Trimming For Beginners + Tap Centering Trick

that nice smooth bottom besides doing squats but squats are recommended [Music] [Music] hello you dirty potters how are you today today we're gonna talk about trimming and most likely you just create your first bull your first Cup your first jar even and you want to learn how to make that really nice foot on the bottom of your bowls trim it a foot at the bottom of your bowl and or a cup really allows to make sure that the bottom of your vessel is a nice and even and it gets rid of some of that surface tension whenever you're putting on grandma's table and she like you mentioned on the table not only that it's really just a proper thing to do with functional stuff I think any Potter who's been around the block a couple times will tell you the first thing they do whenever they pick up a bowl or go to an art show is they pick it up they turn it over and they see the quality on the bottom the places that you take care of that people can't see immediately as it really sets you apart from being a crafter versus an artist and how well you trim the bottom of your vessels really shows how much care you take into the places that people can't see and that's how much work you've really put into your stuff so today we're gonna go over trimming and I'm gonna give you a couple tips along the way to tell you how to get that nice smooth bottom besides doing squats but squats are recommended first of all let's get this subject out of the way right now now if you're just beginning and you're learning how to trim do not try and trim your stuff as soon as it comes off the wheel please and it's all wet and tacky this right here it's considered wet clay see just comes apart but you can still technically trim it and I'm sure gonna be somebody in your class is like totally do it though you can't there are stages to clay and you need to trim them in the proper stages you rebel you need to make sure you can handle them without morphing the entire body first if this thing was an actual vessel and I tried to handle it my hand I'd probably mess it up look how easy it is to smoosh it around if you pick your bowl or cup up off the wheel and it starts moving around because it's still too wet that's not trimmable stuff but if you pick it up and you can move it around and slap it around without it actually doing anything this is trimmable with that being said there are different stages to clay this right here is considered wet this is tacky this has a little bit more water content in it it still technically sticks to my hands if I try and move it around it doesn't fall off too easily this right here is not trimmable and when you throw your stuff and take it immediately off the wheel and don't wait for it to try for a little while it's considered wet clay still don't trim that put it down this right here is considered leather soft the reason this is considered leather soft is because it's good enough to hold but still I can technically move it a little bit you see look I can still hold the majority of the bowl without messing it up there's only certain weak spots and places that I can touch that mess it up this is the thing that makes it leather soft there's still a little bit more water content in this than some leather stuff leather soft imagine that you picked up a ball and it was fine and you touched the top and it morphed that's because it's not completely leather dry yet get out of my way Susan and then there's the leather stage the leather stages were the high majority of people like to trim their stuff and you can always tell the leather stage because it's still a little bit difficult to handle but you can still take off and morph a lot of stuff from this look I can just tear off a chunk of this stuff if I feel like it it's not that hard that's damn near impossible to do in the leather hard stage I prefer to trim my stuff in the leather stage it feels just like a leather belt then it's a little bit difficult to explain to you what that feels like because I'm not there with you passing around an example around class like your teacher is probably doing like oh guys this is the leather skirt this is the leather hard stage so I can't give you a tactile definition of what it feels like but I can say it feels a little bit like a leather belt for your first time I highly suggest you trim your stuff in this stage now these tube over here are considered leather hard there is nothing I can do to these to morph them at all these things are already set in their way they're leather hard I'm not moving them but if you look on the inside you can see that it sorry to turn a little bit white that white color especially with white clay is what happens to clay whenever it dries out completely so I have the little little little bit of time to actually trim this if you see these signs right here inside your stuff you need to get trimming it's up sitting around and playing on your phone I see you back there well technically I can even drop this and nothing would happen to it it would stay in form this thing is leather hard and if I try and pull off any clay it's really not happening I can morph it a little bit I can maybe sculpt it a tiny bit but it's a lot harder to move than it would be leather and leather soft and then there is the dreaded bone dry clay you only want this when you're done for me the bottom of your bowl if you have not finished trimming the bottom of your bowl and it is in this stage you are boned and if you can tell these two are actually the same exact clay but there's a large difference you see how this one's a lot darker then this one is this one is devoid of all of its water it's