Big Etsy Upload!
I've just completed perhaps the biggest upload of pots to my Etsy site I've ever done in one day. It's been a long day, and I'm a little too tired to be creative. But I said it all in the descriptions, so come on over to the site and see...
Saw you featured in CM.....took me a week to get past the cover, but I made it. We seem to have traveled a similar path, 'just diving in', but of the most joy to my heart was your 'most used piece of equipment'....for I too own an old pacifica, as memory serves, and thats not all to reliable, I got it in 1980. I have wore out one wheel head, and a bottom shaft bearing, but it still grinds out a lot of pots, I love it.I still have a newer one I picked up at a garage sale,still in the box, for not a garage sale price, and it sits proudly next to the old timer, watching, waitingg its turn.
ReplyDeleteOH, this is great!
ReplyDeleteMy old Pacifica....
I was 20 years old and had never driven into Chicago. I was going to go to Lill Street Gallery to buy my first wheel. So I looked at a map and figured out the most direct route -- across highway 30 and up highway 1. This is where I would insert one of those emoticons with the rolling eyes if it were available in this comment box, because obviously that route was not only ridiculously long, but dangerous as well.
Nevertheless, I arrived and bought the wheel. I stuck it and 500 pounds of stoneware into the trunk and back seat of my '66 Buick Skylark. I went home via the route the Lil St folks wrote down for me!
When I got home I broke in the wheel by throwing a two quart pitcher (as I remember it, I liked the shape and then went and pulled a too-thin handle for it).
Sometime along in the late eighties or early nineties I bought a new Pacifica. Curious thing though -- I use the old one for throwing and the new one for trimming.
The new one has a system of belts that are nothing more than glorified rubber bands. They consistently break and stretch and don't have enough holding power to continuously throw big pieces.
The old wheel has a serious belt. Of course, over thirty years I've replaced it. I've also replaced the bearings twice, and put a new pedal on it. But it's held up quite well.
I guess I'm overly sentimental about my tools (if you read my "Kiln" piece, you know that about me!). It's nice to hear (from your comment here) that I'm not alone.
JB