Every year for the Leikam Hanukkah Craft Market I make a few new things to have them available for holiday sales. All of these will be available for purchase this Sunday (Nov 2).

First, pictured above, is two new Sluggakiahs, for those who want a more Pacific Northwest note to their festival of lights celebration.

I've made a few new syrup birds for your brunching pleasure.

Since I needed a new crock for our 20-year-old San Francisco sourdough, I made a couple extra to sell.

Now, I realize it's totally the wrong time of year for this, but I also needed a new wine chiller for the back patio, and thought that other folks might want one as well. So there will be 3 on sale.

And, of course, there's always mugs:

So, if you're in the Portland area, please drop by Leikam Brewing on Sunday and check out what I and nine other artisans have to offer.

If you're further away, check my online store next week for more goodies for the holiday season.

Join us for the 5th annual Hanukkah Craft Market at Leikam Brewing! This year, we're ready to kick off your holiday shopping at the beginning of the season:

Sunday, November 2
1 to 6pm
5812 E. Burnside, Portland

Facebook Event

We will have 10 artists and crafters for your Hanukkah gift browsing, which you can do while sipping some of the great kosher beers from Leikam Brewing. Our artists this year include:

Ceramics and Wood:

BOG Woodworking
FuzzyChef Pottery
Rain Dragon Studio

Fiber and Apparel:

Dye-Enu Studios
Western Wools
NavaYiskah Arts / Nava’s House

Painting, Drawing, and Prints:

Dennis Hopkins
Nacho’s Honey Art

Wax and Scents:

The Gilded Post
The Remedy Candle & Apothecary

There will also be a food cart if you want to make a lunch or dinner of your visit. All vendors will be donating 10% of their sales to charity.

Get your holiday shopping started early, and best of all:

No Tariffs On Anything

In late May I found out that I needed to make five dozen custom tiki cups for an event in mid-July. I've never made a tiki cup before, although I'd thought about it, so I wasn't at all set up to create any, let alone more than 50 in about seven weeks. Potters will understand, that's a very short timeline for someone who only does pottery part-time, especially considering firing schedules.

This meant that a lot of more standard methods of making them weren't a possibility. Creating new plaster molds for casting would take too long, especially since I don't regularly do casting and am not set up for it. Sculpting the cups individually would take even longer. What could I do to put designs on them that would be relatively fast, both to engineer and to make each cup?

I asked on a ceramics forum (Clay Buddies) for ideas, and several people (including Tim See) suggested that stamps were my best bet. I hadn't had a lot of luck, though, stamping individual cups will on (or off) the wheel. So after some tinkering, I tried a different approach that I'd used with other textures; instead of bringing the stamp to the cup, I'd bring the cup to the stamp. I needed a texture mat.

TPU is flexible printable plastic. I've been finding it works much better for stamps than rigid plastic, both because you can bend it around pieces and also because it sticks a bit less. It's perfect for texture mats. So I found some cartoons of tiki faces on a clipart site, modified them to make them simpler and more geometric, and turned one into a texture mat, which I printed in black TPU.

The next step was to create a wooden form for the inside of each cup, which could be used to roll the cup across the texture mat without losing its shape. I made mine from a 2" diameter post and inserted part of a broom handle for control. I did not want to 3d print the inside-cup dowel, both because plastic sticks to wet clay, and because I was concerned about strength.

Next, I had to throw a bunch of perfectly cylindrical cups, with interiors that were 2.25" diameter and 5.5" tall to match the dowel. This was a bit harder than it sounds; I hadn't thought about the fact that my hands are too large for a 2.25" diameter cup, and as a result I had to finish each cup using a throwing stick on the inside.

The next step was to roll the cups on the mats to make the tiki faces. The first batch of 6 cups I ended up turning into regular mugs, because I found out (the "hard" way) that the clay needed to be quite soft to take an impression, like just 12-15 hours after throwing.

I learned a few things with this first trial. First, it was quite difficult to get a good impression if the design, like this one, had any large blocky shapes. Also those squares at the top with sharp corners really dug into the clay, ruining some cups. But I felt like I was on the right track.

