HOW TO DO POTTERY AT HOME // Set up a home pottery studio safely and cleanly

so in this video today I just want to go through how to set up a home pottery studio and how I've done it in particular this is a relatively old studio we actually moved into this house about two two-and-a-half three months ago and since the day I moved in I've started setting up a little home studio so I started pottery about two years ago at a local pottery studio I had class once a week for about three and a half hours and it was how I got to learn the basics of throwing but after a while I realized that in order to improve I need more hours on the wheel practicing three hours a week is just not enough so I've always wanted to have my own home studio because one I can save the cost of renting a space and two I can just throw and out here half an hour here and it's just quick and easy and there's no commute and traveling and it just encourages me to practice more often so about two months ago we moved elderly apartment into a two-bedroom house this space difference is just crazy like we've got two massive bedrooms we've got a separate dining room which is where this pottery studio is that now and having the right space is tough but personally I actually don't think you need that much space this room right now is about 4.5 by 3.5 meters it's a decent sized room and for what I'm doing here it's more than enough so if this room was just for pottery I can actually get away with a lot less space I can put this wheel into the corner and just have a table for wedging in the shelf for drying and that's about all I need so even half the size of this room if I have to it won't be comfortable so you don't actually need a big space unless you're producing a huge amount of work when you're drying and key onto another staff which I'll touch on a bit later so let's talk equipment most importantly if you want to do is throwing you need one of these pottery wheel I've got the Shimpo whisper I think they're called there's three main reason why I chose this wheel in particular one this is the wheel that they had at the studio where I went to class so it's something that are enjoy I enjoy and I like and there's no reason why I should try a different brand or a different model and risking something that might annoy me for whatever reason and - this is a brushless motor wheel which means that there's no belt there's no real noisy mechanical parts and in the name it literally say whisper it's one of I think it's supposed to be the quietest wheel there is I don't know but it is very quiet so I'm just gonna let this run for a few seconds just to show you how quieter this you know this is a very low speed and I'm just a gradually ramp it up so you can hear a little bit of humming but it's not intrusive at all it's not like a belt-driven wheeler so it's kind of like I think like all the time and that's at full speed so yeah you can't hear it for sure it's not it's not completely silent but having that in the home studio is great especially if you're sharing a space with other people it's just it's just so much better and if you're doing any videos or filming like this it's so important to have a wheel that's quiet but that's a very specific requirement for me because I want to document all this stuff so where I was learning they use bats in the studio and that's just how I got used to it so it was very important to me to make sure that I can use bats at home as well and personally the main reason I like using batters so that I don't have to lift things off the wheel head and so I often when I do that the shape would change or if especially the thinner it is the easier it is to warp so often I'll just throw it on the bat lift it off sometimes I don't even wear it off depending on the shape because wiring it off actually applies pressure into it and it also warps it so if I'm really into a very symmetrical and perfect but then I'll leave it on the balance let it dry after why I just pops off and then you can just trim it as usual so if the system I got I use bed pins that are standard ten inch apart I drew them in myself so at the simple will heads they actually have to indentation on the bottom where you can just pull it drew on it you don't have to do any measurements because it's perfectly ten inch apart so if the back pin installed and holds drug onto your bats you can simply put it onto the wheel and users right away and that's fine but I find that sometimes it wobbles a bit especially if the bat gets a bit older so it was important for me to have something that helps secure it so what I've got here is it's a very common thing that you see it's basically a chamois it's called a bat mate and you can get this quite readily and moist pottery supply shops and it comes with two holes already on that 10-meter pot just to match their back pins now then you simply pull it on and that's it helps secure the bat just so you have a little bit of suction from the water yeah just to go into a bit more detail about this particular bat there's got the hole in it that's because this allows for a smaller insert into it the reason why I prefer this then just having a whole bunch of regular size that it's because being in the home studio means that I don't have that much space to work with and if I have 10 20 of this lying around with pots on there it's just gonna take up way too much space because they had to stack and it's just a nightmare but we're for insert like this I can just have a whole stack of small fats flocculent and this is actually not that small this could accommodate most of the pot I make unless I'm doing plate this is not an issue rarely will I make a piece where the base is wider than this even a big ramen bowl the foot is still relatively small even though the room might be you know much bigger and it's easier to clean because they're smaller and it's just for me this is the most important thing in terms of this whole setup is because I can just FRA take it off take it off it's not it's a speed thing it's also again keeping pot on here without having to lift them off which means there's less touching off the pot when it's wet and there's less fixing afterward there's less trimming and it's just it's great I can't I can't do without this so once I had my willing bat setup I already had a whole bunch of throwing tools from when I was doing class I would bring my own tools