Rail Mounted Tea Making Facility on location at Petone Railway Modelers.
The "Rail Mounted Tea Making Facility" like my other Rail mounted teapot (See the six wheeler elsewhere in this gallery) was designed to be compatible with the standard 5 inch guage railway modellers tracks. Obviously this needed to be tested, so I took the teapot out on location to the local Model Engineer's railway in Petone (New Zealand) for a photo session.
I was pleased to see that it fit the tracks well and ran on them smoothly.
This view shows the fancy glaze on the ceramic teapot section. I was after a good "oil spot" black to give a look a bit like the big black steam engines that used to run on New Zealand's railways. Despite heaps of black iron oxide in the glaze I ended up with this rather strange glaze that was this beige honey colour where it was flat and black/brown on vertical and overhung surfaces. So the two colours on this teapot were achieved with the one glaze. I called the glaze "Surprising Black". The glaze has an excellent buttery feel and excellent fit despite that fact that it does not use lead compounds. All materials used in this glaze were food safe.
This image shows the cradle in action. The cradle assembly sits on a hard disk drive reader arm bearing, while the main chassis pivots are hard disk drive motors. All of the wood used in the structure is recovered waste wood from various sources including some old windowsill (Matai?) which was removed because of patches of rot, and some waste shipping pallets. Although the pallet wood was very hard and splintery to work with, it came up with the amazing golden amber flecks through it when varnished.
I was pleased to see that it fit the tracks well and ran on them smoothly.
This view shows the fancy glaze on the ceramic teapot section. I was after a good "oil spot" black to give a look a bit like the big black steam engines that used to run on New Zealand's railways. Despite heaps of black iron oxide in the glaze I ended up with this rather strange glaze that was this beige honey colour where it was flat and black/brown on vertical and overhung surfaces. So the two colours on this teapot were achieved with the one glaze. I called the glaze "Surprising Black". The glaze has an excellent buttery feel and excellent fit despite that fact that it does not use lead compounds. All materials used in this glaze were food safe.
This image shows the cradle in action. The cradle assembly sits on a hard disk drive reader arm bearing, while the main chassis pivots are hard disk drive motors. All of the wood used in the structure is recovered waste wood from various sources including some old windowsill (Matai?) which was removed because of patches of rot, and some waste shipping pallets. Although the pallet wood was very hard and splintery to work with, it came up with the amazing golden amber flecks through it when varnished.