Скачать или смотреть How I Cheat When Making Bowls

After experiencing two apprenticeships and seeing dozens of potters throw in great detail, you’d be surprised by how often fixes like this pop up, be it during the throwing or trimming stage or even on finished, fired work. ‘Bodgering’ is what I want to call it but perhaps that’s just what myself and a few fellow makers call it.

Perhaps the process that helps the most with learning this skill, of how to fix mis-thrown vessels, is teaching. During my three years teaching evening classes at Maze Hill Pottery, I encountered all kinds of mistakes, naturally, I made the same errors when learning myself. Often, you don’t have time to just remove the lump of clay and start again, so you figure out ways of correcting wobbles, holes in pots, thin bases, uneven rims, the lot. Then, when making yourself, you’ll find you implement what you’ve learnt fixing pots from time to time. Thank goodness.

That’s the first half of this video, the second part focuses on removing pots from the wheel neatly with just my hands without the use of a throwing batt. Now, there is more to this, such as how a slightly grogged clay can help tremendously for this process as compared to if you’re using a completely smooth body—those are MUCH harder to lift away like this as they tend to be stickier.

I also tend to spin the wheel at the exact same moment that I lift the pot away, this helps to break and seal there might be, but more importantly, I use a thicker, twisted metal wire to separate pot from wheel. This creates a much more extensive, serrated slice, that’s less likely to stick back to itself after the wire has passed through. So, if the wire you’re using is very smooth and fine, in combination with using a smoother clay body, then lifting pots off with just your hands is going to be more troublesome.

#bowl #pottery #wheelthrownpottery #ceramics #tutorial