because I prefer to do it that way and that he'll feel workshop where I got to use and buy a bunch of tools a very specific that I really enjoy using so I won't go into too much details about throwing tools and trimming tools just because there's so many of them it kind of needs to be a video on its own but here just some basic essential ones that I believe everyone should have a wide tool just to cut clays very self-explanatory sponges these are great for throwing cleaning up you can't have a pottery studio without sponges that's just and there just have basic grips and stuff and to be honest if you have some ribs a wire tool a sponge o-obviously bucket very important if that's all you got and that's fine you don't need more than that if you really want to all you need are your hands for throwing you don't need to have ribs and all that stuff but they do you make life easy and if you want smooth textures but etc therefore ahead to have but again that is everything so trimming tools are slightly different to your throwing tools they're more for cutting than for pushing and there's a whole different range of them this you know these little dip tools are very cheap and easy to buy something a little bit nicer this is a mud tool which I bought a while ago it's got a few different shapes and it's quite versatile in for trimming so we can get different curves not that I used to use this a little bit more but then I got something else nothing like this where it has a flat edge what you prefer is the personal preference I'm sure everyone's got the opinion this and with just a couple of those that's all you need really to get started so of equipment out of the way let's talk about things you need around the studio so here's the other back that's my wedging table it's not great it's very flimsy it's just a fold-out table that we had lying around so if you're wedging table you want something that will absorb moisture because then it releases the clay and it makes it easier to wedge so what I've done is I bought that piece of drywall repair panel that way down a little bit smaller you don't have to cut it up and just clam it onto the table and use that as your wedding surface it absorbs the moisture very easily and it allows the clay to just release so you can roll it over and over it over with any clay to have recycled or backs that are open I'll just put them in the top this is not an tight one for places that are not wrapped up it will still dry but a lot slower but for better cleaner open but still in the plastic it just adds an extra layer so it's definitely not for a long time storage but a week or two is fine if they're in plastic bags much longer than that will still be okay but I tend to use them quite quickly so it's not a major issue so one thing I don't have yet is proper shelfing right now you can see all my pastas just either drying or stop on the table and I had to move them around when I do my wedding and not a it's a bit annoying so originally I was going to build my own shelf but then I just got a bit lazy and now I'm thinking about looking into buying something either a cheap IKEA shelf that I can just pull up or something that's more industrial that's on wheels and that were in the future if I move into a bigger space it will be handy to have and then I have to buy things twice but most likely I'll just get a simple wooden IKEA shelf and just put it up for storage and on the topic of shelving it's nice to have little planks of wood these uses ply woods I've cut up and they're great for transporting pieces from one surface to the other or you can just have it on your side and then ask your throw in just put things on it just makes life a lot easier any productions do you look at they don't just have like all these boards full pots lined up and it looks great so it's nice and easy very handy for a table so once you've got your equipments and stuff and you can start making things you still need a kiln to fire your work kiln is probably the hardest thing to do at home and luckily there's a lot of pottery students around who rents out their kilns or they just do community firing so you can just bring things in get charged by the weight and then everything else gets sold out by the staff then that makes it a lot easier so for me that's what I do I just don't have the space for account and it's also a bit trickier because of the electricals and the kiln is just the most expensive piece of equipment that you will need in pottery I think here they charge ten dollars a kilo firing so that's almost nothing compared to spending five six seven eight thousand dollars on the kiln to start off with yeah so for me that's just more efficient it makes sense it's a bit trickier because I have to travel with green ware that buy dry which is quite fragile so that clay it's only about five minutes drive away so it's not a big commute and it makes things a lot easier so the workflow is a bit tricky because I have to pack it at home take it to the studio have a bisque fire bring it back glazier home bring it back to the studio and get it closed fired one last time and then collect it so it's a bit of a round trip and that's why I tend to stop how a bunch of stuff before I get fired and it also makes it hard to do tests where I want to just get one or two pieces fired quickly just to see what the glaze is doing what the clay is doing so developing recipes and developing a style is definitely tricky because as much as I can figure out the form at home a lot of the firing stuff it's a long process it takes a few weeks just to get my pieces finished that means to develop stuff I have to wait a few weeks and then do any changes to it and then try a new one and then it just really adds up what if I have a kiln at home I can do things within a few days I can develop a lot faster but again it's tricky to do that and it might be worthwhile one day to buy a small prototype key on that only fits you know a small amount of stuff then I do a few pieces at most but mostly test tiles and test bowls and things like that and that could be a feasible solution and you kind of get the best of both worlds because I can do right and I can do big production runs at the studio because you can hire a Hulk into yourself so you have control over how things are done and the firing and it schedules and things like that and that's something I've to look into but at this stage