I’m primarily a hand builder, and most of my pieces are created from slabs that have to be rolled out. I have access to a large slab roller during my weekly pottery studio sessions, but when I work in my home studio, I’ve been using a big rolling pin and wooden rolling guides to create level slabs. I’ve wanted to buy a professional grade slab roller for some time, but they are expensive — and very large. I share my home studio space with the washer and dryer and my home office, and there really isn’t a lot of room for a full-size slab roller.

Another consideration is that my right knee has no cartilage and I can’t walk or stand for very long. My Bailey Pro X Pottery Wheel has a worksurface on the opposite end of the turntable, and I’ve got a 2-ft x 2-ft birch board clamped onto that. I added locking casters to the legs so I can roll it around, and I sit on a rolling stool. When I want to use the wheel, I roll over to the turntable side, and when I want to hand build, I roll over to the birch board side. The casters let me position my workstation where I need it to be, and make cleaning up my clay messes very easy.  

When I first starting working in my home studio, I grabbed a small metal rolling tool cart from the garage to hold my supplies and tools while I was working. I could roll it around to where I needed it, and everything was easy to reach from a sitting position. The cart is small enough to fit well in my space but perfectly suited for my pottery uses. Stainless steel is easy to clean and very sturdy, and the locking casters keep it absolutely still when I need it.

I finally bit the bullet in June and ordered the Nidec Shimpo Mini Slab Roller, which was the perfect size to fit on my little tool cart, and it has lots of good reviews. But when I tried it out on top of my cart, I quickly realized that this wasn’t going to be an out-of-the-box solution. For starters, this model uses a crank handle that you rotate, and the slab board slides forward and back to flatten chunks of clay into a uniform slab. At 19-inches high, my tool cart was actually a little too low to comfortably crank the handle without stooping over.

In addition, the slab roller has telescoping “stabilizer bars” for legs to support the rolling board. Because the metal legs were sitting directly on smooth, slick sheet metal, the motion of the turning crank caused them to constantly slide back into the roller base, and then the slab board would fall off the legs and the slab would get gouged by the metal roller. Finally, the cranking motion also made the slab roller base twist and slide around like crazy whenever I tried to use it.

I noticed that there are two holes in the base of the slab roller that could be used to attach the unit to a work surface, but my cart is powder-coated stainless steel and I didn’t want to drill holes into that. But if I could get some custom-sized boards and posts, I could add a wooden shelf to my tool cart, raising the height of the work surface — and I could bolt the slab roller onto the top surface. That would solve all the problems.

I already had clamps, wood glue, and a power drill with lots of bits, but I don’t have a power saw — nor do I need to own one because this would be the only time I’d use it. To build my cart extension, I needed two worksurfaces that measured 18-inches wide by 26.75-inches long; one to attach to the top of the metal cart, and the other would be attached to that with four corner posts. I could then drill holes into that top worksurface and bolt in the slab roller.

I searched online to see if I could find some plywood boards that were sized to fit my cart and discovered that Home Depot does custom-cutting for lumber purchases. The first ten cuts are free, and then it’s 50¢ a cut after that. The guys at Home Depot were really helpful and picked out some clearance lumber to cut down to size. Since the cart is 18-inches wide, they grabbed two 6-inch wide boards and two 3-inch boards and cut them into four pieces each. For the posts, they cut a 2×4 into 8-inch sections. Between the lumber and the cutting fee, it was under $10 for my project.

The materials were cheap, but it was going to take most of my weekend to put it all together. Now that it’s done, I am so proud of myself! It’s definitely a little rustic looking, but it’s very sturdy and puts the slab roller at the perfect height for rolling out slabs while sitting on my stool. Plus, I got an additional storage shelf, which is coming in very handy (extra storage space always does!). It is amazingly easy to roll out slabs now, and I am having a blast!

If you want to see how I built my new slab roller table by myself, take a look at the photo gallery below.