Lina’s Clay Cave

Lina’s new passion is mug making, so she got a kiln for her birthday:

The garage is too cold in the winter and the basement rooms are mostly carpet, so we decided to turn the laundry/utility room into her Clay cave.

Every space needs a workbench, so I built her a benchtop with a sandwich of two 3/4″ plywood pieces surrounded by a real wood edge. Then I finished it with something called a sealer from the boating world, but it ended up being a more like a poly-eurothane or varnish. Then I finished it with a ceramic coating that should repel all water and prevent the top from warping.

While the top was curing, I installed a sink. We don’t want any clay to end up in our pipes, so we needed a clay trap to catch all the clay before it hits the drain. I tried a couple different styles and ended up building one myself out of some storage containers.

• The sink drain falls into a small bin inside the large bin. Any big clay pieces that enter the small bin should settle on the bottom.
• When the first bin gets 90% full, it drains into a second small bin that has the same function.
• When the second bin gets 3/4 full, it fills the large bin through some holes I drilled on the side.
• The large bin hopefully catches anything that slips through the first two bins before it fills up about 1/2 way and heads to a p-trap to prevent odors from entering the room.

The top was still curing, so then I added a shelf with some leftover mahogany plywood from the wet-bar build:

Then we could finally install everything permanently:

The lights have two modes. This is regular work:

And then you can lower two lights into focus mode to eliminate shadows: