Throwing a Cylinder

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I’m Jenni Fritzlan. I am a potter and an instructor at Ploughshare. I’ve been making pots on the wheel for 20 years, and I took my first hand building lesson 24 years ago. In this video, we will be making a cylinder. So everything we make starts out as a cylinder. Even a plate starts out as a wide, shallow cylinder, and a bowl is only a variation of a cylinder. But everything starts as a cylinder.

And for that reason, in this first video, we’re going to concentrate on just making a cylinder. The first thing that we have to do before you make any pot is you want to make sure that your clay is prepared very well. And we need to wedge the clay, which we’ll be getting all of the air bubbles out of the clay. Wrap your hands around the clay, press down with your palms, then pull up with your fingers and repeat.

Generally for ladies, I’ll have them start with a pound and a half of clay. For men, about two pounds of clay. It’s just a nice amount of clay to work with. It’s not too much for you to start with on the wheel, but it’s enough to have something work in your hands. This is called wedging. And if you’ve properly prepared and wedged your clay, you know you’re pushing your hands the right direction if you make a monkey face.

So then you would just roll it up onto the monkey’s lips and press back down again. You want to avoid pressing down too hard with your hands. If you press down too hard to get flat spots, like this, when you fold it back over on itself, you’ll trap air in the clay. And the point of what we’re trying to do is get the air out of the clay and get the moisture distributed evenly all the way through.

If you trap air in the clay when you get it on the wheel and you’re trying to center the clay, it will throw the clay off center. You won’t be able to get it completely centered, and it will also cause problems when you’re pulling the walls up. Wedge the clay about 30 times if it’s fresh out of the bag. If you’re putting peat scraps of clay together, you can put little pieces of play together.

Make sure that you slap them together very well, and then wedge it at least 60 times. Once you’ve wedged the clay at least 30 times, you’ll still have a little bit of a tongue coming out. Instead of pressing it down all the way, do short, shorter strokes and fold it up over on itself so that the tongue goes into the whole ball of clay. So this is what it will look like when you’re done wedging the clay.

After you’ve gotten the tongue folded over onto the piece. Now you’ll take it and smack it. On either end, we want to end up with round ball of clay. This is about what you want it to look like. You want the base to be round and smooth.

So now that we’ve wedged the clay, we’re ready to start making a pot. First I’m going to talk about the different tools that we’ll use. This is a wooden rib. This is called a triangular wooden rib. There’s many different shapes of ribs, but this one will use today for the cylinder. The next tool is this, the needle tool. A wooden knife, and a wire tool. The wire tool we’ll use to cut the clay.

We’ll use it to cut to pot off after we’re finished. You can also use it to cut clay. Any time you need to cut clay, this is the tool to use. You will also need a bucket of water and a sponge. The water keeps the clay lubricated while you work with it, and the sponge is for putting water on the clay and smoothing it. Before you smack a piece of clay down on the wheel, you want to get just a damp sponge and moisten the wheel head.

It’s important not to put too much water. If you put too much, the clay will slide off. But if you have no water at all, the clay will not stick down to the wheel head. And then start with the round, smooth, round side of the clay. You wouldn’t want to start this piece of clay shaped somewhat longer than it is wide. You wouldn’t want to start with the flat side. Start with the round bottom, and make sure it’s well rounded.

Hold it in your right hand, and just above the center of the wheel head, and then smack down. If it’s too far off from the center, if it’s more than half an inch away from the center of the wheel, you can turn it on and see it’s slightly off, slightly wobbling. But that’s why we’re going to center the clay. If it’s more than that off, you would want to lift the clay up, re-round the bottom, and try again.

Once you have it close enough to the center, smack it down on top to make sure it’s round and smooth. You want to start with the clay as smooth as possible. If the clay is real bumpy, it’s going to cause you a whole lot more work. This looks pretty good. That’s about how you want it to look. Now get your hands wet, and get a little extra water on the clay.

We’re going to, every different hand position I will refer to, we’ll look at the wheel head like it’s a clock face. And I’ll start putting pressure with my palms, both of my palms here and here. At 7 o’clock and at 5 o’clock. So begin pressing down, and then use your fingers. I usually use my right middle finger. You can use your forefinger if that’s more comfortable for you.

Continue to press down and squeeze in, that at the same time start to use this finger to seal the clay down to the bat. This prevents any air or water from sliding in under the clay and making the piece of clay come off the wheel.

