How to Make a DIY Pottery Wheel | I Like To Make Stuff

hey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're gonna make a pottery wheel [Music] for quite a while now I've been wanting to make a pottery wheel but I haven't had a very good reason to do it recently my wife started taking pottery classes and so now I can make one for her to use I don't know a whole lot about pottery wheels so I've done a little bit of research and I found out a few things about the motor for what I've found you have to have a relatively low rpm motor you don't want it to go too fast but it does have to have a lot of torque because you are pushing down on top of it plus you have the weight of the clay itself so we've got this motor that's higher rpm than we want but we're gonna slow it down using some pulleys so we've got these two fly wheels here with a belt in between them and this should ratio it down to the right rpm I've got a speed controller coming so we can slow this down even more but in the meantime let's go ahead and mount all this stuff to the plate [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] we hear a first snag right off the bat this is made for an electric scooter or hoverboard and I guess those are supposed to be chain driven so I assume that you could take off this nut and then pull that sprocket right off and you'd have a post that you could work on well apparently this nut is not supposed to come off it turns freely on the threaded insert there but it won't actually come loose so I mean they're gonna have to cut it out or figure out something else before we can move on we don't actually need to have this nut we just need the post underneath it and it's the same size as the pulley we're gonna put on it so I think we're gonna try with the Dremel just to cut through the outside of this nut and pry it off it doesn't even matter if we have the threads underneath it we just need the post now that we got this nut taken off I wanted to go ahead and hook up the motor to the power supply and make sure all of the electronics are going to work I got this little power supply that's going to an 18 volt transformer that's plugged in and this supply comes with a directional chain so you can switch the direction of the motor and a speed controller so I've got this hooked up and a little piece of tape so we can see how quickly this motor is going to turn when you turn on the speed controller you can see that it starts turning that's a pretty decent clip on there and then once you turn it all the way down you can change the direction so that way you can turn the table left and right for left-handed or right-handed people who are doing pottery the speed controller is currently just a potentiometer just a knob but this will eventually need to be a pedal so you can control it with your foot we'll get to that later on the flywheel is going to go down here about like this and that's going to connect to the surface called the bat that you put the clay on through this shaft so that's going to be mounted here and then this whole thing is going to be driven by a belt that'll go around here a belt needs to be tight to the motor and usually you would do that with an idler wheel but we're not going to do that instead we're gonna mount the motor here on a plate that can shift forward and backward just a little bit and that'll help us adjust the tension on the belt to get this mounted I have to run this shaft through this piece of plywood and to do that we're gonna put in a bearing now this is a pretty large bearing it's one and 1/8 of an inch on the outside so we're going to use a Forstner bit to make a hole to press this into [Music] [Music] my first attempt here placing the motor I'm gonna put it on a plate and then attach to that plate to the main surface with some L brackets that way I can get all of this attached right here tension it where I want it and then drive and some screws to put these down in place this may end up not being strong enough but we're gonna try it and see how it works and then if it doesn't work try something else [Music] to mount this motor to the piece of wood typically you would want to drill a hole and then drive a bolt through and use the threads that are already in the mounting bracket that would hold it really tightly unfortunately I can't seem to find any piece of hardware in my entire stash over there that fits this thread pattern so temporarily I'm going to just screw this on here to hold it in place now that's probably not going to work long term because of the tension that's gonna be working against those screws but we'll try it out with the screws and if it works then we'll go back and replace those with a bolt and a nut [Music] [Applause] to get this pulley installed on the shaft of the motor I measured the outside of the shaft and then later on after I ordered the pulley realized that this is actually a sleeve that's not attached so we're gonna have to attach this butt so that we can attach this we're going to use some two-part epoxy mix it up and put this piece on the shaft and then grind on a flat so we can attach the pulley the epoxy is all dry now so this is good and in place but I need a flat surface to be able to sit this set screw against so I'm gonna hold this shaft and then use a file to just gently file in just a small flat spike now I've got the motor mounted just by one screw and that actually works as a pivot point you can see here that I can move it off that pivot point to put more or less tension on the belt so once I get this running I can adjust it like this to get it to the correct tightness and then drive in some screws here to lock it into place [Music] so we've got this functionally working it turns it's nice and strong but nothing is really attached so the next step is to temporarily attach the all the electronics down and