Kuba
Full Member
SztukKilka in Old Formu
Posts: 111
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Post by Kuba on Feb 11, 2016 15:31:54 GMT -6
Hi  I want to ask You about bats! I myself and other potter friends in Poland would like to order some bats in US (there is no distributor of bats and DE or UK or other Europe shops are crazy expensive...) We found some interesting offer form www.clay-king.com/pottery_wheels/bat_list.html I would like to ask You about opinion these bats (especially Speedball Bats 12" and 14") Maybe You can recommend some other bats? (with pins for pinholes). Regards Jakub |
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Post by mohawkpiper on Feb 12, 2016 19:16:36 GMT -6
Hi Jakub,
I'll share my two cents...
Hopefully others do too...
I have never used the speedball bats so take my thoughts on them with a grain of salt...
The plastic ones I would personally stay away from, unless you do not have holes in your wheel head for pins (it sounds like they can be put on a wheel without batpins...)
I would imagine them being plastic would not help with drying out the bottoms of your pieces and it would take ages for them to dry enough to pop off the bats. You may still have to cut them off, in which case why even get bats in the first place. Also, I don't know about you, but I love to torch stuff often on the wheel head right after I threw it. I would imagine the plastic bats would not hold up to well to the torch flame. (melting...)
The masonite bats can take a beating with the flame and sometimes can even burn a little if you go crazy but they still work just fine.
The masonite bats however I love. I do not know what brand I use, but I would imagine they are all pretty similar from brand to brand, from speedball to new england or wonderbat or whatever.
The masonite bats do warp, but that has never been a problem for me as you can just flip them and then they sit just fine on the wheel head again.
occasionally over time the holes in the masonite bats get larger and they don't stay in place as well (like they slide back and forth ever so slightly.) this i do not like about them. I put a piece of plastic over the pin prior to putting the bat on if the problem is really bad but most of the time i just deal with it, because really it isn't that big of a problem.
the masonite bats can be put on hot kilns to help dry the bottoms and they can be torched and I have never caught one on fire so for me that is a plus. I have burned a few a little with the torch but you can start to smell it so you know to stop, and it doesnt make the bat useless. It just has a little black mark. aesthetic problem only.
I have snapped a few masonite bats in half accidentally bending them over my knee to help the pot come off (in which case the pot goes flying and smashes to the floor ) so I guess that is a negative.
I don't like bats that cannot be flipped (wonderbat) because even those do warp and if the center is lower than the outside it is useless.
on that note, my wife loves the wonderbat (adapter set with inserts) because of the size of the inserts. You can fit a million more things on bats next to each other and save a lot of space whereas the regular masonite bats take up a lot of space on the shelf. The inserts arent so bad actually because even though they are designed to be one side only, the insert itself can still be flipped. (they do warp, even if they claim they dont.) I use the adapter set with inserts too sometimes for smaller items and glazecatchers and whatnot, but the square part is smaller so you cant throw larger diameter based things on it.
Think that's about all i got.
G
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