6″ Plunger Tile Cutter

Quick and easy plunger style tile cutter. I saw this design in a book called Handmade Tiles by Frank Giorgini. It’s made from a scrap of 3/4″ plywood, galvanized sheet metal, masonite, dowel rods and a paint stirring stick.
We wanted 6″ square tiles so I cut the plywood to 6-3/8″ to allow for shrinkage. Then I cut a strip of sheet metal 1-3/4 x 26″. Line the metal up with one corner and the top edge of the plywood and staple or nail the metal to the plywood. You then bend the metal around the first corner. I had a piece of ply the same size that helped with using a hammer to bend the metal nice and square. Nail the second side and repeat for the third and forth. Then wrap the excess over the first side. Cut a piece of masonite a tiny and I mean a tiny bit smaller than the plywood. If you make it too small you will see an indention in the tile. Drill a couple 1/2″ holes or what ever size match the dowels you intend to use. Hold the masonite up against the plywood and use a pencil to trace the holes onto the masonite. Drill holes in the middle of the markings with a countersinking bit so the drywall screws don’t stick out. The hardest part is drilling holes into both ends of the dowels. You have to do it or they will split. Stick the dowels through the plywood and screw the masonite to the dowels, then attach some sort of handle.

For use we cut a piece of paper 6″ square and laid it on the slab where we wanted to cut and position the cutter over the paper and push down. Lift by the handle and move the cutter to a board and hold the plunger down while lifting the cutter. The paper will assist by not letting the clay stick to the masonite.

Tile Bevel Tool

We are making some bevel tiles for a client.  I was not happy with the little jig we had been using to bevel tiles and we had a lot to make so a new tool was in order.

I’ll make another one NOT out of pressure treated wood but this will do for now. The cutter is a head pin for jewelry making.  Just slide it along the tile.

45° Trim Tool

As a woodworker I hate butt joints, so when I tried making these slab style vases I wanted to use 45° miter joints. After making the tall squarish vase on the left I thought there had to be a better way to cut the joints rather than an xacto knife.   So I came up  with a new tool.

I took a short strip of 1/2″ plywood and used my miter saw to cut a 45° angle on one end.  Then attached a scrap of 3/4″ pine with some 1″ staples at a position that would allow the razor blade to scrape along the top of our work table.  The razor blade is one that is perforated so  you can snap off the tip.  It had a hole already in it.  I had to use the nut and washer as a spacer so the shortest screw I had wouldn’t poke out the other side.

You just place your clay slab on along the edge of the table and slide the tool towards you holding it firmly against the bottom and side of the table.  You can loosen the screw and turn the blade down while not in use.

More Grapes

We have a new tile showroom that is now carrying our tile. How cool is that. They are putting our grapevine backsplash in one of the kitchen demos. The single tile shown here is 9″ x 12″ with 3″ molding goes above the sink area. The field tile and moldings aren’t glazed yet. We cut the half tiles and the miters with a tile saw then sand smooth the sharp spots and glaze them so they don’t have a rough edge.

We used the Bailey DRB 30″ slab roller we bought off craiglist last year to make all the field tile for the job.  What took days before with a rolling pin now takes a few hours…totally awesome.

Going Large

One extra large gladiola coming up.

Printed Epson waterproof canvas with our antique Epson 9600 ultrachrome printer.  Original image was shot in the studio with a Sinar F  4×5, Kodak EPP transparency film and scanned via a Umax flatbed scanner w/transparency adapter.   Print is a little flat so were gonna sell it and print another one for the house a little snappier.

How I miss using our Sinar.  I can’t wait to finally get a digital back for it.

Proud As A Peacock

We are searching and searching for more of this glaze. It’s Duncan Spanish Moss Crystaltone glaze. It’s also discontinued.
Help the jar is almost empty.

Check Out My Mug

Most of the blogger potters I check out make some sort of drinking mugs so I thought I would give it a whirl.
It’s really nice to hold and the flipped out lip makes it nice on the lips.

Some More Carpentry

I have to say, I love finish carpentry. There’s nothings nicer than a tight fitting dovetail joint. Now while I don’t do hand cut dovetails I’m still proud of my routed ones.

A whole bunch of them.

All the cabinet boxes are constructed out of 3/4″ birch plywood. The doors and face faceframes are poplar with 1/4″ birch plywood panels on the doors.

We chose a really big crown to tie the cabinets into the ceiling.

I still have to finish the corner doors and drawer fronts on the large drawers before we put the concrete counter on this side of the pantry. Not that it stopped us from filling everything to the brim.

We hard wired,  in and under cabinet lighting.

The sink cabinet on the other side of the room has a 2″ thick polished concrete counter-top.

Bathroom Vanity Tiles

Here are some earthenware tiles we made. The cap tiles are solid slipcast with plaster molds we made from urethane casts from wood chair rail moldings.
Everything was glazed with Duncan Mocha Cream Crackle and fired to 05.

We made the concrete countertop too.

The subway tiles were rolled with at rolling pin and hand cut using a needle tool and a plastic template. The blue frosted glass square tiles were purchased from Home Depot Expo.

Coffered Ceiling

I haven’t put up any carpentry posts so I thought I would start with the coffered ceiling in our house that we’re building.

We started with Angi painting the ceiling. Way easier doing it before all the molding went up.

Had to rig a safety cage on our scaffolding to give Angi a little more security up there. I rolled her around the room. It took her a good part of a day to get it all painted.

Next was to attach all the behind the scenes nailing skeleton.

It was all made from 1/2″ CDX plywood making it very economical yet extremely strong.
We planed ahead and put bracing in the trusses before we put up the drywall to make attaching these U shaped boxes to the ceiling much easier.  Used liquid nails and screws to make the attachments.

Here’s a detail of how the molding attached to the nailer’s.

We used MDF for the bottom section not plywood like in the photo.  We bought some 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF and ripped them to width with a circular saw and a rip fence.  Way safer and easier than using our table saw.  We primed it before putting it up to save a step. The rest is made up of relatively inexpensive pre-primed MDF moldings.  A 4.5″ baseboard upside down and a 4.5″ crown.

Here’s the first couple sections of molding going up.

Shot everything up with a 15ga Senco nail gun, I coped all the joints rather than just doing 45° corners. It meant spending a lot of time with the coping saw but the joints are much better.

I filled all the nail holes caulked and sanded everything as I went across the room.

We wanted to get the ceiling done before putting down the floor so we wouldn’t be rolling the scaffolding over the new hardwood.

As you can see I had just about had enough when we were almost done.  It’s 4″ wide 3/4″ thick cabin grade unfinished maple.

Done…Well with that part.