I have been commissioned to make sinks for the new guest house at Penland and I will be painting and glazing them on Saturday. I've promised to give y'all a sink how-to, but unfortunately didn't do so well in technical writing as a young engineering student back in the day. But here goes...
First off, if you can make a teapot you can make a sink. But to make a big sink you'll need a few more chops to get'er done. First off, to make a finished sink that is 14.5" in diameter, I used 25 lbs. of clay! I threw the sinks between 15 and 16 inches. Also, I wanted to make them rather heavy to possibly avoid warping. (we'll see) This required a bunch of clay.
[sorry no pictures from the throwing stages. oh wait, here is a picture of some that were later destroyed and redone]
Then I let them dry really slow, and trimmed the foot as I usually do, but made the foot a little narrower as it related to the rim than I usually do for a bowl.
Then I cut a hole to accommodate the plumbing. (with the shrinkage of my clay, I made the hole about 1 3/4".
Then I added a coil that threw to make an overflow "chamber". After that was sufficiently dry I added a slab. [Well I guess, according top these picture, I added the short spouts that would serve as my overflow first. ;-) ]
Here are an assortment of little spouts that will carry overflow to the overflow chamber and down the pipe.
Doesn't this look like a strange kind of teapot? The two spouts will have a rubber tube between them! This is Kent McLaughlin's design that he freely shared with me and I hope he doesn't mind that I'm sharing with you?!?!
The overflow openings.
You leave a comment if you have a question. The overflow part is the critical design part.Next:
- painting designs on the sinks and glazing them.
- moving them carefully over to Penland
- Load into their new soda/salt/wood/gas kiln!
- try to stay out the way of Sam Chung's class!
- Unload the kiln and deliver sinks to a waiting crew to install in the guest house.
