Help! I HATE trimming

so today I want to talk about why me trim and how to trim so one reason is to have a line that we can stop a decoration understand that the line stops at the foot ring we're going to have a place for the glaze to stop running so it can be a collection point to stop a piece from sticking to the shelf as in that case you can actually see where it ran off because there's no foot ring it can be a place to hold onto a piece so you're not getting your fingers all the way up onto the side of the pot and it could be a way to separate the piece from what it's sitting on so that it's not just glazed all the way down to the foot ring sooo how to trim well there are a few standard methods this is a beginning video you know for beginners so we're not going to go through all these crappy tools that are out there we're going to hit basically how to tap in the middle how to bump in the middle and how to place it in the middle so I will do tap you first because the camera angles used to look better for tapping right now so main thing is one have a bath that's smooth and have a bet that's you know particularly round and flat so I usually work on a plastic fat because a plastic bat doesn't need to be wet if you're working on masonite either you don't have one that's already damp or when you're done sunroom you'll need to dampen it before you put the lights on so to get it in the middle I will do tapping first I'm going to tap at a pretty consistent pace I don't want to wait till it comes around and tap I'm not going to you know wait for it to to get off in the tap it what I will do is now as I tap them in a tap lighter lighter way to practice how hard tap is to put it on one side of the wheel and tip you want it to move about sixteenth twenty eighth of an inch if you're hitting it and it's moving a half inch you're hitting it too hard you're hitting it and it's not moving and it's not going to do anything while it's spinning either so one of the one of the major dumb things people do on this is expect to hit it right when it's off so as it comes around they're going to hit it hopefully tap it enough that it goes in the middle that takes a lot of work and I'm sure there are people that can do it but for a beginner you're not going to want to try that you're going to be more successful tapping lighter and lighter until it goes into the body my left hand is on the opposite side just tickling the pot if the pot stops spinning means you're holding it too hard and it's not going to try that it's not going to go anywhere close to the center as you're stopping it later and lighter and lighter and then we go into the middle what I'm most concerned about is this edge here is this in the middle down here if your piece is perfectly level it'll also be in the middle but this is the part that we're going to trim so that's the important part so that's tapping placing is as it's coming around I'm going to stop the wheel and it touches my thumbs and I'm going to move it away I'm going to do that until it's in the middle I'm going to move the camera alright so another method is bumping and bumping is the same thing as tapping with your hand except I'm going to be pushing with my thumbs it's a little bit harder to move your thumbs in a slight twitch and just like my left hand was the opposite side over here when I was tapping I'm going to move my fingers up here and they're going to do the tickling while my thumbs bump that's going to prevent it if I bump too hard that my piece doesn't fly off all right so I've got the thumbs I'm going to bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump lighter and lighter until it goes into the middle that's what we're shooting for again if it's off it's just little bumps of my thumbs my fingers are touching bump bump bump bump thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb and I'm watching this in the last week to Center is to bump and move it so or to touch it and move it so I'm going to let my thumbs hit and when my thumbs hit I'm going to stop the wheel I'm going to move it away from that point I want to do that in thumbs hit their stop the wheel move it away I want to do that until it's in the middle it takes longer to do it that way you know if I'm just bumping with my thumbs it can take me just a couple rotations together in the middle whereas that stopping and bumping or to stopping moving it can take you know many more minutes those are the three ways there's three ways that you can get it in the middle next part is actually trimming the piece this piece is a tad bit dry but I don't have any other pots to do this on today my students wanted a video so you want to be trimming at slightly wetter this is a little past leather hard it's kind of stiff so to take my little hot dogs to clay I'm going to push down on the top of the piece I'm going to push the hot dog against the wheel again this is for yo beginners this isn't going to be your production powders aren't going to be using hot dogs of clay to hold down every piece they're going to have themselves a rubberized Chuck or they're going to learn how to just wet the wheel and tap it on but as a beginner you're going to probably want to use little lugs of clay check to make sure it's still in