So I did two new designs, which were composed only of lines, and gave fairly even design coverage over the whole height of the cup. I also started dusting the designs with dry clay to make them stick less.

This worked a lot better. Those designs really popped and were clear all over the cup, and would look good once glazed.

Next I repeated that several dozen times. And then drying, and firing, and glazing. Tip: if you do use dry clay to prevent a stamp from sticking, make sure you brush off all the loose dry clay once the piece hardens. I didn't do that on all the cups and it ruined the glaze on a few.

I glazed them all using translucent glazes (two celedons and two others) which would do the best job of emphasizing the tiki designs. They were all done, not just on time for the event, but actually two weeks early. Yay!

I'll definitely use this technique again, although I'll make some changes. Some padding on the dowel would probably be good. Also, maybe a cup form that was a bit wider and shorter to speed up throwing. But it worked pretty well.

Cats! Cats that are also hot beverage safe drinking mugs! What could be better than tea/coffee/chocolate and a kitty -- in one hand? I've added some new cat mugs to my store, and will be adding more in the next few days. In the meantime, meet Mungojerry, Pickles, and Oh Lawd He Comin'.

Get them online, or at the Leikam Hanukkah Craft Market this Sunday.

The cat mugs I make have evolved over the years, becoming more and more fully sculpted into the shapes of cats. I've been able to do that and yet keep them comfortable to drink out of. Each has a curled tail/handle:

They also have feet on the bottom:

The last cat's name is a reference to the famous Feline Chonk Chart. It's by far the widest cat mug I've made, holding more than 22oz. So if you know someone who really needs a cat mug/beer stein, Oh Lawd is here for you.

Regardless of whether you want these, or Buck, Mrs. Tibbits, or Tuco (coming this weekend), I hope you get one and enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed making them.

I have new salt monsters in my shop! Meet Oggie, Kilroy, Champ, and Wadjet.

Like my previous salt monsters, these four are there to hold your coarse salt next to the stove so that you can pinch and fling it into your cooking food, like a video chef. Or you can use the provided tongue-spoon to be a bit more measured about it. Whatever you like; salt monsters don't judge.

You can buy these from my online store, or you can come to the Leikam Brewing Hanukkah Craft Market this Sunday.

I'm particularly proud of Wadjet, whose fanginess is both daunting and amusing.

Join Fuzzychef Pottery on December 8 for the 4th annual Hanukkah Craft Market at Leikam Brewing!

As always, we will have local artists and crafters, many with a Hanukkah theme. And Leikam will have kosher beer, including the new Holiday Macca Beer. Artists with their wares include:

• FuzzyChef Pottery (me)
• A+S 2020 Ceramics
• Orah Samba henna painting
• Nava's House garments and fabric art
• Sun & Rayne herbal medicine
• Hebrunes Oracle tiles & Judaica
• Grant High School Woodworkers
• Mudge Fudge for your snacking needs

Among other things, I will have my Cat Mugs:

... and also some Hanukkiahs (menorahs).

So, join us and do a little Hanukkah Shopping!

Leikam Hanukkah Craft Market
Leikam Brewing
5812 E Burnside St, Portland, OR
Sunday, December 8
1pm to 6pm

Lots of potters by now are familiar with the Ball Opener tool, popularized by Tom Whitaker. Speedball even has a version for sale, although I'd argue that it's inferior to one you make yourself from PVC. I use ball openers when I make matched sets, because making sure that the bottoms of all pieces are identical thickness makes it much easier to make them all identical.

After a few years of making plain glued PVC ball openers, I started thinking about how I could improve the device. Particularly, how could I incorporate 3D printed elements to make it better, and maybe make the thickness dynamically adjustable? I did a bunch of experimentation, and a bunch of trials, and have come up with a new design that I call "Ball Opener Mark 2". For any of you with a 3D printer and assembly skills, I think you'll find it a worthwhile improvement over the individual design.

