Platter Bowls for Wood Firing #1: Throwing and Conversation

hey everybody welcome back it is a late night throwing time here at Matthew Kelly pottery so we're gonna throw some some platter bowls for my wood kiln and I'm gonna be making these a little bit different than what I normally make in hopes that they make it through my wood firing without warping so let's go [Music] okay we're going to start out here making a six pound bowl I've got two three pound clay balls then I'm going to Center in two different clay balls so I'm going to round the top of that one and then get this one down on the wheel and then throw that one on top of it after I sent of this one one of the things I've had several questions about is is about wider bottom pieces having small cracks on the bottom a lot of times shaped like an ass or you that show up after the bisque fire and one of the reasons in my experience that that happens is is especially if you're using a pug mill and the clay comes out of the pug mill like this because you can see how it's the round shape there I've rounded that one a little bit but and then if you take that clay ball and then throw it down this way on the wheel and that's the bottom of your pot the way the pug mill mixes the clay and spirals it calls it that if you throw the clay ball down this way it kind of like unspoilt or twists as it dries and doesn't dry correctly and so that you will have it so that it get that small edge crack on the bottom so the way I saw that is that I take the clay balls out of the pug more like this and I'm going to throw it down this way if you've noticed oh my videos you'll see that now when I throw the next one on top I'm gonna throw it the other way but that's not going to be the bottom of this plate of this bowl so that's why that makes a difference in why that changes that so if you've had any problems with with cracks in the bottom of your pots you know definitely pay attention to that next time you're plugging clay I know it definitely makes it easier to Center to throw it down the other way because it's already round but you're gonna have problems with cracks and that's not worth it so so I'll just Center this 3-pounder and then I'm gonna round off the top there and then I've already rounded the other one the other way so that I when I throw it on top now I've got the two points are gonna meet and then won't be trapping any air when I do that now I can definitely send her six pounds of clay at one time but we have discussed that before on my channel and did a livestream or a video about that but there's there are times that it just makes it easier on my body and definitely makes it sometimes easier to get them out of Clay Center that I want to send her so the way that I'm making these quote-unquote different than what I normally do is I'm I'm gonna leave these thicker than I normally would for my gas kiln because I you know definitely had experience and seen other potters who have had experience with with plates and bowls and those kinds of things warping worse you know in a wood kiln especially in a salt glazed kiln and then of course one of the main reasons is that is because every pot is sitting on wads of clay of the wadding to keep it up off the shelf so you have to kind of account for that and so you want to leave a little bit more thickness really throughout the whole pot especially on wider pieces like this you could just definitely have a problem with warping if you don't if you don't leave some more thickness there so these are definitely got not going to be as large as they 6-pounder that I would normally throw but I'm just trying to get a real consistent wall thickness and like I said being thicker than than the ones I would normally throw for my gas kiln and I want to leave a good hefty rim on there as well my other focus is to get a really smooth inside I'm gonna come back and do some slip decoration and glaze decoration on the inside of these so having that smooth curve on the inside will help with with all of that decoration and with the flow of all that decoration as it's being fired so I'm gonna stop after that pool right there and so my wall thickness I would assume is probably a good you know between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch something like that and like I said that's a little thicker than I would normally throw these I'm gonna try to make sure I have a good little foot on the bottom there as well because makes it look good but also if somebody wants to hang these on their wall they can wrap a wire around that foot and then be able to hang these as a wall decoration piece once they're finished I try to make sure I don't put too much water on the inside where I'm doing these as well is that water will soak in as it sits there and then it'll get your clay more and more soft and you'll have a harder time getting the shape that you want out of it what I'm trying to do here is is get that nice curve at the base they're going down into the bottom now that I've got that started I'm going to come back with this tool here I'm using one of these mud tools plastic rib don't use these a lot but they work really nice for doing this kind of smoothing of the clay and getting this curve really nice in the in the bottom of a bowl like this of course I'm supporting it a little bit on the outside on the outside with my left hand as I do this depending on if I need to push out more if I need to push back in a little bit with my hand kind of adjust that now I'm gonna take the rim of this and lay it over as well and then after I do that I'll have to come back with that rib again and do the inside a little bit more water on the outside once I do that rim laid over like that I usually have to come back in and and push down and out on this part of the the wall there as well to kind of get that all right that doesn't have