Slab Question

I've been looking at the roller posts and saw that some of you use 30" slab rollers which makes me wonder, how thick a slab do you roll out? I've been rolling thin slabs for hand building, from 1/8" to 1/4" using home made shims, with a thick 2" dowel, I've been doing all my rolling by hand. Am I doing it wrong? Am I missing something here?

Spacey

Reply to
S P A C E M A N
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In message , S P A C E M A N writes

I hope not because that's how I do it too. As far as I understand it, the advantage of slab rollers is that they quickly roll lots of clay. It's like using a food processor to chop onions. You can do it by hand too, but it's quicker and less work with a machine.

Reply to
M Rimmer

I have a limited amount of experience with slab rollers but it does seem that the thickness is pretty much correlated with how big the piece is. A small item (soap dish size) can be really thin expecially if it is porcelain (1/8"). The larger a piece gets the thicker it needs to be but even then you can do things fairly thin (I have done 24" platters at about 1/4" but I think that was really pushing it). What I can recommend is that the clay the thrown to thin it out and align the clay particles before running it through the slap and that the slab be kept as flat as possible when moving (that is you don't to put in bends that the clay will remember and warp when firing). By throwing I don't mean wheel throwing. I mean literally throwing it at an angle (short of sideways onto a table).

Reply to
DKat

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