How to Pull Up The Walls of a Pot — A Beginner's Guide

after a lump of clay has been centered and the base formed the next step in the process is pulling up the walls of the pot and doing that is the topic of this video in which i'll discuss how to pull up the walls alongside showing you any tips and tricks i have together with showing you what to avoid to hopefully get your throwing to a point where you can quickly evenly and confidently pull the walls up on the pods you're making it's worth noting that this video won't go over centering or opening up and forming the base of your lump of clay as i've already covered those topics in great detail in two videos which i'll leave links to in the description below both centering and opening up the clay correctly are undeniably important parts to this process and if you attempt to pull the walls up on a pot that's centered poorly or opened up incorrectly you'll only make this next step of pulling the walls up all the more difficult so let's begin this is the shape i finished with at the end of my last video the base of the pot has been clearly defined as has the thicker portion that surrounds it and it's this thicker section that's going to be pinched together and pulled into the walls of the pot it's quickly worth reiterating though how important it is to have a sharp angle on the interior corner of the pot and then before i start pulling the walls up into a cylinder i just make sure that my walls are angling upwards instead of potentially angling outwards and to do that i just wet my hands and collar the walls in slightly this way the wall is facing the direction you intend to pull it in this cross section you can see the area from which i'm going to pinch from which at this point are these two grooves either side as for the base once it's set i never want to push down any further as it's already quite thin and ideally i want the thickness of the base to be matched in the thickness of the walls after they've been pulled the aim of the game is to pull these thicker sections up so the clay is distributed evenly throughout the entire piece to do this i make a fist and i extend a knuckle my hand is then twisted so it faces downwards and it's the side of this knuckle which is going to do a majority of the pulling from the outside my right hand knuckle is placed into this groove on the outside and on the inside the pads of my fingers meet it and then push them together which creates a smaller region the clay has to pass through as it's squeezed up on successive pulls the positioning of my fingers changes slightly and the pads of my fingers on the inside are a bit higher than those on the outside but let's start with this initial pull the first thing i do is make sure my hands and the pot itself are covered in water as if they aren't hydrated the clay won't flow smoothly and instead it'll stick to my hands i tuck the side of this wetted knuckle into this groove and as it pushes against the pads of my fingers on the inside i move them both up at a very steady and even rate and this is not a process you want to rush as if you move your hands too quickly or spin the wheel too fast you may impart various thicknesses into the walls of the vessel which then makes the walls themself uneven and more likely to collapse or twist after each pull i take a moment just to compress and neaten the rim which i do by squeezing it either side and by pushing down with my index finger for my next pull this is when i get a lot more height out of the cylinder and now the walls are a bit thinner i can begin to manipulate them in a slightly different way so of course i always wet the region i'm going to work on and then i push my knuckle into the bottom of the pot and with my fingers on the inside i push them out slightly above where my knuckle is pushing the gap you leave between your fingers dictates how thick the wall will be as you pull it up often i'll see beginners pinch all the way through the wall creating a hole in their pot and well of course that happens if your fingers actually ever touch as it means you'll have pierced a hole in the walls of your pot for my next pull i make sure the walls are wet and then i dig in with my knuckle to create an indentation at the bottom this pushes in the excess clay into a portion of the walls you'll then be able to pull up the bump you see above that groove is where my fingers on the inside are pushing out and once i've set this up i can push both fingers into these indentations pinch and then move them up at a steady rate forcing the clay upwards once again i move both my hands at a very even gradual rate i'm not pinching progressively more firmly as my hands travel up instead once the initial squeeze is made at the bottom and the gap between my fingers is set i keep my fingers held at that position throughout the entirety of the pull i don't suddenly squeeze more firmly or suddenly release pressure as i'm going up and in fact the most vital thing at this stage when you're pulling is to just be as consistent with your movements as you possibly can be one way to tell if you're doing that is to look at the throwing rings you leave on the outside surface of the pot if they're spaced out nice and evenly then it means your pull was even too if instead these grooves are sporadic and some are wider more narrow or deeper than others then it means your pulls are inconsistent so you can look at the outside surface of your pot at this stage to really get an understanding of how your hands are moving but the best thing you can do is to cut your pots in half and observe the cross section and this is ideally what we're looking for a pot with walls that are the same thickness throughout they shouldn't be too thick in one