How To Throw Lids

[Music] hey everybody welcome back today we're going to talk about lids I've got a dozen jars here that I made yesterday and we're gonna make lids for those today it's going to be mainly one style of a lid that I call kind of like an in andover lid which means that you throw the lid upside down and you throw it so that has a foot basically that goes inside the rim and then the top outer edge of the rim of the lid goes over the rim of the jar and so those you have to throw upside down to come back the next day flip them over trim them and put a knob on them so that's what we're gonna do with these jars here and we're like so we're gonna make that one style of lid but I'm gonna make some of them a little bit different based on the shape of the jar but so we're going to talk about the ins and outs of those lids today so let's get to it alright for these lids I have a pound of clay each which is probably a little bit more than I need but for making a lid like this that we're going to throw and then turn over and trim I'd rather have more clay than less because you can always reclaim the trimmings and if you ever make one that doesn't have enough your lid won't look good or you or you'll trim it to thin and then you have a mess so what we're gonna do is the first tip that I that I have for you is that all of these jars that I made no matter what shape they were I made the first one and I set my calipers to that first one and so that I made the rest of them to fit the exact same sized lid so now that I've got a dozen lids to make they're all going to be the exactly the same size they won't end up looking the same based on how I throw them here and then how I trim them and put knobs on them but just to make it easier for myself that I don't have to throw twelve different size lids I when I made the first one I set my calipers to that and then I'm gonna through the rest of them and each one I measured inside with that guide right there and now that as I throw them I'm going to flip this around and as I throw the foot on him you'll see I'll gauge that foot with that with the outside parameters of that caliper right there and so that way I can just make a dozen I'm actually probably going to make fourteen or sixteen lids just to make sure that I've got extras in they're all going to vary slightly so that way I can throw them all and then I can see which one's fit best which one's look best and I'll have a couple extras in case some don't fit so nobody's perfect even after 25 years we all make mistakes and never know I might lose one along the way too so but here we go we're gonna make the first one and kind of show you guys how we go about doing this now this another thing you could do with these you could throw these off of a big hump as well I just kind of like having the individual clay balls to make them this way so I've kind of opened it up like I would like a wood a bowl and then I just leave a whole lot of clay up here where I want to make this where I want to separate this clay out to make the foot in the outer ring there so I'm gonna gotta get that there and I kind of got an idea here so there what I'm gonna do now that I've got kind of a thickness up here that I can separate and I've got an idea where that foot where that what's gonna be I just take my wooden rib here and I come just inside there where I want that foot to be and I just push down and separate that clay out now I've got the foot sticking up above here I've kind of gauge that again that's a little bit big so next one I think I'm gonna need to make that inside a little bit smaller so that I don't have that happen but now I've got that that would be a snug fit there alright and now what I'm gonna do is take the thickness that's right here and I'm actually going to kind of thin that out and pull it out to make a wider rim on this and there we go that's about all we have to it the rest of its gonna be done tomorrow when we come back and cut these off and turn them over and trim them alright guys here we are it is the next day after throwing these lids and I've got them ready to tuck off the bat and what I did last night is I actually didn't have the heat on in my workshop and it was a little cooler night so I didn't cover them because I they were pretty wet I threw them really late last night and so now this morning what I did is I actually ran a wire under all of the lids because I figured by the time I got back to them there might be a little too stiff to do that and then actually I lightly covered them this morning before I had to go do something else so they wouldn't get too dry and then so now what I'm gonna do is basically just lift them all off the batts and flip them over so then we can trim them and put the knobs on so just wanted to give you guys an update on where we are in the process and how I handle these so now you'll see basically I'm going to take these like said and just flip them over so that they're ready to ready to trim [Music] before we trim the leaves I'm going to show you something I do that I think really helps this process immensely because when I first started making lids of this style I would I would trim the lid and then take a little ball of clay and put it on top and then Center that ball of clay on top to make the knob and and I just found that process really difficult because sometimes that the if the lid was too soft you would end up caving in the top of the lid and if it was too dry would crack all kinds of issues and just kind of something I took from kind of my idea of piecing pots together when they're wet I thought you know what why don't I throw little bitty cylinders and and set those aside and then when I'm trimming the the lids after I finished trimming them before I take them off the wheel because then if they're too wet you have to take them off the wheel let those stiffen up put them back on the wheel and then put the knobs on and all that process I just said you know what I'm gonna throw these little bitty cylinders and and set those aside and then when I'm trimming the lids I'm gonna pick one of those cylinders up at a time put it down on there and I've already got a cylinder thrown I just attach it to the lid and and make my knobs out of that so that's what I'm gonna do here I'm going to throw those off of a hump so I've got about two and a half pounds of clay right here that I'm actually gonna Center and throw those little cylinders off of I don't I have no idea how much it's going to take it it's definitely not gonna take two-and-a-half pounds but I actually had these clay balls cut for some pictures I made yesterday and this was an extra one it's all I'm gonna do is just open up the top of the Kwai ball a little bit open up the top of this clay here a little bit then make a little cylinder I don't mind if it's a little bit thick I just don't does the problem you may run into is if you if you make them a little bit too small then you're gonna not gonna have enough spite for your knobs so you might want to have a little bit bigger than a little bit too small so that's all I do is just kind of throw it and then I kind of use my screwdrivers that I usually take off my bats and I just kind of push it in till it cuts them off and then hold it on my finger and I'm just gonna put it on this put it on this back over here that I've got set aside I'm just throwing a little bitty cylinder cut it off and set it aside and I'll probably throw some extras I've got 16 lids I've only got 12 actual jars that I've got for lids twelve jars that need list and I've got sixteen lids for having extra lids to know it's a good things [Music] [Music] all right I found out that for me working with these plastic bats when I go to trim lids is really beneficial and here's here's the steps of how I do it I basically take the lid after it's leather hard you know I want it to be a little bit softer this one might be a little bit stiff out here but if it's too soft it's really hard to trim lids but I definitely want to make sure that this part is it's fairly stiff so that you can pick it up and mess with it without distorting the the lid or the rim here so what I do is I take a little bit of water and I put it right on that rim because that's what's going to touch the bat because I want to set that down and then I want to get it to seal so I'm kind of pushing it back and forth kind of dry and drying that water off making it stick to the bat that's one of the reasons I use the plastic bat all I'm doing now is it's trying to get this weird recenter on the wheel I usually tap it a couple of good times now that it's pretty good and stuck to the bat it'll stay there because of the the air that's trapped in there and then I wet the clay it so it's curating a suction underneath that lid to kind of keep it to keep it where it is while I've trim on it so of course trim the lid there's there's many different ways to all different kinds of tools what I'm using is one of these right here that's a double-ended but I'm just gonna use the square end you've probably noticed I don't use a large amount of tools when I'm doing anything that I do I try to kind of keep it down to a minimum of how many tools I use but I got I got a general shape that I'm going for with most my lids I want it basically rounded in this section and then a little bit of a lip here for the outside of this drop too much a little bit of a lip there for the outside of the lid you can see how how well stuck that lid is that I'm pushing in and carving all this away and it's not slipping or moving now that doesn't mean it won't slip I've had lids that have flown off the wheel while I'm doing this just means it didn't get stuck very well but if you if you get if you get the lid at the right consistency the right dryness and you get it stuck down to the bat really well you'll have a lot of success doing trimming your lids this way all right so there's basically my shape that I wanted for the lid now what I'm going to do is take one of these I'm going to take a needle tool and draw a line for a circle as far as that the center of that on top of that lid then you're going to take one of my little bitty cylinders that I made earlier I'm gonna get a little bit of water and just add it right here to the bottom I don't want to get it really wet but I want to get a little bit of water there and then I'm gonna try to Center that somewhere around that ring that I just made with a needle tool now I'm going to throw that and I'm going to start out by getting water on the top and just kind of pushing down on the top of it to kind of help force that down and stick to the to the top of the lid then I'm gonna kind of add a little bit more water if you had too much water before you put this on it'll slip and move around and it won't stick to the actual top of the lids so now I want to use my thumbnail there or whatever use the tools kind of smooth that out now that it's stuck really well now I can actually shape this in form it good thing is is that lid centered so even if I get this a little bit off-center it's such a small amount of clay that you can kind of manipulate it and get it back on center you just make whatever shape knob that you prefer I just kind of have a general idea but I don't I'm not too stuck on one idea I might if I'm making a jar a certain shape I might try to make a certain style knob but for the most part I just kind of make whatever whatever I feel like as far as a knob and the other reason I use these plastic bats is this right here once I'm done throwing that it's still stuck to this and unless I want to use a new bat every time I can pick this up and because these plastic bats are flexible I can kind of bend it this way turn it and then bend it again and I just felt it release now I can pick that lid up and move it and start over with the next one so there we go now we got a trimmed lid now I'll come back tomorrow and I'll actually put a hole up through because this is holding air inside of that knob I'll come back and drill a hole through the bottom to make sure that that air has an escape [Music] well that wraps it up I got all the lids made for all the jars I got them all trimmed I got all the holes drilled in them so the air can escape from the knobs and I got two matched up with the jars based on the size and shape of the jar and so I hope this helps you I hope it inspires you and if it did go out and make some amazing pots don't forget to subscribe before you go if you haven't done that already and if you really enjoyed this and you got something out of it hit the thumbs up button and we'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Matthew Kelly Pottery

Views: 36,755

Rating: 4.959372 out of 5

Keywords: Matthew Kelly Pottery, Pottery, Clay, Lids, Lidded Jar, Seagrove Pottery, Pottery Instruction, Throwing Pottery

Id: mP7SWIqA2pg

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 27 2019