Tom's Pie Plates
I use a drill and mixer to mix 50 pounds of natural red clay with 15 gallons of water in a crock. I pour the resulting slurry through a 200 mesh sieve and into 5 gallon plastic buckets.
After a few weeks I siphon off the water and pour the thickened slurry onto pieces of canvas placed over large porous clay bats. The following day I place the canvas and clay on dry bats and put the wet bats in the sun to dry. When the clay stiffens sufficiently, I wedge it and put it in plastic buckets for storage.
I throw the pie plates, trim them, scrape them with a metal rib and then burnish them on the wheel.
When the pieces are dry I fire them in an electric kiln to cone one which produces very usable and attractive non-porous bakeware.
I recently narrowed my focus to concentrate on and specialize in exceptional pie plates.
My pie plates are ovenproof, microwavable and dishwasher safe.
See the catalogue page for customer reviews.