The recent floods in northern NSW and SE Queensland resulted in many pottery wheels getting covered by flood water. In the 1980’s I was a technical officer at Southern Cross University Ceramics Department when while we were situated in Keen Street Lismore. During that time we had at least 3 floods come through our studios. Luckily we managed to move our equipment to higher ground. Not everyone is so lucky and many people lost their pottery gear. It’s not all bad news about motors as they can be restored quite easily. The important thing is not to turn them on before they have been cleaned up. The bloke who does motor repairs for me explained the process. The process is best performed by a professional but if you’re handy around the workshop it can be done. Usually floodwaters contain a lot of silt and other muck that can clog a motor up. The process involves taking the motor apart and thoroughly washing all parts with clean water. The motor then needs to be dried and rewind shops use a heated wind tunnel sort of thing. You could probably improvise by using a fan heater and a length of 300mm plastic water pipe or something similar. The parts need to be dried out fairly quickly and need to be totally dry before reassembling. Once again it is better to have a rewind shop do this. The motor should be tested before being used. The rest of the wheel can be hosed out and dried off. I’m not too sure how electronic wheels like Venco direct drives would fare in floods but with careful cleaning and drying they should be resurectable .