Building The Mark 2

To make the Ball Opener Mark 2, you will need:

• 2-3ft of 1/2" thick wall PVC pipe
• A 4-way PVC junction and two elbows
• 3ft of 1/2" wooden dowel rod
• A cutoff, table, or band saw for cutting that pipe and dowel
• A power drill and 1/8" bit
• One 2.5" piece of 3mm brass rod
• PVC "glue"
• Superglue gel or E6000 glue
• All of the 3D printed elements included in this set
• A toothpick

First, you'll want to print all the 3D printed items for the Ball Opener. There's a bunch of them, so get started now. PLA filament is fine. See the notes in the Thingiverse entry on how to print them.

Cut the PVC pipe into two pieces 4.5" long, two pieces 3.5" long, and one piece 3" long. Fit the two 3.5" pieces on opposite sides of the 4-way junction, and cement them in with PVC glue. Fit the elbows onto the ends of those pieces, and glue them in, making sure that they are exactly parallel to one of the unused openings of the 4-way junction. Fit the two 4.5" pieces into the elbows and glue. Finally, glue the 3" piece in the 4-way opening on the same side as the other two pieces, forming an "M" out of PVC. Allow all the PVC glue to set, around 1 hour.

While the PVC glue is setting, cut three 6" pieces from the dowel rod. Attach each of the 3D printed ball opener Opener Tips to one of the dowel rods. Glue these in with the superglue/E6000. Bend down one end of the brass rod, about 1/2".

Once the PVC glue has set, glue in the rest of the 3D printed parts. The two PVC Plugs go on the two outer legs of the M; these are to keep the PVC from getting worn down by the friction of the wheel too fast. The Top Plug goes in the top of the 4-way junction. As you glue this in, make sure that the slot on top is exactly parallel with the PVC cross pieces. Now, time to wait for all that glue to dry, at least a couple hours.

Once that's all set, fit each dowel into place by inserting it up through the center of the M. Mark the dowel rod where the slot in the Top Plug is. Take it back out and drill a hole through it at that mark. Repeat with the two other dowels. Label each dowel with its gauge thickness with a sharpie.

Your Mark 2 is now manufactured. You might want to wait overnight for all glue to be completely set.

Using the Mark 2

To use your new tool, push one of the Opener Tips with its dowel through the center of the M, and then anchor it using the brass rod. You can change the height by switching which of the Opener Tips you use, and you can (and should) 3D print more with different thicknesses. I have named the Opener Tips with the distance from the wheelhead, which becomes the thickness of the clay bottom. These distances are not exact, particularly given that none of us is precision-cutting our PVC.

Now, you can use it like a regular ball-opener per Tom's video.

However, the Mark 2 comes with a bonus feature: a Width Gauge. I designed this because, in order to make matching pieces, I also wanted to make sure to open each hole the exact same amount. The way you use it is this: before locking in the dowel with the brass rod, you slide the Width Gauge over the top of the 4-Way, ringing the Top End, with the slots matching up. Then lock everything in place with the brass rod. Put a toothpick in the little hole, pointing down. When you throw, follow the toothpick with your eye to see if you've opened the hole the right amount.

The example width gauge in my 3D print set is for a hole 95mm wide. You will, of course, want to make ones a variety of sizes. Note that the flat bar needs to be 27mm shorter than the desired hole width, because of the width of the ball opener itself. Eventually I'll create an OpenSCAD template for generating them.

On to the Next

I hope you enjoy building and customizing your own Mark 2 Ball Opener.

For me: it's been a learning experience, and I already know how I want to build the Mark 3.

Q&A

Why use PVC plus 3D prints instead of 3D printing the whole thing?

Extruded filament plastic, regardless of filament type, doesn't have anywhere near the strength of commercially formed PVC pipe. A fully 3D printed model would break in use. Another artist is experimenting with resin printing, and I'll update this based on what they find out.

Why not just make a bunch of all-PVC standard ball openers at different heights?

Because that would have been a lot less fun, and take up more space. Also, this design has some other advantages like the width gauge.

Is it important that all my pipe and wood cuts are exactly perpendicular and smooth?

Yes.

Why do you mix American and metric measurements?

Sorry, I live in the USA, that's how things are here. If you're in another country and want to make an all-metric one, you'll need to redo the measurements yourself.

