Cleaning Mr. Peter Pugger - Part II

Good evening (It's Tuesday evening, as I sit here typing this up.. :) )! Hope ya'll are doing well!  So guess what....I DID IT!!!  I am soo proud of myself!  I completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled my pugmill!  Those that have been following me for a bit know what an AWESOME accomplishment this is, especially considering all the health hurdles I traverse daily.  :)  But *pat on the back* for me!  :-D  I didn't get it spotless, like Scott and Angie did when they cleaned their Shimpo Pugmill.  BUT, I got it clean enough for my purposes.  I want to make my own batch of paper clay (which, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a tutorial on how to make your own paperclay, that actually provides accurate ratios of paper pulp to clay?!?)!  Good thing I plan on writing about THAT too..hehe

So I would say...in total, it probably took me 3.5-4 hours, broken up over two days to get my pugmill clean.  Not terrible given the circumstances. I'm pleased with that. You can see Part I of the cleaning process here.  When I went back to finish cleaning it this afternoon, I took one of my wooden ribs and finished scraping

ALL CLEAN

down the sides, getting all the dried clay off.  Once I did that, I took a little scrub brush and got it nice and wet and started scrubbing the inside.  It helped loosen up all the clay that was adhered to the hopper and the auger.  Then I took a wet rag and wiped everything down....followed by a dry rag.  Repeat that process as necessary.  As soon as I got it clean, put back together.. scrap clay got immediately thrown into it. When I pug it tomorrow, we shall see if I got the bolts tight enough so that a vacuum is able to form during the de-airing process.  *fingers crossed*.  I really do love my little Peter Pugger VPM-9. It's the perfect size for a small scale hobby/home studio potter like myself.  Now...if I can just decide on a single clay body to work with (rather than 3)...or at least only have a single clay body that I use the pugmill to reclaim clay in..all will be well and I shouldn't have to clean Mr. Pugger very often! hehe

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