section or thin in another it is normal perhaps to have a slight extra bit of thickness in the bottom corner but generally what we're aiming for for a cylinder at least is to have walls and a base that are more or less the same thickness throughout you don't want the bottom of your pot to be excessively heavy but naturally at the beginning when you're learning to throw they will be it's just one of those things but with enough dedicated practice it doesn't take long to get pots to a point where they'd look like this the key is just not to be too precious at the start and to throw cylinders until they break so you really gain a thorough understanding of the limits of your material now while that might have gone over the process in some detail i'll spend the rest of this video going over each step in a lot more detail together with discussing how to fix certain things why some errors arise together with showing you many more cross-sections like this to hopefully illustrate what is sometimes quite a difficult process to grasp as it certainly was for me when i was a student first learning how to throw pots let's discuss the pressure needed to pull up the walls and the theory behind it if you only apply pressure from the outside you can see that the form just bows inward the same is true if you only push from the inside instead what we need is some counter pressure to oppose the force being applied from one side so instead i pinch with two fingers and they move up together with a relative amount of pressure as you throw pots centrifugal force will naturally will want to pull the walls of the vessel outward which you can see here although it is an abstract situation if i spin the wheel as you can see the pot gets wider as the clay is flung outward as it spins you may find as you're pulling up cylinders that the top section begins to splay outwards as you're making them which will cause it to thin out as it stretches and that part can be quite difficult to control if i find this is happening to my pots i wet the vessel and then i clasp both hands around the piece and i gently collar the top inward i run my hands from below up to the top and i make as much contact with the rim as possible with my hands so that it's being squeezed in from all the way around as opposed to just one or two points and then just to correct the rim i pinch it between two fingers and compress it down from on top now the reason i'm showing you that is to explain why i throw pots in this inward tapering shape as i'm pulling up the walls of my cylinders i aim to keep the opening more narrow than the base of the pot and after every pull i'll collar in the upper sections of the walls just to keep them tapered in as with each pull the walls become straighter and if i didn't account for this and didn't correct them by tapering them in slightly then there's a chance the cylinder will gradually begin to flare out more and more and as it does so it becomes more difficult to control and as i pull the walls up i do so in such a way that they slope inward in this way i end up with a cylinder that's more stable and controlled now i use a knuckle on the outside to pull up the walls i find this really works well for me for the first couple of pulls at least yet you'll find other potters who use just their fingertips on the outside and you'll find other potters who instead of using their fingers directly they'll push them through a wetted sponge on the outside there isn't just one correct way of doing it but the fundamental technique remains the same regardless if you're using your fingers or a sponge and whilst the sponge does come with the added bonus of keeping the pot well saturated as you're throwing you're also disconnecting yourself slightly from the clay as you aren't pushing on it directly for me though personally i tend to use my knuckle for the first couple of pulls and then i might switch to using my fingertips towards the end to really pinch out the very last of the excess clay in the base and typically i'll only use a sponge when i'm throwing larger pots there are constants in this process though such as dousing the piece with water before you begin each pull along with the constant pressure and speed the wall is pulled up at another very important factor to consider is the positioning of your arms and tuck my elbows into my torso and actually that's where most of the movement comes from i'm moving my whole forearm up from the elbow as opposed to just moving my hand or rotating it at the wrist moving my hand from the elbow means that the position of my knuckle remains the same on the outside of the pod and the angle that i push in initially is maintained as it travels up the wall and as you can see here my whole forearm is moving not just my hands and the result of this is that my hands are just far more stable as i move them up in this clip i'm doing what you shouldn't do i'm moving my hand upwards just by rotating my wrist and you can see just how drastically the angle at which i'm pulling up at changes and i've gone from using the side of my knuckle to the tip of it and the focus pressure i began with when i first tucked my knuckle in becomes very difficult to sustain as the point of focus changes halfway up the pot in fact i found myself losing control when trying it this way if as you're pulling up you linger in one spot for too long you may also create a weak point as the clay thins beneath your fingers and collapses down slightly although in a different spot this is what a thin region can look like in comparison to the rest of the wall and if this occurs lower down the weight of the walls above it can be enough to cause the lower section to crumple and collapse this is also something that's more likely to