quite the exact shape I'd like in there I've got a little bit of a bump down in there but it's low enough that I'm gonna leave that the way it is before it and then I'm actually gonna use this piece of plastic and I'm gonna put it over the rim and kind of push some of that grit that's coming to the surface back down into that RIM there this one was starting to get just a little bit of a wobble too I've already made four of these tonight and here on the fifth one of course the first one I had on video is gonna have a little bit of a wobble the rest of them we're just fine I think I was pushing this one a little bit farther down than the others that I made and but I'm pretty sure it'll be fine if not I'll recycle it before it's misfired if I see it's warped or not running evenly and then I'll have a couple extras so that I can do that if I need to yeah we'll go ahead and throw another one maybe before I'm finished here we'll throw a throw a bigger one maybe we'll put three of these clay balls together and throw a nine pound one see what that looks like once again likes it I'm gonna round this one first before I put my other clay ball down on there get that right nice round surface there well I've been if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you've seen that I finished the back wall of the kiln and started to do some good work on the chimney as well and I'm about to have the the chimney get above the arch even on the outside of the kiln and that's exciting news it's coming along and making good progress on it definitely got probably another day or two of work to get the chimney finished and I've got some real tedious work of getting the space where the dampers are gonna be all situated correctly that's gonna take some time having to definitely would have been having to cut a lot of brick the last couple days to fit in all the real specific areas of the chimney but that's helped me get a little more excited about this all coming together is having that back wall of the kiln done and the chimney going up it's kind of like other than other than putting the the insulation and the in the cast of all on top of the arch that's that's one of the very last things that I had to do out there so definitely getting close to the firing and I've got a lot of pots to make - I definitely feeling the time crunch of that tear which is hence why I'm out here late at night getting some pots made after the kids have gone to bed I was out here earlier laying brick in the chimney and then made a couple 20-pound pots I'll take you guys over there when I finished throwing these and show you the larger pots that I have made for the wood firing so far I'm really happy with this selection or the the grouping whatever I'm really happy with the pots the larger pots that I've made so far for the first firing they turned out really well did the slip decoration earlier also on the the two-part vases that were in my last video so I'll show you those yeah I really had the I was really thinking about whether I wanted to make platter bowls or platters and trim a foot on the bottom or not I definitely liked that look but I'm gonna try it this way first is this the way I normally make my platter bowls and see if this works okay and the wood kiln if it does then that's the wind and continue to do it not that I'm against like I said nothing I'm against the trim foot I love the look of a good trim foot on a on a bowl or a platter but just gonna try to stick with what I've been doing and see how well it works and go from there the first thing I do is before I use my rib down there I've really used my left hand my middle finger mainly to kind of curve because most time that you have a problem like that last Bowl that I made less time if you have a problem with that with that curve it's right there before you reach the bottom so I'm trying to really work on that spot there to get it nice and curved and great thing about these ribs like this is you've got a sharper curve here and a lesser curve here that you can use depending on what part of the ball that you're working on and how much curve you want to put got water dripping down my leg it's itching yeah this one's turning that really nice some of these two I'll probably come back and alter the edge on them a little bit after they stiffen up just a little bit give us some more character one of the reasons I like having this late over rim on them but also if you do decide to alter the edge that it gives a whole nother look with this rim being laid over it also gives you a nice break point for doing decoration we can change the the glazing and the decoration from the rim to the inside of the bowl all right get our piece of plastic again you can do this with a lot of different things but I found a little plastic around and that really helps just like say push that grip back down into the end of the clay a little bit yeah really happy with that one that's a nice Bowl nice platter all right now will you have a 9-pound one a shot will get three of these three pound clay balls here and Center them just like the two and see what we can come up with yeah I'm not sure how much bigger just adding three more pounds will make this but we'll see hopefully I feel this justifiable justifiably bigger but letting into when you get making a wide piece like this large bowl three pounds doesn't really go all that far and of course I'm leaving this these a little thicker which will probably make me feel that it's not big enough but got the bat pinholes down there on the bat that I'm trying to work around and not catch my finger on the wrong way that would hurt or catch my fingernail on the bat pinhole I've done stuff like that before it's no fun no ain't good there that went we'll all right let's see I'm gonna do one more pull like that I don't want to get it too thin and I definitely want to