Sizing it Up, The Other Side

Boy, I had a rough day!
Work is becoming sort of difficult to deal with, but since I have no control over some things, I guess I just soldier on.
Work though, is not what this is about.
I come home and check the stuff I cranked out over the weekend to see if it was ready for the kiln:



The last two days have been sort of hot and dry so the pieces were ready to go.
How many of them would I be able to get in my smallish compact kiln?
When you do a bisque fire, the pieces can touch each other, so space is not really a problem.
You do sort of have to get a little creative:



That's fifteen pieces I stuffed in there!
Not too bad.
Could have stacked more things in there, but that was all I had.
Well I actually had two more mugs to do, but I decided to save them for the next time.
The mugs.
On Sunday, when I did the mugs, I made a simple tool so that I could get some consistency in size:



Yeppers, we're talking production now!
The tool is easy to use: make mug, stick tool in mug, check for depth and width, correct and adjust, finish off mug:



I used that blue mug and the purple mug I made as templates for size.
Upon further inspection, I think I made the mugs too large.
Not a good thing for I made three of them.
The more I look at them, the less confident I feel about those chain handles on them.
I'll fire them before making adjustments, but I'll probably cut down the height and the width on the next batch.
I think the tool I made is okay for the tire handles, they just look out of proportion for the chain ones:



The other tool I need is on it's way.
I ordered a kitchen scale from Amazon so that I can weigh out the clay for each mug before I start to make it. That way, besides the size, the thickness of the walls should be around the same also.
The mugs I did on Sunday were sort of eyeballed thus I feel like they came out on the thick side.
Anyways, this a pretty much how production work goes.
When I used to make bowls, I would make about a dozen or so two pound balls of clay before I sat down on the wheel, then when I started, the only thing to worry about was height and width.
Same with the mugs, except on a smaller scale.
It also helps to have a prototype or model in front of you so that you can concentrate on the shape.
This is also why I really don't like doing functional ware.
Things gotta match and the sizes have to be right so you spend a lot of time checking and adjusting.
I'd rather just crank stuff out, like the bottle forms, and just let my hands do their thing.
Okay, so we've seen the artsy fartsy side of ceramics with the UFTs(which are back home, by the way) and the Industrial Teapot(I don't know exactly where it is).
That's sort of the fun side.
This production side, this making of all things in the same size, is the other side of ceramics, the money side.
I'm not really happy on this side.
For some though, it's this side that helps pay the bills.