then turn this into a table by building some legs and this thing is evolving as I continue to work on it so the placement of all this stuff may have to change as we move ahead eventually I will want all this stuff in some sort of a box so that it's protected and not gonna fall away but for right now I'm just gonna use the strap to hold these pieces in place that way I don't have to worry about them falling out when I flip it over [Music] so it actually does kind of work as a table obviously these legs are not going to be in their final form we need to have some sort of a stringer in between them so you can't just push on it and fold the legs over but for now they work pretty well we're also going to end up cutting this shape down so you can sit around it a little bit easier and I don't want to test the motor like it is right now because as soon as this starts turning the shaft is gonna fall out so until we get that connected up here on the top we're not going to test it the next part is creating the piece that goes on top of the shaft let's get started on that this video is sponsored by Casper and I'm really excited about that because I legitimately love my Casper mattress our entire family has them Josh and his family got one they're just really really good in fact they have three different types to fit different types of sleepers now if you want to check them out go to Casper calm slash il TMS and you can look at the Casper the essential or the wave figure out which one works best for you then you order it when you order it use the code I'll TMS and you get fifty dollars off select mattress purchases terms and conditions apply but then they ship it to you in a box and in your house you can open up the box it inflates you get to sleep on it in your own bed for a hundred nights and if you don't like it for any reason whatsoever they will come get it take it away and give you your money back there's really no reason not to do it so go to Casper comm slash il TMS and use that code I'll tee a message check out thanks Casper now that we've got these pieces cut it's time to attach them to the shaft and to do that we're gonna start with this coupler the shaft is gonna come up through here and to attach those pieces together we're gonna drill a hole through both of them and then drive in a nail to lock them together so that they will spin at the same time then on top of this piece we'll add a whole bunch of epoxy and then put the bat down onto there now this plastic doesn't typically stick super well to epoxy but because these pieces are going to be pressed together there's a whole lot of surface area in there and you're never going to really be pulling up on this piece so it should stick just fine now to get the right size hole for this piece we did some tests on a bad one to make sure that the drill bit was the right size for the nail the nail can fit through there but it's tight enough that it won't fall out that'll be a nice solid lock in between the coupler and the shaft [Applause] [Music] [Music] I started thinking about how to control the speed of the motor with a pedal and it's similar to this motor controller where there's a potentiometer that changes the speed and that made me think of a guitar pedal a lot of volume pedals are actually built basically the same way they have a potentiometer inside and then a small gear that gets rotated when you move the pedal [Music] now that we've got the pedal working it's time to go ahead and reinforce these legs with some stringers now I want to have kind of a bird's mouth on the end of this so that it fits into the angle of this 2x4 there's a really simple way to do this you just lay the piece that's gonna be the stringer on top get it lined up with the outside edge and then trace the underside how it interacts with the 2x4 when you flip it over you've got roughly your shape that needs to be cut out you can do that on the bandsaw [Music] with those stringers on the base for this thing is really nice and sturdy so we're going to move up here to the top and start to curve this you're gonna be sitting about right here and so getting rid of these corners will make it a lot more comfortable now the thing that goes right here is called a bat that's what you work with the clay on top of and it's a twelve inch circle so I've got this piece cut to 16 inches across so we've got a little bit of extra space on each side and from the center of this post all the way to the edge is eight inches so I'm gonna mark eight inches from each one of the corners in every direction and then draw a curve in between them and I'll just cut that curve out with a jigsaw [Music] I cut that out with a jigsaw forgetting to score the top layer and so you can see there's a whole lot of tear out on the plywood if you take a knife and cut along the line you're gonna split the grain where the fibers on the top face and you won't have quite as much tear out [Music] now before we can actually start assembling everything we have to put down a basin to catch the water and the clay and for that we're gonna use a cake pan this is a three inch cake pan it's gonna be just the right size but before we can put it down we have to drill a hole in the center the first bits video we ever did was all about finding the center of different shapes so if you want to figure out how to find the center of a circle go check that one out so after we get that hole will mount it down to the board then we can start assembling everything on the inside of it [Music] next we've got these ball bearing casters you would put these underneath something to help it roll on a surface but we're gonna flip it upside down so that the bat can sit on them we're also going to use them to mount this cake pan down to the surface this container is going to eventually have a bunch of water in it when you're