happen if you've spent a very long time throwing the same cylinder because as you progressively add more and more water the clay slowly becomes saturated it degrades and becomes weak and a cylinder like this really shouldn't take more than two or three minutes to make if they are taking you 10 or 15 minutes per piece then there's a chance the clay you're working with is already too saturated and therefore structurally the clay will be weaker and you'll have a more difficult time making the pot if you pull the walls up too quickly you'll end up creating very dramatic throwing rings like this which if this was your end product and the look you wanted then fine but as the cylinder still needs to be thrown a lot more exaggerated rings like this can impede your making as there are now very thin and very thick sections that you have to contend with as you pull the walls up and you'll have a much more difficult time evenly distributing the clay but now that we've discussed all that and some of the reasons why i do certain things let's go back to the beginning i pinched the clay firmly at the bottom between my knuckle on the outside the pads of my fingers on the inside they squeeze and move up the walls together and then as i'm fetching more water i keep one hand on the pot to help keep it sturdy i then plunge my fingers back down and with my knuckle on the outside i gouge in and undercut and just above that on the inside i'm pushing out with the pads of my fingers to create a bump and then i lift this bulge up the walls of the pot and you'll notice that my hands don't change their position whatsoever rather they're just pivoting from my elbows i then gently release my fingers from the top and compress the rim again just to ensure that it's running smooth and is perfectly centered i then fetch some more water once again and douse both my hand on the inside and the walls on the outside then imagine i'm using a knuckle on the outside i push in at the very bottom and just above that i push out slightly and then i move the two up together very gradually and you can see as the clay is forced through that thinner gap between my fingers the wall itself becomes thinner and i'll show you that again from the outside and one thing you might notice is how i'm bracing the thumb of my left hand against the knuckles of my right hand this is done once again to add stability to my movement and it means my left hand isn't floating in space quite so much and here's how that pull might look now that the wall is thinner and you can clearly see how the bulge that's created is lifted up by that finger underneath creating pots that have even cross sections is one of the first things you should work towards when learning how to throw pots on the wheel as you don't want your pots to feel bottom heavy when they're lifted up pots can still be thickly walled even thicker than this as long as the weight is distributed evenly throughout the entire pot and what i aim for is to have a base which is the same thickness as the walls next to it the next pot i'll show you is what we don't want this is an example of a pot that's bottom heavy thrown in such a way that the clay has been left down in the bottom not only will this piece defy your expectations when you go to pick it up especially when it's filled up with liquid but if you don't trim lots of it away you're essentially wasting raw material not only that but a bottom heavy piece like this is a sure sign the creator isn't throwing their pots properly they aren't squeezing the clay in enough at the base and the lower balls still hold much of the reserves which should be distributed more evenly throughout the pot above it it's also worth mentioning here that my pots were heavy like this ones any potter learning how to throw will have pots at the beginning that are bottom heavy as learning how to distribute it evenly is one of the trickiest things about learning how to throw pots learning to do it efficiently is something that just takes time but for those who are starting out i'd recommend just going for it use a bit more gusto and pinch more firmly at the base try to move as much clay upwards in the first three pulls as you possibly can and if that means your pot breaks then so be it slice it off and start again the fastest way you will improve is by throwing hundreds and hundreds of pots another important thing to consider when you're throwing is how you release your fingers when you get to the top of your pot ideally when you get to the top you want to release pressure very gently from either side and i'll show you that again as i'm pulling up my knuckle on the outside and the pads of my fingers on the inside never go beyond the rim of the pot instead they arrive just underneath it and then i very gently detach them often beginners instead of stopping at this point simply continue pulling all the way through the rim and pinch it like so which often causes one side of the rim to be thinner than the other and if you do this numerous times you can end up with a rim that's very uneven and off center if i am making a drinking vessel i don't want the top of my pot to be squared and blocky like so so instead i bevel this edge so it comes to a point where it meets the outside wall this way the sharper edge will fit comfortably into the corners of your mouth and it also makes the pot feel less enclosed as if it's offering out its contents as opposed to holding them in it's also through this edge that we perceive the thickness of the pot and by throwing it to be just a bit more delicate like this it makes the entire vessel seem as if it's being more carefully thrown you may also sometimes find that you have a wobble in your rim this can be due to many factors such as