5 thrown coffee mugs, 5 different weights of clay.

good morning it's uh vaughan actually just about afternoon now about one o'clock i think yeah later than that anyway um i'm going to do a video uh and it's going to be on five weights of clay which are 180 grams which is six and a half ounces 260 grams which is nine ounces 315 grams which is 11 ounces uh 360 grams which is 13 ounces and 460 grams which is 16 ounces i'm gonna throw a cylinder coffee mug with each measure them show you how what you can get and so as you're practicing as you know you get better with practice but you'll have a goal of what you can get from a certain size lump of clay with a coffee mug because we're always putting too much clay on the wheel or too little clay for what we want to get so i think this will be a good test let me put some light on it here i got so it might be a little nicer and it's a bit extra light um i'm vaughan smith westcott bell pottery in nova scotia uh in the eastern shore of canada all right so here we the go i'm throwing on is a brent cxc so it has a little noise to it because it's 30 odd years old and it's bmix cone 5 clay all right start with the little one now let's get the camera right down so you can see what's going to happen so i can splash the camera probably let that stick out of the way i think that will give you a good view all right so this is the tiny one it's 180 grams which is six and a half ounces i'm assuming you know how to throw with this video if not you can go back to earlier videos of mine to get the gist of how you're throwing proportions are good with you know any lumpy clay for a coffee mug so you gotta kind of judge the width compared to the height you don't want to have a tie a very wide tiny coffee mug otherwise things get cold quickly so a coffee mug opening determines if a mug coffee is going to get cold fast so i judge the width on what i think the height will be usually i get what i'm after in two pulls sometimes three but mostly it's two pulls for smaller pieces put the foot on with the rib like this underneath my fingers just above the ribs so it gives a little edge there but i always turn it over and refine that foot so i don't have to trim finish it up with the metal rib so this you would call like a little espresso mug i guess don't need a sponge on a stick since the sponge will reach the bottom this clay is very smooth so all i'm doing is rubbing the sponge across the rim this is almost a porcelain style clay all right what do we have i want to get my tape rule too dirty so i'll just slip out of my hand either okay it is three i think that says three and a quarter yep it's three and a quarter inches high and the opening is two and a half inches across so that's the first one going to take it off very slowly with some water on the wheel just pull the wire through i'm going to spray all of these black and carve them and you start the next one dry the wheel but leave a little bit of clay on the next one is 260 grams i got it written on the clay which is nine uh what is that one nine ounces so this is just about half a pound of clay kind of moving the clay around to sort of find that point where you feel like your centers leave about a half a centimeter just over at the bottom i always use my fingernail in the corner just to pull my finger back to the center you've seen me do that in other videos it compresses the base push in with your outer fingers and your inner fingers push back just a little bit get water to dribble down the inside and the outside of the same point and then push again with the outer fingers and push back with the inner fingers but not enough to make it wider too much you want to get height rather than width do the foot so it's a wedge underneath the piece and then this one just gives you a refined edge at the bottom and then if it's still moist on the inside you can do the rib thing but if it's a bit dry on the inside you always have to add some more water at this point but this is still smooth enough and soft enough so it's still smooth i might not be able to reach the bottom so i'm going to use the sponge on the stick this was a big sponge for these pieces i might use my other sponge on a stick for the next ones although the next ones will be wider there you go so what did we get with this one width wise it's two and seven eighths inches across and four and a quarter inches high we can work the grams out later it's not not the grams the centimeters and there you see i didn't rotate the wheel but it pulls off easily on its own anyway all right proportions remember are important so judge the width depending on what you think you can get with the height all right the next one is 11 ounces of clay which is 315 grams i'm asked all the time by customers to make mugs a certain height and specifically they love a handle a certain size people will tell me how many fingers they have to be able to get inside the handle to feel comfortable so this will be a good video for me as well as you to actually give me a reference on what size of lump or clay i need to get for a certain mug that somebody wants don't you love these bats that just knock i know how to get rid of it but it never bothers me so i just do it i put my little finger down onto the back while i'm pulling up and it stops it knocking and then when i have to lift my little finger off which is now if i'm not putting too much pressure on it won't do the knocking anyway that i feel like it's a little narrow at the top so i might widen it a bit when i do the metal ribbon okay wet my hand with this one because it's a long way down so i'm widening it a little bit for proportions now the sponge on the stick will go in easier too because it's actually wide enough yeah how many mugs can you get from a bag of clay i mean there's a dollar business side of this too when you're making a pottery form you want to make sure you're making a profit doing it all right what did we get this time go back a little bit three and a quarter by four and three quarters all right that's number three dry the wheel leave a bit of clay on the middle so the next one is easy to stick to this one is 360 grams which is 13 ounces [Music] so so we're talking about three quarters of a pound just about with this one just over water right down the center of the rim so it goes to the inside and the outside there you go i can still get the height i need with two poles on this one the clay is getting bigger though wet my hand on the inside again because it's getting larger yeah so i'm going to carve all these in this graffito technique i'm going to make probably about 30 coffee mugs here my wife and i are going to be carving she only wants 10 to call but i'll do the rest so i'll do a video of carving them i can do the super fast videos for those makes me look like i'm on speed or something when i do those they take me forever to carve and then it only takes 20 seconds in a video there you go so what do we get this time let's get that rough bit off the bottom top first three and a half inches across it's getting slippery to hold this so i don't want to drop it on the pot five inches high there we go yeah it's a miserable day in nova scotia today totally fogged in cloud but it's 10 degrees on december 13th that's 10 degrees centigrade and the last one what do we have here 460 grams at 16 ounces one full pound this is the largest i would use for a coffee mug after this i don't call it a coffee mug anymore i would start calling them tankards or large soup bowls and things like that because this will hold a pint by the time i finished it so all right i think i'll need three pulls with this one that's not so bad maybe i can stay with the two balls i could probably get a little extra height from the bottom there because it's definitely a little thicker down there wet it on the inside again because i'm trying to not catch it because bigger poles mean you're dragging with more pressure more water off the clay all right that is the last one i've always wanted to do something like this for myself because you know i get asked all the time so a lot of time i'm doing mugs with somebody i'll make a bunch like say one three or four i'll say i'll make eight just so i can get the one they want because i know the first one i'm going to throw is not going to be the right height or width so this will be a very useful video let's wipe my hand off a little bit all right what do we have now three and a half inches across that's a good size width anyway for a coffee mug because you want to get them too white at the top otherwise the drink cools off and it is five and [Music] i would say five eighths high five and five eight sides maybe five and three quarters we'll say it's closer to that five and three quarters and we'll record these as they're being fired as well just to show you the height that they will shrink so isn't that going to be useful too all right i'm going to wipe my hands off so i can change the camera so we can look at these together alrighty every time i do one of these videos i feel really guilty because i feel like i have to clean my studio up otherwise you'll think i'm a slob and but then i realized we're all potters so we all like playing in dirt and mud anyway but anyway keep your studio clean because the dust is harmful all right what do we have okay these are the five all right so that i think will be a very useful video for people who have to do production or even just one or two pieces and i'll i'll do another record recording video of what they end up after the firing so we'll get the height of those two and i'll write it in the comments or i'll or i'll put a short couple of minute video on it all righty bmx clay cone 5 on a brent wheel every piece was just two pulls all right so this is an interesting experiment for myself too so from sort of cloudy kind of dreary but still really pretty fantastic looking over the ocean this is vaughan smith actually i should show you that i haven't said that i really should let you see it but um here we go here's what it looks like cloudy and gray battleship grey all right all righty so have fun stay safe and get through this coved stuff all right thanks very much for joining me in nova scotia bye-bye

Channel: Vaughan Smith

Views: 3,274

Rating: 4.9774013 out of 5

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Id: ozYSIm5bGho

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020