I was having a serious problem with my new plaster bats. They're tall enough to raise the throwing surface above the edge of the splash pan on my standing wheel. This was resulting in a fair amount of slip spatter on the walls:

It's a clay studio, so a little spatter was fine, but this would just keep building up and eventually become a silica hazard. I needed a way to make the edge of my splash pan just a inch and a half taller, without hampering my arms while throwing. Including throwing wide plates.

With some trial-and-error, I designed a clip that would slide onto the rolled edge of the Brent wheel splash pan. I printed five of them.

Then I went to the hardware store and grabbed a plastic splash guard, the kind you normally attach to the bottoms of doors. That slid neatly in to give me the 1.5 inches of extra splash guard I needed ... without getting in the way of my arms.

These clips should be useful for anyone who owns a Brent wheel. If you want to use them for trimming, you could put in a much taller piece of plastic. If you improve the design, please share!

I'm doing a large order of plates for a customer, which need to match and stack properly (they even have to stack with plates made by another potter, but that's a complication I'll leave out of this article). One problem making porcelain plates is that you have to throw on a bat, and both plastic and wood bats work poorly, often causing the plate to dry unevenly and crack despite your best efforts. Plaster bats, however, absorb water from your piece, allowing you to dry it in place and have it separate naturally from the bat with relatively even drying.

Now, you can buy plaster bats from several sources, Hydrobat being the most popular in the US. This is a great option if you only need one or two, but if you really need a dozen (or more) then they get expensive very quickly. Since I need to make 80 plates, I need at least 10 bats so that I can have that many drying at once. Using premade plaster bats also makes adding a foot grove impractical. This means casting my own plaster bats.

Wait, you ask. Foot groove? Yes. By carving a round groove into the plaster bat, you can "instantly" have a foot for your thrown plates. As well as ensuring consistent foot diameter, this has the advantage of eliminating a lot of clay waste; trimming a foot on a plate often means trimming off up to 25% of the clay you threw it with.

Before you start, casting bats takes considerable space, and works better in a warm, dry environment. I recommend waiting until summer to make a bunch of bats so that you can do most of the production process outside.

Here's everything you'll need for your bat making:

• bat mold(s) (including bat pin molds)
• plaster
• a good water source
• scale accurate to 5g/1oz
• mold soap and a sponge
• a spirit level (or similar tool)
• a flexible bucket for mixing
• a drill with a mixing blade or a very big whisk
• a food-service-sized spatula or other long-handled scraper
• small plastic paint scraper
• pottery trimming tools
• t-square or similar

Now, you can make a bat mold from any round, smooth-bottomed object of an appropriate diameter. For example, you could cut off the bottom of a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Shapes that taper slightly are better because plaster expands while setting. That's the easy part; the hard part is that you may want to cast indents for your bat pins in this shape, and designing a bar that will let you place them exactly centered. I can't show you that, though, because I chose to buy a mold system from Pure And Simple Pottery Molds instead. I did this because I didn't have time to mess around with perfecting a mold, and the "keying" system for mounting bats using the P&S molds makes it easy to take them on and off the wheel, even multiple times per piece. The drawback of using the P&S system (besides the cost) was that it reduced me to casting one bat at a time.

Now, let's talk plaster. If you're in North America, USG Pottery Plaster #1 is the standard pottery casting plaster, if you can get it. Since the USG plaster mines have had issues lately, you can settle for USG Casting Plaster #1 and it should work fine. For extra hard and durable bats, you can use Hydrocal, whose texture is somewhere between plaster and concrete. Do not use Hydrostone, as it does not absorb water well. Potters in other parts of the world will need to find their own equivalents.

While you're special ordering materials, you'll also want mold soap. This is a thick soap you use to coat the insides of the mold to make sure that the plaster does not adhere. While you can use dish soap, vegetable oil, or other household substitutes, mold soap is formulated to give you a thin but effective coating on the mold, preventing the pottery from sticking without leaving patterns on the plaster from bubbles and streaks. I use Georgie's Mold Soap, which seems to be the same formula as Laguna Pure Lube.

Assemble all your tools and materials in easy reach. Once you start mixing the plaster, you will have minutes to follow the rest of the process and you don't want to be hunting for things.