feel like this is wide enough to justify extra three pounds of course I'm leaving a good amount of weight in the in the bottom in that little spot down there to get that curve yeah in that pool I tried to actually go ahead and start that curve by pushing out and doing that curve and that really worked out well I'll tell you what one thing this is off topic but one thing that I uh III didn't sit I won't say that I really loved English when I was in high school still don't really love I don't I wouldn't want to sit down and write a paper you know do and do a term paper and all that jazz that just stuff just does not interest me at all but one thing in recent years that I've tried to work on a lot is is to certain words that that we especially in America or in the definitely where I live is people using words incorrectly like the works good and well doing something good it's not proper English doing it well and and I catch myself often or even somebody you know a common phrase for people say how's it going oh how you doing I'm doing good no you're doing well it's it's just one of those things that's like I said not a big deal like I'm not gonna correct just the average person that I see on the street you know or even if even most of my you know friends I wouldn't just call them out but just for myself is just something that I've wanted to to work on and it's something I've started to notice that when I say things and I and I don't say them correctly like that it kind of bothers me so they're working really hard to do well saying well instead of good alright this is getting really why I didn't like that but I can feel that it's starting to lose a little bit just women barely got a little wobble but I can just tell by experience that if I keep messing with it that's gonna get worse so I'm not gonna worry so much about getting that perfect shape on the inside of this one as I am just gonna work on laying the slip over and getting this Joker finished so I can get stop spinning and get off the wheel yeah I'm gonna stop right there like I said that's not the exact shape I would love to have on the inside but I know just from my experience if I keep messing with that that's very slight wobble is only gonna get worse and could cause a lot of problems now I did oh there he goes I accidentally picked my plastic up earlier when I was picking up a tool or a sponge all right there we go so yeah I feel I'm definitely happy with that and I'll be be able to do some nice decoration on that in order to get this off I believe I'm gonna pull my splash pan apart and take that off the wheel all right here's the the large pots that I've made so far for this wood firing yeah like said very happy with those other than that first jar that you guys saw me make you're probably gonna hear a lot of echo because I hear it right now as I'm talking my voice is echoing in all these pots sounds kind of funny to me anyway I've got these four over here are the ones that I made is two part places that I did the slip decoration on now and I've got I think all eight of these are around 20 pounds each these two of course I've just made and they're a little bigger because they're just made plus the shape of them by having that tapering at the bottom so much they get a whole lot more height and but the volume of these two jugs I'm really happy with the shape of the volume of those and really all eight of them I'm just really thrilled with the shape and the design so far and what I've been able to accomplish throw in these and so just super excited to have this many large pots going in one kiln because I can honestly say probably maybe two or three of these at the most that I would ever fire at a time when I fire with my buddy Joseph and just because of lack of space for putting them in the kiln and but I've got a whole biscuit load that's already full of some pictures and other things like that that I've made and I've got some jars here that I've made and some other bases but so things things are going well and here in case I was walking that I'll get over here so you can see the rest of them but things are going real I don't know if I'll handle either one of these two here but either way I'll definitely do some slip decoration and just have some fun with that and then I'm gonna get on with making some more platter balls different sizes I might even make a couple really large ones and then make some smaller ones and I've got everything else I'm gonna make all of them let's give me smaller bowls coffee mugs tumblers who knows linen jars I've got to make some bunch of smaller than the jars and kind of medium ones as well and so I got a lot of pots to make but I got like three or four weeks to get everything made and glai this fired glazed and start loading and so we're well on our way but I've got a lot of work left to do hence why like I said why I'm out here middle of the night throwing pots but just felt good and one of the throw some pots and then I was out here working I thought you know what I'm gonna bring you guys along to show you what I was making so anyway hope you enjoyed it and anyway we'll see in the next video thank you for being here thanks for all the comments on the last couple videos and all the views and the shares it really helps grow the channel and of course it will help with the income of the monetization of the videos as well so anyway you have any questions as always leave me a comment and if if I got time I'll definitely get back to you which I usually do so thank you very much and we'll see you soon [Music]

Channel: Matthew Kelly Pottery

Views: 16,614

Rating: 4.9444447 out of 5

Keywords: Throwing, Platter, Bowl, Pottery Demonstration, Matthew Kelly Pottery, Seagrove Pottery, Wood Firing, Platter Bowl, Clay

Id: dXMqxSqRCHQ

Length: 30min 27sec (1827 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019