheel (just used for slow work, now). I do sometimes stand to throw, too, depending on the piece. 

[Min]

1 hour ago, Roberta12 said:

I priced the extension legs for a Brent and they are OUTRAGEOUS in $$.  I will find some cinderblocks and start there.

If you do want to give standing while throwing a go a less expensive way to go than the Brent extension legs is to use legs from an old table. My mum's old sewing table had solid wood legs, I repurposed them to be my wheel extension legs. (I use a Bailey which has the pipe legs like the Brent) If you can find an old table with solid legs at a thrift store or wherever that fit inside the pipe legs then remove them from the table, figure out the height you want then drill a hole through both leg and wheel leg and bolt them together. Since my Bailey is like Brent wheels and there isn't room to sit the foot pedal next to the wheel and use a hand to control it we added a piece of redi-rod to the side of the foot pedal then screwed a knob on top.

 

[Chilly]

I don't throw, but stand when hand-building.  I use the highest table at the community centre, and often work on top of boxes to raise my work, and my benches in my greenhouse (studio) are high too.

I fidget, and am short in the body, and find sitting for most tasks is not comfortable.  I did evening classes working with glass - fusing, copper foiling, leading and was the only one in the class who stood for 3-4 hours.  

The only stuff I do sitting is textile based - spinning, sewing, knitting, although for spindle spinning it's easier to stand, same for weaving.

I think it's important to be at the right height, and comfortablewhatever you're doing.,

[grackle]

I learning to throw in college sitting down.  When I got my own wheel, and had a little back pain, I thought, hmmm, maybe i could do this standing up.  We had a sturdy little table built with 2 x 4's and 2" lumber on top, and we set the wheel up on it, and I never looked back.  I did experiment a bit with standing a bit higher, and ended up standing about 1.5" higher on some 2 x 12's stuck together side by side.

I have a different wheel now, a Pacifica, and I bought the leg extensions, so can change the height if needed,  I am okay standing most of the day at this point, but I do not throw pots all day and am moving around quite a bit doing other things as well.  

[Pyewackette]

I used to have a Shimpo stool but apparently it got lost in the last move.  They have Shimpo stools at the big studio where I go, and just folding chairs and wood stools at the city studio.  I think the Shimpo stools are stupidly over priced for what they are, the seats routinely split and expose the foam padding in nothing flat and they are stupidly difficult to adjust.  I have to take a chopstick to push the little buttons in - and then I can only do one side at a time, I have to get another chop stick and try to push them in from either side simultaneously, and as convoluted a contortion as that is, its the ONLY way I can do it at all.  $100 for what amounts to a bit of hollow metal with a thin padding on top ($70 on sale) is ridiculous.

So I got a mechanics stool that does not roll (or has locking wheels, I've forgotten which and its packed atm) from Costco for around $20 or $30 a few years back.  Then when I started working out of the city studio where they have NO chairs or stools really suited to throwing, I got a cheapy stool from the Dollar Tree for $5.  That's right - 5 smackaroonies.  It's lightweight, easy to schlep around, and if I ever leave it and it disappears I'm only out the 5 smackaroonies.

On 10/31/2023 at 12:04 PM, Min said:

@Kelly in AK, John Glick's article is a good one, it's what got me started on standing up while throwing. When I made the switch to standing I had lower back pain but my main reason was pififormus syndrome from leaning against my throwing stool and the edge of it pressing into my rear end. Took a few years for the sciatic leg pain from the piriformus injury to go away but the lower back pain was gone long before that. I don't use a back support/post like in Glick's article, just stand up and brace my arms against myself while centering. 

I had priformis syndrome this past summer - the irritation was initiated by sitting for hours on a cheapy "office chair" that had no padding worth the term in front of my computer last winter/spring (another thing that got left in the last move, all my good office chairs).  I didn't actually know what it was until I made the mistake of signing up for a class taught by a guy who thinks not telling his students what he's doing is somehow illustrative of something or other.  The particular exercise was, WITHOUT TELLING ANYBODY WHAT WAS GOING ON, to have the students play musical chairs and have to work on each other's lumps of clay.  I'm not five.  Plus I use my OWN bats and other equipment and to have rank beginners throwing water by the cupful on my good medex bats and carry off my personal tools (I permanently lost a rib and one of my sponges) was not much to my liking either.  When I DID NOT get up and start moving around the studio right away, he made a pointed remark about people who don't cooperate, and since I hate being the center of attention I ended up getting up and moving around the studio as well.  The constant up and down and having to sit on stools that had NOT been adjusted for me and the pain in my a... backside ... irritated the priformis syndrome to the point where I could barely walk.  It was 2 months before I could get in to physical therapy and I missed the rest of the class WHICH I HAD PAID FOR and only attended 2 sessions because after that I was back on the cane, schlepping through the grocery in a handicap cart, and barely able to tolerate sitting long enough to drive anywhere.  $100 in extra cushions for my chairs at home and 4 months of physical therapy later (still in physical therapy but its a LOT better by now) I'm finally back in the studio.

That stuff is no joke.  I've considered throwing standing up, but I have no way to brace myself.  Michael Wendt has a video showing his standing setup but I don't quite understand how it is set up nor quite how he is bracing himself on it, but if I could figure it out it would probably be a good idea.  But really, as long as nobody is making me get up every five minutes and switch to a stool that is at yet another height than the last and isn't set to the angle I've found best for me personally, so far, I'm good with sitting.

Sometimes he rests his arm on TOP of that brace, and sometimes he seems to tuck his elbow into it and lean over.  Not sure how I would go about setting that up and adjusting that for myself.  I do like the laser thingy and the editor of Pottery Illustrated should sit on it and rotate because *I* certainly am interested in how to set that up.  He's using cheap lasers from Harbor Freight for that, its not like he's using fancy-dancy lasers costing hundreds of dollars.  I think there's a brief discussion of the setup on his website. 

It would help if his videos had descriptive labels.  "DSCN0308' doesn't tell us much (that video illustrates his use of a metal pipe to flatten a large disk, he has a name for that that I can't for the life of me remember but it sure looks useful if you do a lot of platters or thrown bonsai pots).  Rod and stand?  I think?

A more thorough demonstration of that method - he talks about bracing for throwing while standing but you really can't see any of that in the video:

Rod and REstand is what he calls it: