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About 9 inches tall.

No, I never wedge. Use it straight out of the bag. I have a pug mill to recycle the scraps. But before the pug mill, I threw scraps out. My time was more valuable than all of the wedging.

Thanks for watching. When the two pieces are still wet but easy to handle with out distorting the shape, I put hash marks on both pieces where they will be joined. The I take a generous amount of slip(liquid clay by mixing clay with water) and put a generous amount on both pieces. I place on one top of the other with a wriggle and then pressure. I usually cover the top to below the joint with a plastic bag so it will dry slowly. And that is about it.

Most of the time I do no trimming.

I know folks will overlap edges of slices and pound them down. I don’t do it that way. I cut off enough clay to make the piece and take my rolling pin and bang it down to a thinner wider slab and then go to the slab roller. I honestly rarely use the slab roller-only with larger pieces. I prefer the rolling pin method because I can manipulate the shape of the clay better that way and honestly it is a lot faster for me to do it this way than roll clay back and forth through the rollers. Hope that helps. Sue

Murphy's oil soap will work but ceramic supplies companies sell mold soap. The key is to carefully wipe it on then off letting it dry between coats till the plaster mold is essentially waterproof.

Nice to hear from you. Bacon Cookers can be tricky with their double rims. Couple of tips. Have to get the thickness on the bottom just right. Too thick, more likely to crack. Too thin and they are weak. I test everyone with a needle tool to be slightly less than 1/4”. It is critical that the bottom of the cylinder and the bottom of the rim are not thicker than the rest of the walls. (The transition from horizontal to vertical). How they dry is the reason for the cracks. That is why making sure those areas I mentioned above are not too thick. If they are too thick, they are the last to dry and if rims dry first, something has to allow for the shrinkage that still needs to occur and the result is a crack in the bottom. I have modified my drying a bit since the video, after watching Washington Streets video on cracking. He suggests to cover the pots and uncover the pots and repeat until the bottom is too hard to put a finger nail mark into them. Uncover, let them dry a bit (couple hours depending on conditions in your studio. Then cover them good again letting the piece even out with dryness/wetness. And repeat until you get to the hardness as mentioned above. And of course, get them upside down when the piece will allow you to for drying. I almost never have cracking with my bacon cookers anymore with these methods. Double rimmed pieces need a little more care and attention. It is too easy for the rims to dry first and it has two areas at the bottom that are easy to leave too thick. Hope this helps. And if you get a chance, watch some of the Washington Street videos. They are exceptional. Let me know how it goes and if you have any questions. Sue

@@salvaterrapottery thanks for the advice. Wife and I have been (attempting) pottery for 6 years since we are both retired. Eight years ago I had purchased a bacon cooker and loved the thing. I decided to teach myself how to make one. I made them but they weren't for sale. One day I had 50 of them out for pictures, wife saw them and said quit making them or start selling. It was around Christmas time and I sold 30 at a craft show. In my area no-one had seen such a thing.

That is awesome! I’m honestly a bit burnt out on making them. I’m working on an order for 120 of them right now and as of this year we quit shipping them for wholesale to slow down the orders. Once someone uses one, they are hooked and buy more for others. If you are looking for a wholesale account, Domestic, Domestic wants them and are one of the folks we quit shipping to. They were ordering 75-100 at a time but would be happy with less if they could get them.

@@salvaterrapottery order of 120 would definitely be cause for burnout. 20 a month is about my limit. I throw them and the wife does the glazing. I try to throw them around 6 inches tall and 4.25 wide to allow for shrinkage. Hope for finished cooker to be at least 5 inches tall, if less I put a succulent in it and sell as a flower pot. I also start with 3 to 3.15 lbs of clay not counting the handle.

Back again. Tried your tip on bagging bacon cookers to avoid bottom cracks. Have 20 bagged and drying and so far no cracks. Usually I would expect 3 or 4 with a bottom crack. Thanks again.

I dipped the bottom 3/4 in a green glaze. Turned it upside down dipped the top in a white glaze, overlapping the green. Took a squirt bottle and streaked a raspberry glaze where the 2 other glazes meet. Hope that helps.

You keep the glaze away from the bottom half of the projects or make bisque “cookies” for them to rest on while they glaze fire. They can’t touch each other during the glaze firing process or they’ll be vitrified together

Good to hear from you. I’m still doing some Ram Pressing. I’m taking my original pieces and then having them made with a 3-d printer that includes the cutting edge and gutter. I’m not sure if I will have time to do another video. I let my staff go and am doing all of the production myself now. Since I can throw faster than making pieces on the press, I’m not doing as much mold making.

Thanks for the video, sister. Please, I need how to distribute the air pressure on the mold in numbers 1 bar....at the end of the mold vent

Awesome can’t wait to meet you!

Hey William, I mostly use this for speed. I use Forbes liquid wax when the piece is too large to dip. I used to paint everything with Forbes but a kiln load would take me 45 minutes to brush on and was best if I waited until the next day to glaze. I can wax an entire load in about 10 minutes and glaze immediately. The rubber latex is expensive, time consuming and I find it difficult to work with. I’ll post the bacon cooker handle with in the next couple of days. I taped it weeks ago or at least I thought I did and ended up with a picture of me starting-forgot to switch to video. Aahhhh

Hi Jim, For most of my years I was in a basement that got quite cold but never froze. I didn’t experience any issues with drying due to temperature. Many folks will tell to dry slowly. The speed isn’t as important as drying evenly. Although I do sometimes try to get the bottoms a bit ahead of the rims on certain pieces. My favorite technique lately is covering pots or closing the cart. Then open it up for part of the day and close it again letting the piece even out in the enclosed environment. Repeat until the clay is past leather hard and changes color where it looks mostly dry. You don’t want wind or a breeze to get on them when open either. Hope that helps.

They are called a threaded rod. You can get a long one at Lowes and cut it with a hack saw. They are in the lighting section usually on an end cap. I have also bought them through a company that sells lamp parts in casa grande Arizona. Here is a link to a place. There are different sizes so make sure you get the size you need. antiquelampsupply.com/collections/pipe-nipples-rod/products/1-8-ip-solid-brass-all-thread-nipples-pipe

We made an excel cheat sheet to figure this out for all sizes. Send me an email and will forward it to you.

We use ours frequently. They are on our website and we ship.

We used double tempered Masonite to make the bats and the master they fit in. When they are new you don’t even need to underwire the piece. It will pop off the bat during drying and leave a nice sleek bottom