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#36 What to do after shaping your pottery!
31 Plays3 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery you will learn what to do after you shaped you pottery. Often times this is forgotten but doing these things will help when it comes time to trimming your pots.
What you will learn on this episode:
How to cut the skirt off your clay
Why we take off the slip from the pot
and much more
If you have any pottery questions send them to us on Instagram @nictorres_pottery
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Shaping Your Pottery'
00:00:01
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.
Post-Shaping Essentials
00:00:18
Speaker
In this episode, you're going to be learning about what you need to do after you have gotten the shape that you wanted and you have made the pot that you wanted.
00:00:29
Speaker
There are certain things that we always have to kind of do in order to make things easier for us after we're done shaping. And they're very simple things, but sometimes we forget to do them. So I have to make sure that you guys don't forget to do them.
Importance of Removing Slip
00:00:46
Speaker
So the first thing that you need to do is you need to take a rib. It doesn't matter what type of rib it is. You just need to take away the slip off the clay.
00:00:57
Speaker
Taking away the slip off the clay is going to make it a lot easier for you when you are ready to trim, and it makes it dry more even. Because if it doesn't dry even, then some parts are going to be hard, and other parts are going to be soft. And that's not what you want. You want it to be all even and drying at the same time. So don't forget to take off the slip.
Trimming Techniques
00:01:20
Speaker
The second thing that you need to do
00:01:23
Speaker
is you have to cut off the skirt of the base, the bowl, the mug, whatever you're making. So what happens is when we are pooling and we are shaping our pottery, we tend to get this little skirt of clay and it's just kind of extra clay that we weren't able to get from the bottom to the top. So we have to cut off the skirt. How do we cut off the skirt?
00:01:48
Speaker
So normally we would have this wooden knife looking thing and you want to use that and you just press it at the, get it towards the bottom of the pot. You don't want to go too high because if you go too high, it's going to ruin the shape. So try to go pretty low with this. And what you're going to do is you're going to take the end of it, the tip of it, and you're going to press down the clay while it is
00:02:18
Speaker
the wheel is moving. Remember to keep your hands steady. If your hands start wobbling, it's going to ruin your shape. So keep your hands steady and cut into the clay. And once you have it into the clay, you want to keep it going until it hits the wheel head or to the back. Once you have it and hit the wheel head, release that from the little divot that you made.
00:02:45
Speaker
And then what you're going to do now is you're going to flip it onto its side, and you're going to press underneath that little divot that you made. And you're going to press underneath it until it maybe goes about around once or twice. And after that, you take the knife and you cut in half, and you literally just grab that little section that you just cut off and then you recycle it.
00:03:08
Speaker
That's all you have to do in order to cut off the skirt.
Final Touches and Satisfaction
00:03:11
Speaker
The third and last step that you need to make sure when you are, say, trimming is easier, is to make sure that you have the right shape in mind. And make sure the rim is how you want it. Because if it's not something that you like, why are you gonna want to keep it and try to put more effort to it? So you have to make sure that it's the shape that you like.
00:03:34
Speaker
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.