This is my newest purple butterfly cane.  I finished it last night for a wholesale order.  The cane weighs just over 3 pounds.  It will yield approximately 600 - 900 segments, depending on their diameter and length.  I reduced it right away rather than letting it cool;  I prefer that method.  The initial reduction is made by slamming the side of the cane onto a work surface.  Small rotations are made between each impact.  The vibrations from the slamming move through the clay, and the friction warms the clay, making it more pliable.  After about a dozen or so slams onto the work surface, I squeezed the cane to compress the clay, and gave it a slight back and forth twisting motion.  Then I slammed it again.  The process of reducing it from 6 inch diameter to 3 inch diameter took less than 10 minutes.  At that point, the cane was too long to reduce comfortably, so I cut it in half and then started the process again, with the smaller diameter.  I worked the slamming technique until the cane diameter was small enough that I was jamming my fingers occasionally when I slammed.  Ouch!  But it’s a very effective way to reduce a large cane with a short amount of time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 7:36 am and is filed under What's Happening in the Studio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.