Now, prep your mold. First, use the spirit level, plus shims, wedges, and boards to get the bottom part of the mold completely level. You don't want your bat to be thicker on one side than the other. Using a sponge, gently coat the bottom part of the mold including the edges in mold soap. You're looking for a thin but uniform coating, like thin paint, no more than 0.1mm. You also need to soap the top insert of the mold, which is the keying piece for the P&S mold, or your home-designed mold.

For the P&S mold, you have to add bat pin holes, because even though the bat won't lock onto the pins, it needs to clear them. I bought two socket cap screws that were one size larger than my bat pins, with matching wing nuts. These also gave me convenient handles for the top piece of the mold. P&S instructs you to bolt together the insert and the wheel head mount when casting, and I have no idea why, because that didn't work at all for me.

Now, you're going to mix your plaster. For a 12" P&S bat you'll mixing 6lbs of plaster with 4lbs of water. If your tap water is very hard or otherwise chemically notable you'll need to use bottled water; in Portland, I'm able to use tap water. You also want to use a bucket that will allow you to easily clean all of the waste plaster out of it, because you don't want new batches touching old, hardened waste plaster (it messes up the hardening process). On a suggestion on Clay Buddies, I bought a flexible feed bucket from our nearest farm supply store, and greased it with a little bit of mold soap just to make sure.

Mixing plaster into water uses an odd process called "slaking". You pour the water into the bucket, and then scoop in the plaster, shaking it to distribute it. If you've done this correctly, it should just start to mound up and break the water level as you run out of plaster. Leave it to sit for 2 minutes or so, and then mix it. I use a drill with a glaze-mixing blade to mix my plaster, but you can also use a large whisk and spatula if you want to put some muscle into it. Mix for roughly 1 minute, making sure to hit the "corners" of the bucket, and not to break the water surface a lot with your blade or whisk because you do not want to incorporate a lot of air. Once mixed, let it sit for 2-3 minutes; the plaster should thicken to the consistency of buttermilk, at which point you want to pour immediately.

A note about timings: the amount of time that plaster takes to set is very dependent on the temperature, both air and water. The timings I'm giving here assume that it's 75-80F while you work, and that you're using cold tap water. If it's 95F and your water is warm, you will need to move faster. Likewise, the plaster will take much longer to set in the middle of winter.

Pour the plaster into the mold. For the P&S mold, you want it to come up to about 2mm below the edge of the mold basin. Then slide in the insert; if it's the right amount full, a little plaster should bubble out of the holes you've left open, but not a lot. Tap the top part of the mold for a minute or so, to encourage any air bubbles to migrate out.

Let it set for 25-40 minutes, depending on ambient temperature. Pry the top part of the mold off using the plastic paint scraper. Flex the mold around the plaster, and then flip it upside down to harden/cool. It will need at least 24 hours of rest time before it's ready, but days is better, to make sure it's as dry as possible. Note that the plaster hardening reaction produces a lot of heat, so be careful where you put it to cool, you could damage the surface under it.

Once the bat is dry, clean up any mess on the underside using a palette knife or similar tool. Try to make sure the underside is smooth and flat.

If using the P&S, mount the bat "key" on your wheelhead by removing and reinstalling your bat pins. It has some wiggle room, so carefully adjust it to make sure that the key is exactly centered on the wheelhead. Fit the bat to the key, securing it on top of your wheel. Now you can clean up your bat and add the foot groove (if you are).

First, take a large loop trimming tool or palette knife, and turn the wheel on to medium speed. Use the tool to trim and round off the edges of the bat.

If you're adding a foot groove, you'll want to carefully measure the correct diameter, centered, on the bat head using a t-square or other measuring device. Spin the wheel slowly to draw a circle at exactly the right diameter. Then remove the t-square and grab a sturdy round loop trimming tool (don't use your good trimming tools for this, but they do need to be at least somewhat sharp). Speed up the wheel slightly and use the trimming tool to slowly carve a semi-circular groove in the bat. You'll want this to be between 6mm/0.25" deep and 9mm/0.33" deep to make a good foot. It can't be a lot deeper with this throwing method, and you don't want it much shallower. Once you have a good, semi-circular groove, get a flat trimming tool and round and smooth the edges of the groove so that there are no sharp corners. Carefully remove and clean off all the plaster dust.