working with the clay so I want to make sure to seal up all of these screw holes with some caulking and when I use this step that it actually pulled the aluminum up and made a little bit of a dam around the shaft which is pretty cool but I'm also going to add another bead of caulking around here just to try to keep the water out of that hole so it doesn't fall down into the bearing [Music] now that this is all fixing in place the plan was to put epoxy in this pocket and then put it down on that piece but now we're kind of thinking that maybe it doesn't need the epoxy there's nothing that would cause this to come off of that piece unless it were really loose but it's actually a really nice tight fit so for now I think I'm just gonna push it on there we're gonna try it out if it needs epoxy we can always add it later so I've got this pulled up a little bit above where it needs to end up so that I can fit it on to that coupler like that and then we can just push it down to where it lands in the bearings [Music] after testing this thing out we found that it was extremely loud like almost unbearable so we added a gasket underneath it with some EBA foam and it's better but listen to this still incredibly loud and you would not be comfortable doing this so we've come up with another idea to add some different types of bearings that theoretically should be quieter here's where we're at with the new bearings we've got this 3d printed carriage and then these bearings and I cut down in several pieces of steel rod to go in between here and it fits right down into that so now we've got four of these assemblies in place we're going to try to space them out and keep them even from the center point so that we can screw these down and then put the bat on top of them hopefully it'll be a lot quieter we've got the new bearings in place we did a test it runs great and listen to how much quieter it is that's full speed and I don't even have to raise my voice it's so much better now we also had to play a little bit with it to get the top true but actually once we got it true it's staying where we want it so we're gonna take it off again put on a little bit of epoxy put it on for its final placement and then we should be good to go instead of epoxy we're actually gonna put a little bit of CA glue because I don't know how permanent the epoxy would be I'm not entirely sure we even need to glue it in place so we're just going to use this if we ever need to break it off to re-level it or something should be pretty easy to do with this stuff I think we're pretty good it seems to be running true it's held in place and it's quiet so last couple of things we're going to put a little shelf here just with some pocket holes and plywood add some more pieces to cover up all the electronics and keep them safe and then extend the switch around to a place where we can easily get to it then we can try it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of the last things this needs is to add some circles all the different pottery wheels that I've seen have different circles on the bat so that you can find the center easily to put down the clay so I'm going to use one of my turning tools to try to add some circles that are all based around the center point now it's time to finally try this thing out and I want to give a little disclaimer I have no idea what I'm doing and this is not about actually making pottery this is about making a tool so that I can learn a new skill so don't critique my form here this is just to make sure that the tool works let's do it [Music] [Music] I can totally see why this would take a whole lot of practice because I realized that every surface of every finger on the inside and the outside is doing work and you have to kind of keep track of what everything's doing and where your pressure is being put this is going to be fun [Music] this thing turned out really well although I have no experience with a tool like this I don't know how it compares to other ones but immediately I was able to throw on some clay and turn it into a thing that I wanted to make and I call that a win there are some things I need to work on still I believe there's a lot of water flying around from the cup to the wheel and so I think painting this entire surface will just waterproof it a little bit and that'll be good if you learn some stuff from this video I would love to hear about it because as we know how you learn it helps us make these videos better for you guys we've got a ton of other types of project videos that you may want to check out over there and if you're not subscribed please go ahead and do that and hit the bell so you get notified as soon as we put up a new video that's it for this one guys thanks for watching see you next time here's where we're at with the new bearings we've got this let me do all that again because I could have liked

Channel: I Like To Make Stuff

Views: 919,062

Rating: 4.8962479 out of 5

Keywords: pottery wheel, diy, diy pottery wheel, make, pottery wheel review, clay, throwing, pottery throwing, beginning pottery, pottery basics, make your own, motor, cnc, pot, pots, do it yourself, how to, how-to, iltms, i like to make stuff, bob clagett, josh price, jonathon forby, anthony rose, pottery, ceramics, ceramic making, arts and crafts, crafts, hobby, hobbies, how to make, wheel, bat, pottery bat, try guys, iliketomakestuff, electronics, 3D printing, prop making, woodworking, metalworking

Id: mqCJsYnI6Fc

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/kainel]

Anyone know of a better way to go about this? This is the first one I've seen that looks like it will hold up. I'm actually planning on making it with a few variances I can do on my laser cutter ( like Batt pins for plywood batts, laser out the main sheet and then bullnose route it, build in some tool holders)