naturally dried out over time this right here sounds like this this one shows a little bit of water content in it and you can really tell from the sound versus this sounds a lot more brutal that's because it is that's because it doesn't have any water in it if you ever get to this stage you should not get to the stage in the first place so there's wet clay there's leather soft clay those leather clay which you should be trimming in this stage really and then there's leather hard clay this is when you really have your last chance to trim that stuff once it gets to bone dry mr. powers but daren't say can I put water on this and then it'll become wet like like this one again right and then all of a sudden I can magically trim my stuff within a course of 5 minutes oh no you can't because do you know what happens when you leave this stuff in water for too long this is what would happen your stuff would turn into this crud right here that's right this used to be this thing's brother and now I'm forcing him to stare at him now my brother I mean a lot of students who think they can take their bone-dry stuff and just dip it in water and leave it there until it becomes something else again you can't really take this and put it back into its former self you have to keep your stuff wet enough and wrap it up well enough to make sure that you can trim it in a timely manner keep it a timely schedule in between when you through your clay how fast it takes to dry and when you're able to trim it is a very important thing especially in ceramic artwork so don't let it get to this stage before you actually trim it now let's talk about some of the tools of trimming most likely you've got a package that had a couple tools that look like this or at least one trim tool you know that weird trim tool with the square on this side and then it's a stick a Newtons a loop-de-loop on the other side it's fine to use that too but I don't have those cuz I hate those but I do want to get this point out of the way I have learned to use like 15 different trim tools and these are my favorite ones there is no one trim tool to rule them all there are only different varieties of trim tools for every single person who wants to use different trim tools so please don't feel discouraged whenever someone's like no don't you that one to Joe don't you that one Oh only use the one your teacher told you to so any tool that you want to use is fine but today we're going to be using the pear-shaped trim tool and the reason we're gonna be doing this is because you most likely got this tool inside of your package or that weird square one there are a bunch of trim tools in the world but today we're going to be using this one right here this one right here it's called a pear trim tool it's called that because I mean look look at it so let's go over to the wheel and let's figure out how to use one of these first things first let's learn how to Center let's say you're not that one kid in the class for some reason knows how to do everything perfectly and you really don't know how to Center your bowl when you trim it I'm gonna show you the way I was taught to do it and then I'm gonna show you the way I do it this bowl at the moment is not centered so what you're gonna do is you're gonna get your pencil you're gonna rest your wrist on this thing right here and just let it go and barely touch your clay one two three now do you see this mark right here what you're gonna do is you're gonna put your hand on this mark and push it towards the center of your wheel and you can tell the center because there's these lines usually you on a wheel if you don't have them follow the same rules you just push it towards the center now it's a little bit more Center so go ahead and get your pencil and do it one more time touch touch touch you see that this is a much bigger line now so now just push it towards the center the entire point of this is to get this pencil and make sure there's a line all the way around this once you get into the center you're gonna see a line form all the way around just like this this is the way I was taught how to Center my stuff and by the way I'm using a pencil and not a pin tool because the pin tool will dig into your clay and scratch it and you're gonna mess up your Bowl but at least with a pencil you can simply wipe this off right here and it comes off with enough pressure each and every time you don't get a complete circle from your pencil go ahead take it and push it or pull it into the center a tiny tiny bit more so sooner or later you're gonna get a line and then you're gonna get like one spot that's open and just go ahead and tapping Lubin once you get a line all the way around your bowl that is now centered now here's the way I like to do it go ahead put your boat way off center and slowly start spinning your wheel now if you're right-handed you're here and if you're left-handed you're right here but either way once this bowl comes towards any one of your hands go ahead and smack it towards the center of your wheel and the more centered it gets the more little smacks you're gonna start doing so smack smack smack smack smack smack smack smack smack it smack Center smack it's gonna take a while to get that down so I suggest you do the pencil wave first but after you get tired of doing this for 500 years go ahead and try that tap center method so once your stuff is centered go ahead and get yourself a little ball clay make sure it's good clan its not gonna be gross hard clay you want to use some pretty okay clay put your hand at the very top of your bowl and start putting clay wedges right in between the wheel and the bowl itself this is a key note