Ribbons O Clay

Back to making tiles today. We had a problem on Wednesday when the extruder Mark I kind of blew up. The ready rod bent and the rotating motion of the plunger on the drill introduced a gyrating motion that eventually got so bad it jammed up and torqued the whole machine into a curve. Amazing how much pressure can be put on a device like that. The 5/8th plywood base was actually bent about 1/2" up from the table where it was clamped. We only got about 6 feet of extruded clay out before we had to give it up.
So Engineer Boy went back to the drawing board and changed the plunger motion to straight down with a lever. He totally stole the idea from a commercially made extruder. We attached it to the wall so the ribbon of clay comes out and is held straight by gravity until I can catch it. I have to stand on a chair to raise the lever high enough, but that gives me several feet of space below for a long ribbon. You can see the grey stripe below the tube in the picture. If you want to see a similar version in motion, there is an expert village video here which is where EB got the new design concept.

Today I extruded these ribbons. Once they set up a little I will cut them to length and smooth them out a bit. We only need about 30 tiles in total so this should be enough in addition to what we made on Wednesday. The Mark II works well but it is difficult to get the plunger back up out of the tube. There is extreme suction working to keep it in there, and I have to lever it out again. Engineer Boy thinks if he makes the disc out of plastic and a little smaller diameter, that it will get easier.
You might wonder why, now that we have what we need for tiles, we continue to refine the design. Extruders are great fun, and besides tiles they can make handles, coils, hollow tubes for wind chimes and sides for baking wear.