Now we’re going to begin coning the clay up. Here you’re going to put pressure with your palm at 7 o’clock and your right fingertips at 1 o’clock. You can let your fingertips slide together, but don’t let them overlap like this. You want to keep your fingertips just together. And put opposing pressure. So you’re pushing just as hard with your fingertips as you are with your palm.

And squeeze until the clay begins to move. Move up with the clay, and then ease off the top. Whenever you’re putting your hands on the clay or taking your hands off the clay, you want to ease the pressure on, and then to ease the pressure back off. Now that we’ve got the clay coned up, we’re going to bring it back down.

To bring the clay back down, you’re going to wrap your left hand around the clay from the top, from the side and the top at the same time. You’re going to put pressure with this part of your palm, right there on the edge of the clay here. And begin to press it down. If you’re not putting enough pressure from the side, the clay will form a mushroom shape. You want to avoid getting the mushroom shape.

If it begins to look like this, put more pressure in from the side. You know that the clay is centered when it no longer wobbles under your hands. Wrap your hands around, and you can’t feel any movement. It feels like it’s sliding perfectly smooth. You can also do a test with your finger. Hold your finger steady against the side of the clay.

If there’s no inconsistencies with how it hits your finger, you know it’s centered. Once you have to clay completely centered, shift the position of your hands just slightly. We’re going to go– you’ve been pushing more with this part of your thumb and palm. Now we’re going to shift the pressure down along your pinky finger and the bottom part of your palm. Put a little bit more pressure on the side.

And with your right hand, pinkie knuckle right in the center of the top of the piece of clay, pull your right hand straight up and press down. Maintain pressure from the side, but press down from the top, so that we end up with a straight sided and flat topped piece of clay.

Now we’re going to open up the piece of clay. Wrap your hands around the side of the piece, just let your hands ride there. Don’t put any pressure. And take your thumbs. It’s important to keep your thumbs close together. If you go in with your thumbs flat, like this, you’ll end up with the hole being very wide. And if you go down too far, then you have no bottom in your pot.

But if you keep your thumbs close together and go straight down in, then you have just a narrow hole. You want to stop when the base of the pot is about a quarter of an inch thick. Now we’ll use the needle tool to measure and make sure that we have the right thickness of clay. Hold the needle in your hand so that you can slide your finger down to the tip of the needle.

Sink the needle into the clay in the base. Make sure you keep the needle straight up, and slide down until you hit the clay. Then pull the needle out and measure. You want to leave a quarter of an inch of clay in the base of the pot. Now we’re going to open the pot up. Start with your left hand first, your two middle fingers inside the pot.

Your thumb will be resting out here in the 6 o’clock position at the back of the clay, but it is very important that you don’t squeeze with your thumb. It’s just there as a guide to bring your fingers straight across to your thumb. Rest your finger straight on the bottom of the pot. Don’t put pressure down.

You want to just rest your fingers on the clay. The goal here is to get the base of the pot an even quarter of an inch thick all the way across. It is the tendency oftentimes of beginners to pull your fingers either up or to come down. If you’re going to go one way or the other, make sure you go up, but the goal is to come straight across.

If you go down, what you’ll end up doing is you’ll separate the wall from the base of the pot. Stop pulling out when there’s about an inch of clay left in the wall of the pot. That’s why you leave your thumb on the back, is to measure about an approximate inch of clay left in the wall. Now you’ll use the wooden rib. What we need to do now is compress the bottom of the pot.

You want the clay to be compacted in the bottom of the pot. The rest of the pot gets a lot of compression, but this, the bottom needs a little extra compression. Because there’s a lot of shrinkage, the clay will shrink about 12% to 14%. And without a little bit of extra compression in the bottom of the pot, the clay will crack during the drying and firing.

Hold the rib at an angle so that you can look down over the top of it with the rounded side towards 3 o’clock. Press straight down into the bottom of the pot until it’s completely smooth. The goal is to keep the pot centered the whole time you’re working with it, but when you’re first starting out, it is not uncommon for your pot to look something like this.

If it does look like that, that’s OK. We can get it back on center. Hold the sponge on your fingertips in your right hand with your thumb holding it in place. What we want to do is put pressure against the outside and across the top at the same time, and at the same time we’re going to make an upside down U shape.

