| From the pages of Pottery Making Illustrated
Trains and Boats by Bill Shinn
A completed Viking ship. The mast is made from dowels and the oars from popsicle sticks glued to dowels.
| While the extruder has gradually made headway into the potter’s and sculptor’s world, it still remains one of the best kept secrets for creating unique forms in clay. By creating original dies, you can produce an infinite variety of shapes (see Extruder, Mold & Tiles: Forming Techniques) that go far beyond the making of simple handles, coils or tubes. The process of easily forming elongated shapes also suggests other possibilities for creating representational sculptural forms, such as boats, buses, trains, snakes, etc., as well as functional forms like horns, flutes and fountains. |
Trains
With its consistent shape and cross section, a train is an ideal subject for an extruded form. For the literal re-creation of specific types of locomotives and their respective cars, the internet provides valuable information. However, the basic shapes for trains are surprisingly easy to extrude with the construction of only two dies (figure 1). The rectangular die forms, with the exception of the ends, almost the entire shape of the passenger and boxcars, a caboose and a coal car. The round die forms the tank car and ore carrier.
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| 1. Basic extruded shapes for the engine along with the dies required for their construction. Most of the engine is made with an extrusion from the circular die. The center section has been carved away and expanded to form the boiler. The cab is cut from a short extrusion from the square die. | 2. Details from the engine are both thrown and hand constructed.
| 3. Stamps are used to form the wheels. | 4. All the details of this European passenger car were made from one die, including the seats, the tables and overhead luggage racks. The windows were cut to accommodate their spacing.
| 5. The San Francisco cable car was almost totally made with one die with undesired parts cut away. The seats in the open section were cut away, reversed then reinstalled. Wooden dowels were used for hand grips.
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The various detailed parts such as the smokestack, domes and valve cylinders can be wheel thrown, whereas the cow catcher and smaller parts are assembled and carved by hand (figure 2). The wheels (figure 3) are made with stamps, fired separately then glued to the cars after firing. If desired, the interiors of passenger cars and the caboose can be made separately on a slab, then inserted into one end before closing up (figure 4). This can be done either before or after firing.
Beyond the basic forms, special rail vehicles such as San Francisco and Swiss cable cars are made with unique dies (figure 5). The San Francisco cable car was almost totally made using extrusions from one die, with undesired parts cut away. The seats in the open section were cut away, reversed, then reinstalled. Wooden dowels were used to create handgrips.
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Boats
Extruding boats generally requires a great deal more clay manipulation than trains. While contemporary boat shapes (liners, carriers, subs, etc.) require the extrusion of a constant straight linear shape, historical ships are more sculpturally curved and graceful. The clay has to be altered both during the extrusion and soon afterward while the clay is still plastic. The die pattern is usually drawn from the cross section of the center point (figure 6).
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| 6. The die shape for a ship is created from the cross section of the middle of the hull. This die shape is from the famous Oseberg ship on display in Oslo, Norway. | 7. After cutting and removing the front portion of the deck, gently compress the clay to form the pointed bow. | 8. Cut away the excess clay to form the rounded upward curvature of the keel.
| 9. Carve the ends of the overlapping planking, then add the sculpted prow and stern. These are often in the form of a spiral or mythological creature. Rest the hull on a foam padded wooden support as you work.
| 10. Carve seats from the remaining decking.
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The first-time use of some dies reveal some pleasant surprises. In making the Viking ship, the characteristic graceful upward curves associated with the vessel formed automatically when the clay was pinched together to create the bow and stern (figure 7). Portions of the flat deck had to be cut away in the front and back to make this possible. The rounded, upward curvature of the keel is formed by cutting away excess clay (figure 8). Once the hull has set up, the planking on the sides is given definition and a sculpted prow and stern added (figure 9).
The lines of the planking of the deck were scored by the heads of brads pushed into the top edge of the flat deck space on the die. Seats were carved from the remaining decking (figure 10). You can make shields using a bisque stamp, but potentially fragile additions like oars, masts and rigging should be made from non fired materials. In this case, I’ve used popsicle sticks glued to dowels for oars, dowels for the mast and twine for the rigging.
Bill Shin is a studio potter living in Santa Maria, CA. For comments, you can contact him at shinn@sbceo.org.
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