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Scott Creek Pottery and 3D Potter have combined their resources to come up with an inexpensive wall mount loader for our extruder tubes.
We now offer an easy way of handloading tubes without the added expense of purchasing a large pug mill. Although a de-airing pug mill is by far the best way to load the tubes, this wall mounted loader is a very good second choice.
2 versions of the extruder are available either for the 1000/2000 ml tubes or the 3600/4000ml tubes.
Method for clay preparation before loading
Cut purchased 25 LB bag of clay into 4 smaller square sections using a wire tool and cut straight down the new bag of clay in two positions, see photo.
Put a micro fiber towel or felt cloth into the plastic bag and add 10-15 oz of water. The moisture from the cloth will penetrate into the clay in a day or so.
The time necessary for the moisture to migrate into the clay depends on your environment and time. Some people say place the bag in the sun. I found that the more time you give it the better off so do this up to several days ahead.
Once the clay has fully absorbed the water, just open the bag and take out one of the long rectangles. At this point it's important not to introduce any air into the perfectly de-aired clay that came from the clay manufacturer. Now the trick is to form this rectangle into a circle slightly undersized but almost equal to the inside dimension of the Scott Creek pottery extruder. It takes some practice but what you're trying to do is get the entire slug of clay all the way down to the bottom of the extruder tube without any additional air.
And then comes the easy part. Just mount the handle and the piston down the tube and ratchet your way down until the polycarbonate tube is almost full.