Now you're ready to throw on your new plaster bat with instant foot!

Note about the rack for my plaster bats, pictured below. Those bats weigh almost 10lbs each, so you'll need a sturdy rack to hold them. I found an adjustible pan drying rack online that worked for me.

As every year, I will be participating in the Leikam Hanukkah Craft Sale this weekend, along with 7 other artists. Come see us and pick up a few things for your holiday giftees! You can enjoy a kosher beer from Leikam at the same time.

Sunday, November 19th
1 to 6pm
Leikam Brewing
5812 East Burnside
Portland Oregon 97215

Here's a preview of a few of the things I'll have:

New cat mugs! Specifically, I'm launching my line of Chonky Cat Mugs, designed to be even more cute and comfortable to drink from than my prior cat mugs.

If the cat mugs are too big for you, or if you need something for a child, there's my Kitten Cups. Discounted for kids who are buying for themselves.

Since this is a Hanukkah sale, I will of course have Hannukiahs (often called "menorahs") available for purchase. With candles!

I will even have a mini-sluggakiah available for sale.

See you Sunday!

TL;DR: New blue and red syrup birds in the online store.

We love real maple syrup. And since we tend to do some kind of pancakes or waffles every weekend, we have reason to pour a lot of it. A decade or so ago I decided it was time to solve the problem of "how can I drizzle syrup on my breakfast without slopping it everywhere and ending up with a pool in the middle of the plate?" Regular pitchers, even small creamers, tend to pour out way too fast and make a mess -- not to mention wasting expensive syrup.

So, I made some 4-5oz pitchers with very narrow, conical spouts to drizzle a controlled stream of warm maple syrup. These worked really well. My sweetie observed that they looked like birds, so I added eyes and toes to them and the syrup bird was born. I settled on two "plumage" color schemes; varigated blue with yellow beaks and toes, and bright red with black beaks and toes. I've been selling them ever since.

Here's how you use a syrup bird. First, fill it 2/3 of the way full of 100% genuine grade A maple syrup. Then, warm it up, either in the microwave (usually 15-20 seconds) or in a hot water bath.

Then, pour the syrup over your waffles, pancakes, Dutch baby, or whatever.

Use the side spout to pour leftover syrup back into the bottle.

I recommend hand-washing these; while technically they are dishwasher-safe, the spouts and handles are quite fragile and are likely to get broken in the dishwasher.

Anyway, I've made a new batch of the syrup birds; currently there are two blue and two red ones available for sale. Ready in time for Hanukkah for the syrup-lover in your life!

The birds also work well for soy sauce.

TL;DR: new sluggy soap dishes in the shop

Ten or twelve years ago (or maybe more) our apartment in San Francisco needed a soap dish. I wanted to make something decorative, and thought about what would look good covered in soap slime.

Banana slugs, of course.

Thus my first Sluggy Soap Dishes were born. I made a few extra and these surprisingly became a regular sales item. The earlier ones were made from a rolled slab, hand-cut into an oval with impressed designs, like these:

A lot of folks like these (and I still have a few for sale), but I wanted something that drained better than the impressed designs. This meant, of course, creating a custom extruder plate so that I could extrude deeply grooved soap plates with feet:

The result is really nice. Still all the charm of my original sluggy soap dishes, but better at holding the runoff from your soap.

The slugs are hand-sculpted, of course. After more than a decade of putting slugs on everything, I've become quite good at making them. I tried making molds for the slugs, but it's really faster for me to freehand them. And that way the slugs have more individual personality, too.

These would be a fun gift for anyone you know who likes slugs. They're useful for the bathroom, kitchen, or best of all the gardening sink. Order one now to have it in time for Hanukkah!

I like to make "shot glasses" for doing glaze tests, and to sell off as a $2 item. Given how disposable these are, though, I can't be bothered with throwing and trimming them, so I turned to my trusty extruder to just extrude a tube, cut it into short bits, and cap them off to turn them into little shot glasses. Easy, right?

