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#39 How do I trim my pottery?
32 Plays3 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery we talk about how to trim your pottery. Trimming is one of those things if you don't have the right steps before hand can be a real pain in the booty.
You will the eight steps I take when trimming to have the best success as possible
Don't skip these skips these steps when trimming your pottery.
If you have questions about this episode send them to Nic on Instagram @nictorres_pottery
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Transcript
Introduction & Pottery Passion
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
Nick's Trimming Troubles
00:00:14
Speaker
is up my pottery shapers and welcome to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. When I was in my first year of pottery,
00:00:21
Speaker
I really struggled with trimming and trimming was one of the hardest things for me because I didn't know exactly the steps that it took in order to trim with ease. So I struggled a long time and I kind of had to figure it out all by myself.
Leather Hard Clay: The Key to Trimming?
00:00:38
Speaker
So that's why in this episode, I'm gonna give you eight steps, eight or so steps in order so that you can trim with ease and so that you can have an easier time with it. The first step into trimming anything. It doesn't matter what you are trimming, bowl, mug, planter, something weird. You need to make sure that the clay is leather hard.
00:01:01
Speaker
If the clay is too soft, you're not going to be able to trim at all, really. Same thing if the clay is too hard. So you want it to be right in the middle.
Slap Center Technique: Mastering Pot Centering
00:01:10
Speaker
So once you have it to be leather hard, step two is you want to flip the pot over, make sure the rim is facing down towards the wheel head.
00:01:22
Speaker
And you want to get it as close to the center as possible. Use those lines on the wheel to really try to line up the clip. The third step is you got to get it centered. So I like to use this technique called slap center because you kind of have to find a rhythm to it. So how do you slap center? Slap centering is you get the wheel going pretty slow while the pot is upside down. And all you're doing is you're slapping
00:01:51
Speaker
making little slaps until the clay gets to the middle. But your other hand, so I use my left hand because the clay is, the wheel is going counterclockwise. So I use my left hand to tap it towards the center. And my right hand is there to just brace it to catch it just in case it just flies off because it'll happen sometimes.
Trimming Tools: Crafting the Perfect Shape
00:02:12
Speaker
So you're making little tiny slaps. Make sure you're hitting it hard enough so that it moves
00:02:18
Speaker
but not too hard so that where it just flies off. But you keep on making these tiny little slaps until the clay is centered. And you can check if the clay is centered by taking a needle tool and you go into the bottom of the clay and seeing if it's a perfect circle at the bottom.
00:02:38
Speaker
If it's not a perfect circle, keep on tapping until it's centered or at least close to center. Because sometimes you can't get it exactly centered, but you can get it close. So after you have got the clay centered and you've got it slapped centered, the fourth step is you need to start using your trimming tool to smooth the entire pot pretty much. This little step is going to take away a lot of the clay and it's going to smooth it out. And you are smoothing out
00:03:07
Speaker
the bottom of the clay. So it's kind of round a little bit. Make sure it's not flat like a square anymore. So you want to round out kind of the pot itself.
Foot Ring Mastery: The L Cut Technique
00:03:16
Speaker
So after you have started to round out your pot and you think you have come to a good place to stop, step five is you want to make an L cut at the bottom of your clay. An L cut is you're just simply taking your trimming tools and you are pressing in so that it looks like an L.
00:03:37
Speaker
and this is going to start your foot ring and you press in like that so that it can kind of get its shape. I recommend going about half an inch to a quarter of an inch down because that just kind of makes it look very nice. Once you have your L cup, you need to make the marks for your foot ring. With a foot ring, we make an indent at the bottom of the
00:04:03
Speaker
of the clay, but we don't go all the way to the edges. So we have to mark the bottom of our pot. So again, I recommend going about a quarter of an inch. Anything larger than that kind of makes the clay not as good.
Avoiding Mistakes in Pot Trimming
00:04:19
Speaker
It doesn't make the trimming not as good. So once you have the mark, you can use a trimming tool or needle tool. It doesn't matter. The seventh step that you're going to do is
00:04:31
Speaker
You're going to go from the center of the bottom of the pot and you're going to slowly move towards that mark, but never go past it. And then you're going to go back and you lift up your trimming tool and you can do that process again. You do that a few times and make sure you don't go all the way through because if you go all the way through, the pot is ruined. So you have to make sure that you're doing that and you can kind of
00:04:57
Speaker
tap it a little bit and hear it and see if it's or if you feel it that it's like squishing a little bit you know it's time to stop. So you can keep on doing that until you get a good bottom little bit of it.
Finishing Touches & Signing Off
00:05:11
Speaker
The eighth and final step is you want to smooth out your pot with a damp sponge.
00:05:18
Speaker
This is going to get rid of a lot of those lines and it's going to make a pot a lot smoother and it's going to make everything not as sharp. So you take a damp sponge and you first start with your foot ring. Make sure the foot ring is not super sharp because this can cut you and we don't want it to cut people. We don't want it to scratch up our tables or counters or anything. So we have to make sure it's a little bit rounded.
00:05:44
Speaker
After you have rounded the foot ring, what you want to do now is to smooth out the rest of the pot. Just keep on going up and down with that damp sponge until you think it's pretty smooth. And really, I guess the last step after this is just to kind of sign your pot to make sure so everybody knows that it's yours.
00:06:04
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.