What we’re doing with, this we want to compress the clay, force all the clay to go into this position. So we’re putting pressure all the way from the inside around the top and on the outside, and squeezing the clay back into center by doing that. So with your left hand, you’ll have your thumb and your finger squeezing the wall on the inside and the outside. And with the sponge, you’re putting pressure on the top.

Now we’re going to do what we call a preliminary pull. Keep your fingers in the same position as the recentering pull. Ease off some of the pressure from the top and gently slide your fingers up the wall so that you begin to thin the wall out. The whole time you’re working with the pot, you need to keep plenty of water on it.

Especially when you’re starting the pulls, you need to keep a lot of water to keep the clay lubricated and sliding smooth under your hands. If the clay dries out, it will stick to your fingers and throw the whole pot off balance. And if you keep on going, you can even tear the wall of the pot off. One very common mistake that a lot of beginners make is putting too much pressure when you begin doing your pulls.

When you’re centering the clay, you’ve got to put a lot of pressure. And you finally get that figured out, you figure out that you’ve got to put enough pressure to make the clay move, and you still have that in your mind when you go to begin pulling the walls. So what happens, oftentimes for beginners, is that you squeeze too hard. You’re still squeezing as hard as you were when you were centering, and you pull the wall right off the bottom of the pot.

So it’s very important to remember to use half the amount of pressure that you used when you were centering. Now we’ll begin to pull the walls up. Put your fingers exactly opposite each other at the 3 o’clock position. Apply gentle pressure and slowly and steadily move your hands up. It’s very important to remember to keep your fingers exactly opposite each other.

Concentrate on that, because it’s very easy, you can’t see through the wall of the pot from this position, so it’s easy for you not to be able to tell where your fingers are. Try to feel for the solidness of your finger from the inside of the pot. You’ve got your finger on the inside. Try to feel for the solidness of your finger on the inside from the outside.

It’s also important to try to keep the pot straight up and down. Imagine that there’s a center pole right here, and you’re pulling everything towards that pole. Centrifugal force is going to want to pull the pot out. You have to try to keep it, you’ve got to force it to stay in. Keep your thumbs together and up against your middle finger on the outside. That will help you to keep your hands in the right position.

Another thing to look for that will help you know if you’re moving at the right pace is the distance between these marks on the outside of the pot. These marks on the outside of the pot are called finger rings. And if they’re tight and close together, as you can see here, then you know you’re moving at the right pace. If the finger rings are broad, like this, then you’re moving too fast.

And what you’re going to end up doing is then you’re going to thin out just a spiral of clay all the way around the pot, and when you get to the lip of the pot, you’ll have one side that’s thick and lumped up, and the other side that’s too thin. And if you get it like that, there’s no way you can fix it. You can finish out the cylinder for practice, but you can’t ever fix it if it gets like that’s.

So it’s best to try to pay attention to that as you’re going along, so that you don’t move too fast and get that problem. So keep pulling up until the walls are about a quarter of an inch thick. You want a nice, even thickness all the way up the pot. Now we’ll compress the outside with the rib. This will help to straighten up the walls, as well as to strengthen them.

Make sure that there’s plenty of moisture on the inside of the pot, and hold your finger straight down along the inside of the wall of the pot. Hold the rib in your right hand at an angle to the pot, and put just a very small amount of pressure. Use just enough pressure to make it straight, but not enough to throw the pot off balance.

At this point, if the lip is off, sometimes, often times when you’re beginning, the lip of the pot will be very wobbly. You can trim the top of the pot. Hold the needle in your hand and brace your finger against the base of the needle here. Now put your middle finger on the inside of the pot. Do not press out with this finger. It’s just there to catch the needle when it comes through the clay.

Put your left thumb against the needle so that you can pivot the needle on your thumb, and go into the pot. Slowly sink the needle into the clay at about a 45 degree angle. Wait until it hits your finger. Go all the way around make, sure it’s cut all the way around, and then just lift up. Then you can take that extra clay off. Now we have the lip straightened up again.

Now you will want to smooth the edges of the lip, because any sharp edges will repel the glaze. Use your two forefingers to smooth either side of the lip. Now take your thumb and your forefinger of your left hand and hold them, one on either side of the lip, and use your right forefinger to press down. You want to use very, very gentle pressure at this point, just enough to shape the lip again.

