Wieland Pug Mill

I have an old Wieland Pug Mill for sale and it will be an incredible pug mill for the right person.

 

It is a very heavy duty mostly stainless steel pugmill made by a small company in California. Charlie Wieland was kind of a genius/mad scientist who designed and built these pugmills and other pieces of pottery equipment. He is now retired. I think this one is from the 80's and I have had it since the early 90s. It cost 6500.00 when new. 

It has a 2 hp motor and it's very heavy and powerful. The clay that it makes is, in my opinion, better than the clay that I have gotten out of both my Bluebird and Venco pugmills, and is the best clay that I have ever used. It's very compressed and throws very well. You can wedge it but you don't really need to. 

The Wieland however pugs very slowly. When the 4 inch nozzle is on the pugmill, the clay comes out at about 12 inches a minute, so this is not a high volume pugmill. You get incredibly compressed clay but very slowly. 

The pugmill is on wheels so that it rolls around easily. There was a vacuum pump that came with it but it stopped working really well and I bought a  vacuum pump to replace it. It is virtually brand new. 

The clay comes in at the top, is extruded towards the chamber, and then falls through the  vacuum chamber and is finally extruded through a nozzle at the bottom. If you have a good vacuum, the clay is very compressed.

The augers are stainless steel and a material that Charlie called tabular alumina. I never got any rust stuff in my porcelain but there is one place where the clay could touch regular steel.

I could not get all the pictures of the pugmill in this one post so I will post the rest of the pictures in the next post.