Making Your Own Blender Blade For Under $5.00

I decided to make my own blender tool for pulp and clay slurry preparation. All the parts can be purchased from any hardware or home improvement store.

Here's the breakdown of the parts:

• One Tie plate - 50 cents
• One 24" long threaded rod, 5/16" dia - $1.76. I would have preferred an 18" long rod instead of the 24", but the store did not carry the 18" length.
• One packet of nylon lock nuts, 5/16" dia - 98 cents. You only need one lock nut from the 2 that comes in the packet.
• Two nuts 5/16"dia - 20 cents

With CA sales tax, it comes up to $3.75

I had to enlarge the central hole in the tie plate with a 1/4"drill bit to accommodate the threaded rod.

After that, assembly was very straight forward as seen in the picture.

An electric drill fits into the other end of the blender tool. Make sure the drill chuck is well tightened before use.

Disclaimer: Use caution, wear gloves, and eye protection for your own safety when operating electric tools. Use at your own risk.

Yet Another Kitchen Tool Recruited!

This is the blender I used when I made my Black Mountain paper clay (see earlier post Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here). It was an old one that kind of worked intermittently. I was able to salvage it for use in my ceramic studio so I was happy to re-purpose it for another life.

As the immersion part of the blender is only so long, I had to blend in small portions. The blade works really good in chopping up the soaked paper packaging.

Since then, I've gotten a brand new one for the kitchen. Great for making strawberry smoothies.

Disclaimer: Use caution, wear gloves, and eye protection for your own safety when operating electric tools. Use at your own risk.

Paperclay and Cracking

© 2009 Anthony Foo.

The bane of all ceramic artists - CRACKING! There are many reasons why and when a piece cracks.

1. Crack during the drying stage - greenware

2. Crack after the bisque stage

3. Crack after the high fire (in this case, Cone 10) stage

What to do and how to mitigate the problem. The discussion here pertains only to paperclay, and is based on my personal experiences with the sculpture paperclay from Aardvark Clay Company, Santa Ana. IMCO (from Sacramento) is the manufacturer. I've been using this paperclay since 2004.

1. Crack during drying stage - from leather hard to bone dry greenware.

This is usually due to improper/weak joining, especially when you are doing dry to dry joints. Another reason is unbalanced/uneven drying once the joints are formed. There are 2 kinds of cracks here.

One is a surface crack formed primarily from not using enough moisture in your paperclay slips/slurry. The solution here is to use a thinner paperclay slip (ie more watery slip)  and cover/re-coat the cracks. It may take several applications to completely cover the cracks.

The other more serious one is the deep structural crack due to improper technique. I find that the only way to find out if this is a structural crack is to take a knife or similar tool and dig out the crack and see how deep it goes into your piece. If it is not too deep, the good news is that it can be fixed with paperclay. Remove enough of the dry paperclay until you do not see the crack. Make the hole/opening large enough to do a decent repair/patch job. If during this digging out of the crack, your piece/seam falls apart, then you really know you've not done a good joint. Don't worry. Don't panic. Just start over and this time make sure you spend the time making a good, strong joint with good technique. That's one of the advantage of paperclay. You just can't go wrong with it, and even if you did, it's fixable. This advantage alone gives me peace of mind.

Do not be stingy in your "excavation." Spritz the area well or soak the area with a wet paper towel and let stand for some time for the surrounding dry paperclay to soak up this moisture to create a better moisture balance. Use very "mushy" paperclay to fill in the hole you made. Keep the area moist as the surrounding dry paperclay will want to "suck" the moisture from this spot, so keep the water sprayer handy.

2. Crack after the bisque stage.

Sometimes, even with our best care and technique, we still get cracks in our pieces. Sometimes everything looks good in the green stage, but after the bisque fire, you notice the cracks. If it is a hairline crack, it's really tough to do anything about it. If the crack is large/wide enough to patch with paperclay slip, you may try that. I ususally use a very runny paperclay slip as filler. The bisque piece will absorb the water from the paperclay slip very quickly. Several coats may be necessary to fill the crack. It also depends on how bad/serious the crack is. To be sure my patch holds, I usually re-bisque the piece to test my mending. If it survives, it stands a good chance in the high fire; if not, it's better to remake your piece.

3. Crack after high fire.

This happens sometimes as high fire (Cone 10) puts a lot of strain/stress on a piece, especially tall, vertical pieces.  As sculptural pieces, there is no reason to take it to Cone 10. A Cone 6 firing will do fine. When you find a crack in your piece after a high fire, it's pretty much "putty/epoxy time." Unless your piece is meant to hold water (for example, an ikebana vase or something similar) I usually don't do much about it. Sometimes the crack adds character to the piece, sometimes it does not. At this point, you can't do much fixing it.

A very appropriate quote from my instructor, Julia Klemek, "Don't fall in love with your piece until it comes out of the kiln (this is Cone 10 fire)."

Paperclay and Inclusions - Part 2.

© 2009 by Anthony Foo.

The advantages of Paperclay continues.

In Part 1, I talked about the various organic materials that can be incorporated/kneaded into paperclay to create interesting and random textures. Another advantage of the paper fibers in paperclay is its ability to coat and adhere to various materials that ordinary clay will not. The paper fibers will "grab" on to the irregularities of the surface to be coated and hence form a foundation for the clay to stay on.

In my sculptures, I've used paperclay to coat steel mesh (hardware cloth aka chicken wire), cotton twine, thin reeds, flowers,  twigs. etc. The paperclay I've used is the sculpture body paperclay from Aardvark (IMCO in Sacramento is the manufacturer) and the Southern Ice Porcelain Paperclay, imported from Australia by Laguna Clay Company in Los Angeles. Laguna Clay Company has stopped carrying the Southern Ice Porcelain Paperclay, probably because of its cost.

Both types of paperclay will can be used with the above mentioned materials.  The paperclay slip is made to a "heavy cream" consistency for the brushing method.

When I first start out, I usually brush it on with a soft fan brush, liberally loaded with the paperclay slip. This can be messy work so spread out old newspapers for easy of clean up after. It's slow work here as you need to let the first coat dry completely before the next application. It may not look like much but you are already coating your object with the paper pulp fibers.

I prefer brushing to dipping because I can control the coverage of the details. You may prefer the dipping method if the object to be coated is small enough to fit into your bucket of paperclay slip. Shake off the excess slip and let dry. The first few coats will be slow going until you have built up several coats. From here, it goes pretty fast as the fresh paperclay slip will stick on to the bone dry paperclay coat extremely well. This is actually the fun part and I enjoy this time the most. You can literally see the layers build up.

If you are using the dipping method, it's best at this point to thin out your paperclay slip a bit or else you will have to much slip adhering to your object with each dip. The dipping method is faster but if you are not careful, it will cover up/obliterate the details you have on your object. You can also use a combination of brushing and dipping. Whatever works for you to get to the desired thickness of coverage and still show the details.

In this discussion, I'll use my sculpture "Trapped" to show the different stages in the coating technique. The piece is bisqued fired only. The bamboo reeds and cotton twine burns out; the steel mesh is still encapsulated within the paperclay coating.

The sculpture could probably go to Cone 3 or 5 with the steel wire embedded in it, but since I'm using a community kiln, I'd rather not risk damaging the kiln. 

Initial forming stage - Materials used here are chicken wire, bamboo reeds, cotton twine.

After first coat of paperclay slip, brush technique, drying in the sun.

After 2nd day of coating. There must have been approx. 15 coats already here. I lost count!

Final stage. I'm happy with the coverage and thickness of the paperclay slip over the entire structure. The build up of coverage is anywhere from 3/16" to 1/4" thick.