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banding wheel advice sought

updated mon 28 oct 02

 

Chris Schafale on sat 26 oct 02


Those blue Shimpo ones are wonderful -- heavy and spin forever. If
I were doing it again, I'd buy the taller one, personally, but the short
one is fine and you can always put it up on something if you need
the height.

Chris


Date sent: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 19:15:10 -0600
Send reply to: Ceramic Arts Discussion List

From: James Bowen
Subject: banding wheel advice sought
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG

> I am thinking of getting a banding wheel and will appreciate
> any input on what to buy. Maker? tall vs short? iron vs
> aluminum? anything to help make the decision.
> Thanks from the prairie of Eastern Colorado where the news
> of the death of our voice Paul Wellstone is devastating.
> Stay centered.
>
>
>
> "Who can tell what purpose is served by destinies
> And whether to have lived on earth means little
> Or much."
> --Czeslaw Milosz
>
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Light One Candle Pottery
Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, USA
(south of Raleigh)
candle@intrex.net
http://www.lightonecandle.com

vince pitelka on sat 26 oct 02


> I am thinking of getting a banding wheel and will appreciate
> any input on what to buy. Maker? tall vs short? iron vs
> aluminum? anything to help make the decision.
> Thanks from the prairie of Eastern Colorado where the news
> of the death of our voice Paul Wellstone is devastating.
> Stay centered.

Jim -
I have not seen any of the aluminum ones that I would bother with. Shimpo
and Lockerbie makes very good ones, as does Van Ho and several other Chinese
or Korean manufacturers. As long as it is stoutly built, and has very good
bearings, it will serve you well. Personally, I like the low ones because
of the stability, but it all depends on what you are using it for. If you
are actually doing banding, then you might want the taller one so you can
more easily spin the shaft collar with your hand. If you are using it for
making coil pots or for more heavy-duty banding, then you might want to get
the lower one.

Personally, I cannot understand why none of the manufacturers make aluminum
ones that are very stout like the cast iron ones. They would work just as
well, and would much be less expensive to ship, and generally easier to
handle.
Best wishes -
- Vince

Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Crafts
Tennessee Technological University
1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville TN 37166
Home - vpitelka@dtccom.net
615/597-5376
Work - wpitelka@tntech.edu
615/597-6801 ext. 111, fax 615/597-6803
http://www.craftcenter.tntech.edu/

Barbara on sat 26 oct 02


I just paid $74 for a 12' weighted banding wheel. Costly---YES.
Wonderful----YES. Worth every penny, absolutely.
It's very heavy, weighted, continues to revolve as you work your pot. I 'd
love to have another as I like to work on a cple of large coil/slab pots at
a time . I may just ask for another for Xmas!
Barb Skelton
Clayfolks in Oregon

James Bowen on sat 26 oct 02


I am thinking of getting a banding wheel and will appreciate
any input on what to buy. Maker? tall vs short? iron vs
aluminum? anything to help make the decision.
Thanks from the prairie of Eastern Colorado where the news
of the death of our voice Paul Wellstone is devastating.
Stay centered.



"Who can tell what purpose is served by destinies
And whether to have lived on earth means little
Or much."
--Czeslaw Milosz

Leland G. Hall on sun 27 oct 02


I don't know if anyone can use this or not, but I came up with a trick for
a great (for me anyway) buget banding wheel. I wound up with a discarded
burned out toy type potters wheel. Threw it in the scrap heap. Had a good
and true aluminum head. I also had a supply of 8 to 10 pound soapstone
sculpture bases left over from some previous projects which I had lost
interest in. The wheel head had a three quarter inch shaft. I used my
drill press to bore an appropriately sized whole in the center of one of
the chunks of soapstone, smeared a little wheel-bearing grease in there,
slipped the shaft in and presto! a heck for stout, stable and true banding
wheel. I keep this one in the spray booth in the raku shed sit pots on it
for spraying glaze. Works great, and cost little, and recycled too.
Leland in La Pine
Before The Wheel Enterprises

Dave Gayman on sun 27 oct 02


Good ones are roughly the same, though some spin more freely than
others. I really like my Lockerbie for the way you can lock it with the
turn-thingie (technical term) out the side. You can also reef down on it
slightly to dial in some drag, which I find useful for really fine-line work.

A cheap banding wheel with brass or bronze bushings (rather than ball
bearings) is going to get loose over time, clay being very abrasive. I
wish the Lockerbie's ball bearings were of the sealed type, however.

Dave

At 07:15 PM 10/26/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>I am thinking of getting a banding wheel and will appreciate
>any input on what to buy.

Marianne Lombardo on sun 27 oct 02


Well, you're all going to laugh when you hear what I used for a banding
wheel. Many years (not gonna tell you how many), I did a lot of banding, as
well as airbrushing. I used an old record player turntable as my banding
wheel! I used that poor old thing for over ten years.

Now I use a sturdy upside-down bucket that I have glued onto a wooden bat
that aligns perfectly with the pins on my potter's wheel. I glued a rubber
(I think it's rubber) circle onto the top (bottom of the bucket). Works
great! Actually, I made two, a taller one and a shorter one.

And for small pots that I feel like working upstairs at the kitchen table, I
have a lovely, very heavy, solid marble lazy susan thingy that I never had
any other use for that I was given one Christmas.

Marianne Lombardo
Omemee, Ontario, Canada
email: mlombardo@nexicom.net