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#17 How to center your clay
52 Plays3 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery we are beginning a pottery lesson every Wednesday and Frida and what better way then to talk about how to center clay.
Centering clay is the most important step when throwing on the wheel if you don't center all the way then it will ruin the piece you are trying to make.
The steps needed to take when centering are
1. Get clay as close to center as possible
2. Seal the clay to the wheel
3. Stabalize your arms into your body
4. Cone up and down to get out some air bubbles
5. Make sure that the clay is completly centered
If you have any pottery questions send me an email at nictorres1684@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Schedule
00:00:00
Speaker
welcome shaping your pottery listeners this is Nick Torres here and starting this week every Wednesday and Friday I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a pottery lesson I'll explain some things that I have learned that I have helped me and that can help you and every Wednesday and Friday this is what I will be doing and Mondays you guys will still get some awesome interviews with people that I interview so
00:00:26
Speaker
Let's get started on today's lesson. Today's lesson
Centering Clay: Basics & Preparation
00:00:31
Speaker
will be about centering. Centering is the very first thing you need to be able to get good at when you're learning how to throw on the wheel. So, how do you set in your play? Well, it's not that many steps you actually need to take. Before we actually get started with the steps, the first thing you need to know
00:00:54
Speaker
is that you should always wedge your clay. You need to prepare your clay before you are able to start working on it. Now that your clay has been wedged up let's get to the wheel. So when you get to the wheel you want to get the clay as close as possible as you possibly can. This will make everything so much easier and even if you get it a little bit off center or if it's not perfect you can kind of slap the clay towards the middle
00:01:19
Speaker
and then it will be closer to the middle and make things a lot easier for you. The next thing you need to do is that you need to seal the clay to the wheel or to the back. This is going to keep it from flying around everywhere and you won't have to get a new clay if you mess up.
Techniques for Stabilizing Clay
00:01:35
Speaker
So now that you have the clay centered and it is sealed to the wheel, the next thing you need to do is you need to be able to have water and you need to wet the clay and after that you have to
00:01:49
Speaker
start bracing your elbows into your body. This is going to help a lot with your centering whether you're making a two pound, something that is two pound or something that is ten pounds. This is going to help you so much because you need to be able to stabilize the clay so you do that by stabilizing your arms first. So drive your elbows into your hips or into your body depending if you're standing or sitting. Now
00:02:19
Speaker
once you have that the position of your hand really matters when you are going to try to center think of it like a diamond you're making a diamond with your hands and your hands are always connected no matter what and your elbows are always into your body and then you just get the wheels spinning and you keep on adding water as you need once it gets dry this will prevent friction in your hands from feeling all like rough and burnt for now
00:02:48
Speaker
You keep on doing that diamond shape until you have it centered. But how do you know when it's centered? Well,
Advanced Centering Techniques: Coning
00:02:58
Speaker
there's a really easy trick, two tricks that you can really do. So the first one is you can close your eyes and you can kind of feel if it's centered or not. And then the second one is that you can use a needle tool or some type of tool that can make a line.
00:03:16
Speaker
When you make a line on a clay, if it's like a perfect circle, that's how you know it's centered. If it's a little off, it becomes like an oval or a weird looking shape. That's how you know it's not centered. Another thing that you need to do is before it's actually all centered, you need to be able to cone up and down depending how much clay you are using. If you're using a lot less clay, you can cone up and down once or twice. If you're using more clay,
00:03:46
Speaker
you're gonna need three, four, five times sometimes maybe. But how do you cone up and down? So when you cone up and down you're pretty much squeezing the clay downward and then you catch it at the bottom with your hands and you do that and you bring up a little bit of cone. The cone doesn't have to be super high and then once you are bringing it down
Preview of Next Episode
00:04:07
Speaker
you place your left hand that the left hand is going to catch the clay and the right hand is going to push the clay down and as you're pushing the clay down you're pushing the clay forward a little bit with the right hand and then you just catch the clay with your left hand and that's all it takes with centering. Join me on the next episode where I will show you how to open your clay. I'll explain how to open your clay.