though make sure you don't push into your bowl make sure you're pushing down if you push downwards the clay is gonna morph onto your bowl anyway because this space is gonna move outwards you don't want to be that guy who's like oh my oh and then you take it off and your rims all morphed and yeah yeah that you got what you deserved just gently kind of push it down on the wheel itself tear off spin the wheel put it down over here tear off spin the wheel put it down over here and you should be good something I like to do whenever I really really don't trust those little battens down here is I'll take my hand and I'll just push them down a little bit more on the edge just like this I'm pretty sure this doesn't help me at all but it honestly gives me some peace of mind so I don't mind and now if you do like this you could spin your wheel as fast as you want and nothing will come off amazing remember that pencil that you had from earlier you're still gonna need that a lot of the trouble that happens with students is they never figure out where to put their foot and the foot can't be too small and it can't be too big what I want you to do is I want you to get your pencil right here and go ahead and Mark out where you think your foots gonna be you're gonna draw two different lines and in between those lines is going to be your foot so if you want your foot way out here you're gonna make a line right here and you're gonna make another line right here everything outside of this line you're gonna trim away and everything inside this line you're also gonna trim away anything that is within these two lines you're gonna keep so that means if you wanted to make a foot super small you would take one pencil mark right here and one right here and this space right here would be your foot but clearly that's way too small for a cup and or Bowl you want something that's actually gonna hold its own weight on a table when you eat from it and not gonna spill over and then the dogs drinking it and again the cat's afraid of you now it's an awful experience you see this Cup right here I made this cup like five years ago and it has the tiniest tiniest foot and now I can't stand on anything nobody uses it in the house look at this it you just push it over once and dies that's why you don't want a small foot so now that I've already drawn the lines for our bowl what we're gonna do now is we're going to trim everything on the inside of it and on the outside so I'm gonna show you guys the way that I learned and then I'm gonna show you guys the way I do it as per usual go ahead get your pair trim tool the one that literally looks like a little pair and take this big side right here put your hand on the very top and make constant pressure constant pressure means that you're not doing this as it spins you're not putting this amount of pressure and then this amount of pressure and then this amount of pressure what you're doing is you're putting one constant amount of pressure this is what you need to be doing to this bowl hold your trim tool just like this and just push down with this finger right here just like this and keep doing that same amount of pressure no matter what happens be warned if you trim bone-dry clay with your tool enough times that will unsharp anit you will either have to buy a new tool or resharpen it it will ruin your tools and go ahead and keep pushing down just like this until you get it deep enough foot that you actually want okay cool that sides done now flip your pair of trim tool over and use this tiny part right here hold your trim tool just like this and start on the inside and pull towards this direction and stop right outside that line right there now you're gonna keep doing this over and over and over again until you get a deep enough foot and this is one of the reasons I like to use pair trim tools because if I'm going cheat mode I'm just gonna lay this sucker down flat and spin and now I have an entire surface that I'm just gonna take off see I just did that entire surface in the matter of like three seconds the one thing you need to remember is to have constant pressure if you don't have constant pressure and you push a little pressure and you take it off and push a little pressure and take it off because you're too afraid or you're frightened you're gonna mess up the bowl that's the thing that's gonna mess up the bowl if you are afraid to keep trimming your stuff and you don't keep that constant pressure you're gonna create unwanted bumps and trim marks inside your stuff and then you're gonna have a really messed up bull it's not gonna sit flat anywhere Potter tip sometimes the inside of this little circle right here makes a glaze run so what I like to do is like to get a little bit more trim and make a tiny little line on the insides there because trust and believe me when you're done glazing your very first bolt it might run and this will stop it from running on the inside just like if you make a little line on the outside of your pot at the very base of the foot right here this will kind of prevent a lot of glands from running and this doesn't make it stop a hundred percent but it lessens the chances a lot so we've trimmed the outside right here and we trim the inside we trimmed everything on the out side of those lines this is going pretty good but you think you're done oh no you're not done get off Instagram you're not done go ahead and take your sponge or whatever have you some people have lambskin and some people have a chamois and make a little arc with it and go ahead and push this part down right here these two little edges are most likely gonna be really really sharp after you're done trimming