Transcript
Speaker: If you love pottery and want to take your skills to the next level, you're in the right place. Find your own pottery style right here on Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Let's get started. What is up my pottery shapers and welcome to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. When I was in my first year of pottery, one of the things that I really, really did not enjoy doing was trimming my pots.
Speaker: And I didn't really understand why we had to trim our pots. It just seemed like a big waste of time to me. And I just didn't get it. And it made me frustrated because I just couldn't I wasn't able to do it. So that was another reason why I couldn't I didn't like it. And it was just so time consuming to me. But I learned from my teacher that trimming is actually very, very beneficial to you just the way your pots look. And it prevents a lot of things from happening. So
Speaker: That's why we must trim. A lot of potters don't like to trim, especially beginners, but it's something that we must do in order to make our pottery look nice. So in this episode, I will give you four reasons why we should be trimming our pots after we have got it
Speaker: to the leather hard stage. The first reason why we should be really trimming our pots is because it can make the pottery look nice. Sometimes you don't really get a shape that you really want, but trimming can completely almost alter the shape if you do it right. So that's why we want to trim our pots because it can really make our pots look way better. If you make a crappy piece, you can trim it and it can make it look way nicer.
Speaker: Reason number two for trimming our pots is that sometimes we end up making a pot that is really heavy. Like let's say we have a really small mug, but we use a lot of clay for it, but we don't want it to be that heavy. Trimming can make it a lot lighter and it can make it look a lot smoother by doing it because trimming takes off the clay.
Speaker: So it makes it lighter and it makes it look smooth, everything like that. Reason number three that we should be always trimming our pots is that when we make a foot ring and we are trimming our pots, it prevents warping on the bottom of the pot and S -cracks. These two things are something that we almost can never control, but by trimming,
Speaker: It gives us more control over our clay, over our pottery once it's fired. Because if it's warped, the whole piece just kind of messes up. Same thing with an S -crack. If you get an S -crack, you can get leaks. The mug or bowl, vase, whatever it is, it just doesn't look as nice because there's a crack in there when there shouldn't be. So that's why we should be trimming our pots. It prevents S -cracks from warping.
Speaker: The fourth and final reason why we should be trimming our work is that it shows people that we really care about work and that we take the time to do these little things to make our pottery look nice. And when we're able to show people that our pottery looks nice, we're going to be able to sell it a lot easier because people could see the work that you're putting in. They could see that you really care about your work.
Speaker: So you have to be able to care about your work and you have to trim your pots because otherwise you're just going to show up to people and just be like, eh, this is kind of nothing to me. So that's why you want to trim your pot. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Do you have questions about pottery that you'd like Nick to answer? Send them to us on Instagram at Nick Torres underscore pottery. We'll see you next time.