the middle in your beginner toolkit you will have a bird head tool and a double-ended loopy tool so the double-ended loopy tool used to take off the majority of the clay on the outside of the pot we start with the round side as an extension of your finger you want enough of the loop sticking out to the clay can come off of that I have it pressed into the palm of my hand I'm going to put my left hand on top of the pot and my thumb touching the tool so that everything is working together I'm going to put the wheel at a speed that the pieces will actually come off the pop but I don't want is it going so slow the pieces land on the wheel and just stay there I want everything to kind of come off the wheel and leave it nice and clean so I can see what's going on but also going fast helps you make and more even cut if you notice right now that your pot is not centered guess what you would need to do stop and recenter it now I don't have a preference on going up or down or down or up one major thing is though that you do not trim all the way down to your wads if you trim all the way down to the LOB's and you're not able to blend it together a couple of the reasons I don't think about why we trim if you suck at throwing sure we can make a sucky Bowl or another pot at least lighter so you can pretend like you know what you're doing and that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice to get better at throwing but if you wanted to cover it up for Christmas present for Grandma this is when you do it like I said my pops a little dry your pot comes like that you're probably trimming to dry no to get rid of that you got to push harder I'm trying to blend that in so I don't want to push too hard which is why it's going to do a lot of squeaking you notice I left clay up here for my foot ring I'll clean that up with my squared of my double any loop tool but before you do that the outside of my pot I'm going to clean up with my flexible nut a rib of death again you want a clean edge at least on one side I'm going to hold it so that it's cutting play away I will not be able to get if I do it over here let's see you can actually see the pieces getting cut off that's evening up that surface even more so I get a nice smooth surface if you wanted that country-bumpkin sort of throw rings on it you could leave your double any loop tool rings on a bug for me I like a smooth surface then I'm actually going to go back and I'll hit it with the flat part of the rib contort to the surface and that will actually burnish it up all nice and shiny now inside of the foot ring I'll go back to our double any loopy tool and we're going to use the square end so we're going to hold it a little bit different I'm gonna hold it so it's underneath my four fingers and it's tilted so that I'm hitting with the tip of it let's see if I can turn around turn here a little bit so I'm going to hold it so that the point is going to be what's digging into the clay I'm going to start in the middle I'm going to push down I'm going to move towards three o'clock I do not want to go all the way out to the edge of my foot ring I'm going to go back now the flat side and clean the but I go back my fat-side upholding it more like a pencil and I will clean up this inside edge now you know my outside edge and round that over now if you notice the outside of my foot ring and my inside of my foot ring do not match up know if they can see that on camera but they don't so I know there's more clay here on the inside of that foot ring to trim away especially on the bottom of a bowl you know that the inside of the bowl if you made a good bowl is not flat it's rounded so the bottom of the bowl should also be rounded on something like this that's like a cereal soupy kind of bowl it's not something that's going to be you know on a pedestal but I'm rounding off this foot ring so it's nice and smooth it means less chips later on when it's finished and I'll even hit it with my metal rib to make it nice and shiny from that I'll hit that as well now we're pretty much done the last thing is to sign the piece I'll absolutely hate signatures made with needle tools it's just a pet peeve of mine so I've got little ball stylus so when I put my name on all those little chunks aren't you know little scratch marks and they just wipe right off the last thing as a beginner you should do is check to make sure that the middle point is lower than your foot ring so you can use the flat and the flat edge of your flexible metal of the death just put it on your foot ring and if it touches in the middle there's no there's not a gap underneath there you need to trim that middle down where else your bowl will spin and that's really bad you don't want a bad spinning bowl there we go we have why we trim a foot ring the easy way out takes at the end of this as you can see my rim tell if it's in the middle is trying to be all not as fast as it will go if it flies off it was not those are three important ways of normal normally those

Channel: Timsee clay

Views: 188,248

Rating: 4.9266667 out of 5

Keywords: Help, HATE, trimming, timseepots, timseeclay, pottery, clay, ceramics, wheel throwing, Tutorial, Tips

Id: HCRqtvwRVrA

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2013