because you just trim them with essentially a tiny tiny knife so go ahead and get a sponge make a little arc and just push down these two little edges right here and keep that constant pressure and I've just rounded out these edges and when it's done coming out of the kiln it's not gonna cut your hand when you try to hold it from the bottom and get it out the cabinet and I know you're gonna try and give this to your grandma your mom cuz you're not keeping your own artwork right so I mean unless you really want to cut your mom and now you are essentially done but does one more move left you are almost done all you have to do now is take this off of the wheel without messing it up a lot of people at this point will get their fingers and try and rolie polie this part off right here don't don't do that don't worry about that go ahead get your wooden knife put it next to but not on the actual bowl itself by the trim do not touch this with your bow just put it down on the wheel next to it and spin your wheel and these things will come off automatically that way you could pick up your bowl without morphine the very top and you have done it you have trimmed your very first bowl I think uh I think a little round of congratulations is get off Instagram get off Instagram pay attention and you've done it you've made your very first bowl and you know what the very bottom is super super smooth because we're not savages and we didn't leave it all sharp and I still have one more bow to trim right here so for the hell of it let's do this one more time but we're gonna do it a little faster but pay attention because we're about to do everything we just talked about [Music] [Applause] [Music] and once you're done trimming if you really want to you can make some little decorations in here with the trim tool by itself one of my favorite things to do is put three concentric lines at the very bottom of my bowl makes it look really nice and uplift it I put one line right here I put another right here and then you put the third line always remember to sign the bottom of your bowl because somebody will get desperate who doesn't pass class and try and steal this junk and you also have to make sure your clearance level is good too what I mean by clearance level is the amount of depth you've got while trimming the inside of your bowl and the outside for that effect I like to get my wooden knife right here and put it right here and if I can see through that space right there that's a good indicator for me right there I can see right through that so that's deep enough for me because when you start glazing this stuff you're gonna take a sponge and you're gonna wipe this entire foot off you're gonna end up leaving the glaze on the inside and on the very outside of your bowl and the glaze does move in the kiln it will drip off and fuse to the kiln shelf and believe you mean this will stick to my kiln shelf if it's not glazed properly and you don't wipe off all the glaze and I will break your bowl and not count it as a passing grade before I don't save my kiln shelf my kiln shelf is probably worth a lot more than you pick up a ball and there you go you have trimmed your very first two bowls I think you deserve a tiny a tiny round of it get back to work no applause get back to work so it's really that simple it's not too hard one of the very few things that I think a lot of people don't understand is that you can't pull away whenever you start trimming something you need to keep a constant amount of pressure just like when you're throwing I'm sure you guys noticed you're getting better at cylinders the more pressure you continuously put as you pull up and you really need to do that with trimming as well because if you start to pull away you're gonna get some nasty lines just like this on your pottery but if you don't pull away you're gonna get that nice smoothness just like this mmm ah yeah don't forget you don't have to paint everything on or make everything look nice of glaze you can always put a nice layer of trim inside of any of your balls with your trim tool can also be used as aesthetic purposes and them the basics I hadn't had a shrimp Bowl so thank you guys very much for joining me I really hope that that helps some of you new Potter's out there learn how to trim one of the most consistent problems that I see whenever people trim is that you have to keep constant pressure and you have to have the right kind of clay to trend if you're trying to trim something that's super dry it's not gonna work super soft you're gonna create holes in your pottery so you really really really have to make sure that you have that nice leather medium stuff so thank you guys very much for joining me I really hope that helps some of you new Potter's learn how to trim and I really really hope that helps you pass your class if that's why you have if that's what you're watching this video and I tried to keep this clean for anybody who wants to show their class I mean we're we'll figure that out in the editing really if you want to see any of my artwork the links are down below my Instagram my Facebook fan page where you can always message me and ask me questions or you can just look at some pretty pretty art now we'll see you dirty Potter's next week [Music] I do realize there's a certain amount of people out there who want to know how deep they should go I mean I mean I'd you already know how deep

Channel: Earth Nation Ceramics

Views: 301,554

Keywords: pottery, clay, trimming, help, beginner, wheel thrown, ceramic, make, craft, cone5, cone 6, kiln, foot, trim tool, glaze recipe, art

Id: hhtdYUMTNpc

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018