But, I quickly found that the commercial hollow extruder plates created a tube that was way too thick and asymmetrical to boot. The problem is the design; standard hollow dies are made by having a metal "bridge" holding the center piece in place. This doesn't permit careful, exact placement to make nice 3 or 4mm thick walls. Since I 3D print my extruder plates these days, that got me thinking about printing dies for hollow forms.

Most other artists going down this line of experimentation make the mistake of trying to recreate the shape of the flat commercial die with the bridge exactly. Not only are there a number of mechanical problems with this (PLA or ABS are not strong enough for a bridge), but it's also very limited thinking. We can make any shape we want on the 3D printer; why limit ourselves to reproducing the exact shape of commercial dies that are cut from sheets of polyetheline?

So, I started playing around with designs. The first thing I decided was that the die needed to be flat on top. One of the other disagreeable parts of the metal bridge design has always been that you can't use all the clay in the extruder because some of it will be caked up around the bridge. Further, I wanted the center piece to be printed permanently in place, so that I could have thin walls that I knew would not be thicker on one side or the other because the center piece moved around.

So I printed a 2cm tall hollow die with four printed supports holding the center piece in place. The supports were less than 1cm high, so the clay could go past them and out the tube. This produced four separate quarters of a tube, up until the supports broke with the pressure and the die came apart. Improvements were needed.

So first thing, the clay needed to be squished together after it got past the supports. It occured to me that if, instead of a tube shape, I had a kind of hollow cone shape, then after the clay got past the supports it would compress and the four divided portions would re-merge before exiting the die.

Second, I needed to reenforce the supports. I made them into hollow tubes so that I could insert a 3mm brass rod, which would be stronger than the plastic (I tested 2mm, but it wasn't strong enough).

This gave me the design I was looking for. Here's how the final die looks.

Here's the die being printed. You can see those hollow support tubes in progress. It's being printed upside-down, so that there doesn't need to be any support material.

The die was strong, and produced a strong, fused tube. And this design concept is cleary reproduceable for any type of hollow die.

I squished this one a bit cutting it, but look at those even sides!

Since it's hard to cut the clay tube without squishing it, I also designed a miter for cutting it with a wire.

Now, there is one drawback to this die design: it's hard to clean, and you need to clean it right after use while the clay is still soft. I found out the hard way that it's extremely difficult to remove dried clay from the complex interior shape.

Here's my designs on Thingyverse. If you create additional hollow dies using this approach, please share with me there or on Clay Extruding and Rolling Group.

Hopefully this post will help you break out of flat thinking when designing 3D printed dies.

As a Jew from an observant family (although I'm not), I noticed that there don't seem to be any other Portland area potters making Judaica for sale. So I figured I'd fix that. Having borrowed some designs from my mother, I now have a few things on offer for fellow members of the Tribe, starting with the sale at Leikam Brewing this Sunday.

On the left are travel shabbos candleholders. These are to bring with you any time you're visiting somewhere over the sabbath or other holidays, and need to light candles. I made some of these for my parents, and they've been useful enough that I made some for sale.

In the center is a hand-washing pitcher, which seems super-appropriate given the times. During the handwashing ritual preceding meals, you're supposed to pour water from one hand to the other while saying the prayer. This double-handled pitcher makes it natural to smoothly rinse your hands while saying your "al nitilat yadaim".

I also have mezzuzah covers, both with and without banana slugs. These are ready for you to insert a scroll from your chosen synagogue or yeshiva, and screw securely to your doorframe.

All of these will be available this Sunday:

Sunday, December 12th
1pm to 5pm
Leikam Brewing
5812 East Burnside
Portland, Oregon

After Sunday, I'll put them up in my online store. Shabbat shalom!

Meet the SpoonLu!

I like to cook, and that means that I also like making pottery for cooking. While I make many bits of "chefware", among the simplest, yet the most useful are spoonrests. I started out making sluggy spoonrests.

But, I wanted to make a special spoonrest as a gift for some friends. So I modeled it after their long-haired black cat, Lucifer. He's friendly, and wide enough for a ladle or spider. Of course, I made extras, and I have them for sale on my store.

Or, if you're in Portland, you can buy them this Sunday (Nov 21) at the Leikam Holiday Sale!

Leikam Brewing
5812 Burnside
Portland, OR
1pm-5pm Nov. 21