poorly wedged clay or inconsistent pressure when you're pulling up the walls to rectify this i wet the top slightly and then take a sharp potter's needle i'll push this through the wall below the lowest point of the undulation and when i feel the tip of the needle on my finger on the other side i'll lift away all the excess clay above it which in practice looks a bit like this i'll then wet this room again and just carefully work it back to my desired shape one thing i really want to reiterate is just how important it is for your pulls to be slow and consistent speed you start with at the beginning of your pull should remain the same from bottom to top the more practice you get the faster you can begin to throw but initially you should just be focusing on the quality of each pull make sure the rim is set the form is tapering in wet the outsides form the groove in the base and then gently pull the walls up if you find your hands are getting dry as you're doing this you could try throwing with water that contains a bit more slip in it as it tends to cling to the form of the pot as opposed to water which can just run off in some cases i usually fetch a bit more water in between each pull squeezing it on both my hand on the inside so the interior walls are covered and on the outside if the component does dry out too much and you start to feel the clay sticking to your hands then that's a sure sign that you need to add some more water the position on the wheel that i'm pulling from is also really important if the wheel head is a clock my hands are pulling on the walls at about four o'clock next i'll discuss how i finish a pot so that it can be removed from the wheel although that topic together was shaping a pot i'll save for the next video in this series i begin by sponging out the excess water inside the pot and then i carefully trim away this skirt of clay around the base which is done with a blunt old turning tool there's then a selection of tools you can use to clean up the walls these are three throwing kidneys one's rubber one's wooden and one's metal they'll more or less do the same thing and they all have the same feature which is a nice long sharp side it's this edge which i'll be offering up to the clay in order to scrape away the excess slip on the walls and whilst they may all be similar the different materials really do make a big difference i primarily use metal ones these days they tend to be the sharpest and are probably the most difficult to control but i'll discuss each of them in turn the plastic ones tend to be the most beginner friendly they're smoother and they don't bite the clay as much as the wood or the metal but they are more malleable which can be very useful in some situations then there's the wood which isn't flexible whatsoever but has a smooth edge relatively compared to the metal and then there's my favorite which is the sharp brass tool which bites and really rips away the outer layer of slip and it is slightly flexible when i remove this lip i place one hand inside the pot and then i firmly grasp the metal tool and i hold it hovering it just where i want the wall to be i'm not digging it into the clay rather from the inside i'm pushing the clay out against the metal edge and i'm not digging the metal into the clay as doing so usually causes the pot to twist and deform i even use a sharper metal edge sometimes which leaves me with a very crisp and dry surface although there's little room for error when using tools like this i hope all this has proved to be useful out of all of the processes i've shown so far in this series i think this is the most difficult part i know i've said it a lot but the best thing is just not to be too precious when you're first learning how to throw tall thin cylinders just spending an afternoon with 10 lumps of clay and throwing each of them as thinly as you possibly can is absolutely fantastic practice even if they break as you'll still learn so much and sometimes you need to exert too much pressure and pull the walls up too thinly to really gain a thorough understanding of the material throwing pots really evenly and thinly is something that takes time so you shouldn't let this hinder your progress and you should try throwing all kinds of pots even if they are a little bit heavy initially you'll learn more doing that than feverishly trying to throw perfect even cylinders and there are still some shapes these days that i find much harder to distribute the clay nice and evenly but maybe in 10 years time with another decade of practice i'll be able to throw them as easily as i can cylinders and we should think ourselves as lucky as potters as all the clay from pots cut in half or ruined can simply be wedged back up into perfectly usable material and ultimately thrown with again into ever more successful pots thanks for watching i hope this video helped the series isn't over yet and please do let me know down in the comments below if you found this series helpful and equally if you have any ideas or specific topics you'd like to see me cover please do let me know in the comments below that's all see you next time [Applause] you

Channel: Florian Gadsby

Views: 1,256,812

Keywords: pottery, ceramics, how to trim pottery, Florian Gadsby, how to make pottery, handmade pottery, pottery for beginners, pottery wheel, clay, pottery diy, handmade, pottery advice, pottery tips and tricks, ceramics how to, pottery guide, pottery tips, how to centre, how to center, how to center clay, how to centre clay, how to pull up the walls of a pot, how to throw pots, how to throw pottery, throwing tips, throwing help, centering help, centring help, asmr, centering clay

Id: VM8SJZ4lNRY

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022