If you press down too hard, you’ll smash the pot. And then use the sponge to smooth the lip. You can also use the rib to restraighten the wall. Now we’re going to use the wooden knife to trim away some clay from the base of the pot. Remember, this is a knife. You want to cut with the sharp edge of the tool. Hold it like a pencil.

Embrace your right hand with your left hand, and just slowly sink the wooden knife into the clay at an angle so you cut away any extra clay from the base of the pot. Now use your needle tool to slice into the clay. Turn your wheel on so that you slice underneath the clay, and then pull it off. After you’ve trimmed the foot, you can go back with the sponge and smooth the foot of the pot.

Now, you want to make sure that there’s no water left sitting in the bottom of the pot. Any water left in there will desolve it and cause a crack. So take your sponge and just hold it in the base of the pot at the 3 o’clock position and spin the wheel to get that extra water out. Now you’re ready to cut the pot off the wheel. Hold the wire so that you can slide it up against your pinky fingers, the end of the wire.

Now wrap around one hand and use either your fingers or your thumb, whichever you’re more comfortable with. Press down against the wheel head and keep the wire tight, and slice under the pot. Dry your hands on your apron and wrap your hands very gently around the pot. You can use your palms to lift up, just barely holding on to the pot. And you can move it over and set it down.

So that’s how we make a cylinder. Again, this is the basic foundation for any pot that we make. From this point, we could shape this pot into a vase, we could make it into a pitcher. We could turn this into a mug very easily. With a little bit of variation, we could make a bowl from that shape. After you’ve made the pot, you’ll want to let it dry for approximately 8 to 12 hours.

You want it to be what we call leather hard. That means that the pot can be picked up, it still has a little bit of flexibility, but it’s not going to distort if you pick it up. After the pot’s dried for 8 to 12 hours, the next thing that you’ll want to do is to trim the foot of the pot. Oftentimes the bottom of the pot will be rough and uneven where you cut it off, where you trim the foot. We’re going to trim all of that off.

Moisten your wheel head just a little bit, and then set the pot in the center as close as you can get it to the middle. And tap it a little bit, with the wheel turning slowly to make sure that it’s close to the center. Now take and press down just a little bit. What you’re doing here is creating a vacuum that will hold the pot down on the wheel head. You want to release the air from the inside.

Now you’re going to take this tool. This is called a trimming tool. And hold the pot down. It’s very critical to hold the pot down, otherwise it will pop off the wheel. Hold the pot down with your finger in the middle, or very close to the middle, and use the trimming tool to scrape away a layer from the bottom of the pot. If it slides off, that’s OK. You can just set it back down again.

If you’re having too much difficulty getting it to stick with just the water on the wheel head, you can take three small balls of clay and place them around the outside of the pot to keep it still. So shave off a layer across the bottom until it’s completely even. You’ll want to be careful not to let the middle of the pot be higher than the outside edge.

Have it slightly indented so that when the pot’s turned over and sitting down on the table top, it won’t rock around. Now I’m setting a little bit of an edge right here. This is so that after the pot is completely dry and it’s been fired, and you’re ready to glaze the pot, you’ll want to wax the bottom of the pot to keep the glaze from sticking to it, so that it in turn does not stick to the kiln shelf and seal down.

And this little beveled edge leaves a nice, defined transition between the glaze on the pot and the smooth, clean bottom of the pot. You can also go on the side. If there’s any little bumps that you want to get rid of, you can do that right now as you’re trimming. Now go back with your sponge, and anywhere that you’ve used the trimming tool, moisten it.

And then this is another type of a rib. This is called a rubber rib. It’s made out of a thin, flexible silicone. And go back and polish where you moistened it with the sponge. Now that finishes out the base of the pot. After this, you can sign it any way that you like. This is a good tool to use. It’s called a ball stylus. Use either a ball stylus or a pencil.

You do not want to use a needle tool, because it leaves a very scratchy signature that nobody will later be able to read. We usually date the pieces so that you know what year you made it. After you’re finished, you can lift of the pot and just take your sponge and re-smooth the rim to make sure that it’s nice. And then set it off to the side.

Now you’ll let it dry for at least two more days, maybe even longer. You want to let it dry until there’s no moisture left in the pot. And you’ll know that there’s no moisture left when there’s no more color change happening.

As the pot dries, the clay’s going to change color. And you’ll be able to see, usually at the base it’s going to stay dark, but the rest of the pot will begin to lighten. When it’s all of a consistent, light color, then you know it’s completely dry and it’s ready for firing.