This page has my super cool, but older handmade wheel. To see my coolest current wheel, go here.
I throw most of my pots on a lightweight, low-momentum kickwheel. The wheel is eastern in origin–most likely Korean, Chinese, or Japanese, but my guess is Korean. I’ve heard it called a Kero Kuro (I like this name best), Karatsu wheel, Karatsu-style wheel, kick wheel, and onggi wheel. It probably has even more names than that! Whatever it’s called, here it is:
I completely built the wheel from scratch, from the ground up. Because I have no welder nor steel shop, I did have the metalwork done for me by a welder. The wheel consists of a square metal base and a 1″ metal bar welded to the middle. At the end of the bar is a cone shape which a metal cup, more obtuse than the cone, sits on and spins. On the bottom of the bar twirls a bearing, seated on the kick plate of the wheel. The kickplate and lower wheelhead sections were made from 1/2″ plywood cut from 1 sheet. I made a circle jig for my table saw and cut a bunch of disks, larger for the bottom. A few of the bottom disks I angled the table saw blade to give me a slant and easier kicking area. The top of the wheelhead is made out of a crosscut slab of a birch tree. I assume just plywood well sealed would work just fine, but I wanted something a bit more inspirational and wobbly. I sealed it with Watco Danish Oil, which I wouldn’t recommend although it seems to be holding up okay. I think I would just use some type of spar urethane. I thought about using that bartop epoxy, but it’s kind of pricey and I already had the danish oil on hand. The kickplate and wheelhead are connected by four thick wood dowels that completely go through the kickplate and wheelhead. I wrapped the wheel in ski rope, as I was already using modern materials and thought this looked fun.
The wheel cost approximately $150 to build myself, including the cost for the metalwork ($50). I used modern materials because that is what most things are made of these days and it’s cheap. I liked the idea of using today’s stuff rather than something akin to historical wheels.
The wheel itself is extremely quiet–quieter than a prius sneaking up on you. It is also very agile, making work more intuitive instead of being bogged down by weight. This does present its own issues–centering and throwing larger amounts of clay is not for the faint of heart, as in muscle. It ain’t easy.
**Also pictured: a trim tool that I took a long time fashioning only to dislike it once I tried using it. I never like the trim tools I make, which is weird because I have made a healthy handful of them and I have improved at making them, yet they always disappoint.