What are the must have things for a ceramics studio?  A table? a kiln? a wheel?

I would say a plaster bat!

So, when every time we working on no matter wheel throwing or hand building, there’s more or less some clay we take away from the object, usually we collect/recycle them and keep them wet then put these wet clay on plaster bat when it enough to wedge another batch of clay. After placing wet clay onto the plaster bat, the bat will start to absorbing water contained in clay and we can turning clay up side down after some time to help.

To make a plaster bat for yourself is possible, I bought a sack of 25kg plaster and used 20kg to mix with water by 10:8(plaster powder:water) for 50x50x10cm size frame. There were some hassles occurred when I poured mixed plaster into the frame, the bucket was a bit too heavy for me for the first mix(8 liters of water mixed) when trying to scraping all the plaster from bucket and even the level of plaster in the frame. Fortunately I got my dad’s help to hold up the bucket, so I was able to even the top and push plaster to the four corners. After the first pouring, plaster height level was about the middle of the frame where I marked earlier, then place a stainless mesh on top and push it a bit down into the plaster. The plaster began heat up while I doing this step so I suggest to prepare everything you need around so you can grab it when it’s time to use it.

I hope this will help you to make your plaster bat, let know if there’s any part I missed, I will try my best to explain.