I can get away with just firing at the studio instead of doing it home so let's say now you've got your shiny new toys or your equipment sorted or your video gear sorted now let's talk about maintenance pottery is messy like I try my best to fry as clean as possible so I don't use much water I clean my splash pan every time I use it I mop the floor every time I throw it and just to make sure I keep it as clean as possible and that is especially important for homes do like mine where it's not a garage it's it's literally in the house my room here is in between the kitchen and the dining room so there are a couple of things I've done to protect the space because this is a rental firstly I've put final down in this whole room so I just mentioned that the room went to a hardware store got a roll of final lay it down cut around the corners and edges fairly simple anyone could do it and it just means that I can protect the timber flooring from moistures in water and clay in general when you're throwing these droplets here and then sometimes you miss it as you're cleaning and it gets saved into the timber and it could cause problem I don't know if it's thanks them or not but I prefer doing it this way so when the landlord or real-estate do inspections they know that Ellie's I'm respecting the space enough to protect it and on top of that I also have a office chair protector and so you can get from ideas of most office supply shops it's just a clear plastic that perfectly fits under the wheel and that again it's just for spillage and also if the wheels quite heavy so I wanted to spread the weight a little bit and not just create dents on the flooring so I prefer to have my clay style off the floor that's so that I can just mock underneath it there's a lot of dust and flakes that comes out of the bags especially once that's been opened and the benefit of having final flooring means that I can just mark without worrying so much about the timber so these are water resistant ones that I've got so when they're mob either have to dry them completely I can just let it air dry and that's all right so mopping should be the only way you clean your floor and these sweeping or vacuuming just do some other dust and it goes into the air that's from clays or any how that you use for clays making they stay in the air for quite a while before it sells down because they're so fine and any move them like that stir it up and again if you're doing this at home you don't want it to spread into the other rooms and everyone's breathing in dust and that's it's terrible for you so any cleaning you do should be with a sponge or mop it needs to be wet because it traps all the dust and it doesn't spread it everywhere so on the topic of dust I actually have an air purifier that runs 24/7 in the studio and that just gives me an extra layer of protection because as much as I try to be clean and wipe any surfaces as much as possible there are still places I miss no they're still dust in general and it just helped clear that little last bit and makes it as safe as possible and for me that's an essential item so lastly on topic of maintenance in cleaning I just want to touch on a clay trap you can't just dump clay down your sink because it will block up the sink very quickly and it's very expensive to fix then you don't want to do that so you can make a clay trap at home pretty easily I looked online there's a couple of designs that mainly uses free separate buckets so the idea is after you throw for example you have your bucket for water and slip and then you just pour into the first bucket which has the opening with the top where it will just go into the next bucket and then so on and so on so by the time I feel free to step back up most of the sediment and clay gets trapped in the first couple of buckets and then the water just goes straight down so either run the pipe from the third bucket into your plumbing or just simply have it go into your sink and then that just goes out and when the bucket starts to fill up too much you just let it dry a bit and then just get rid of it that way the clay are not going into the sink and causing massive plumbing issues alternatively there are system you can get installed under your sink and then that just filters all the clay and then when that gets cool just take it off dump it replace it and that's fine but in my experience I don't want to mess with the plumbing here because again it's a rental house and it was a lot cheap but doing the three bucket method so overall this is my personal setup if one's going to be a bit different your space might be their friend but I hope that this is a good new guideline of what's possible if you have a garage it makes life a lot easier because one it's separate from the living space and two you most likely have a larger space in your garage and easy to install shell things and stuff like that so for me my dream home pottery studio would be a but building out of the bank that way I have control of the constructions and the layout and everything like that and I can also make in the way that's easy to clean but you just have to work with what you've got and don't let limitations stop you from doing what you want to do so it might seem like a lot of work and it kind of is but once you have your work flow and your cleaning schedule and stuff like that set up it's pretty straightforward if you set up the bare minimum and then start working on it and adding more things as you go according to the way you work or your personal style I think that will be the best approach so if you've been on the fence on whether you should start a home pottery studio hopefully this gives you a better idea of what's achievable or what's required and if you found that helpful do please subscribe as this is a brand new channel and every little support helps I thank you

Channel: dear Ali Ceramics

Views: 40,452

Rating: 4.9710841 out of 5

Keywords: pottery studio tour, pottery studio setup, pottery studio at home, pottery studio, How to set up a pottery studio at home, How to make a clay trap, pottery studio dust control, Air purifier in pottery studio, Safe pottery at home, Equipment to start pottery, Pottery tools, wheel throwing set up, Pottery bat system, Pottery bats, cleaning pottery studio, pottery tools for beginners, pottery studio video

Id: PVN4vWJPsVE

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020