Monday, January 3, 2011

Hand Built Projects:Make a Basic Pinch Pot

 Start with a ball of clay than half as wide as gold, slightly smaller than your fist. Form it into a business, compact ball.

Do not mix work with clay you do Covered with plastic. If your soil istoo dry to function properly, seal it in a plastic bag with a damp paper towel overnight. The next day, corner of the earth or thedough to a piece of fabric moisture evenly Thanks to ground.

If clay is too wet and sticky, knead the corner or on a gold surfaceplaster is a piece of cloth until it dries slightly.




Hold the ball of clay firmly in one hand. Use the thumb of your otherhand to push the year of opening the ball. This opening should "endof a quarter to half inch of the Year The Other Side Of The Ball, donot push your thumb all along.

If the hole does eventually go through, Just squeeze the balltogether and start over.


Using your thumb, push your fingers in a pinching motion cons.This thin clay to create the pota ¢  floor and walls. Do not try to thin the clay with a pinch too. Instead, use a series of smallpinches more work up Clay outward as it thins.

Working to make the floor and walls have a uniform thickness as possible. This will help keep the pot from cracking when dry firinggold during Firing

Part of the charm of the pinched pot may be the rustic look it has when the top edges are left uneven. You can, however, also choose to trim the upper edge to give the pot a more refined look.

Don't throw away any small pieces of clay. Gather them into a bucket or other container and let them dry thoroughly. Because they will easily slake down and mix with water, they make the easiest way to make slurry, which is used in other forms of handbuilding and in throwing.

The finished pot should be placed somewhere safe and allowed to dry slowly. Fast drying will often result in cracks appearing in the greenware or during firing. After the pot is bone dry (no part of the pot feels cool to the touch) it is ready to be bisque fired.



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Slab Pot Basics:Making Slabs

 Making Slabs
Tiles can be achieved in a variety of methods. The most common method is to deploy the slab by hand using a rolling pin. Other methods include using

Slab Rollers: large pieces of equipment that allow potters to roll large slab thickness uniform very quickly.
Extruders: an extruded pipe can be cut through the middle to form a slab.
Waving hand: the slab can be formed by throwing clay on a hard surface at an angle. The resulting slabs are not uniform in thickness and may give an organic feel to a room.




Soft-Slab Construction

Pots Pouch / Beth E Peterson
Many potters have developed a style that uses slabs which have been recently implemented and are still very wet. These flexible panels can be formed into a beautiful, fluid structures often evoke leather. They can be used with molds to slump or drape over the hump molds to make shapes reproducible, allowing the potter to concentrate more on form finishing with surface textures, decorations, or effects of fire. View slump and draping slabs for more information. Tiles can also be formed very soft, and then incorporated into a larger room once they have stiffened the leather hard

Stiff-Slab Construction

Beth E Peterson
The stiff-slab method is more appropriate for architectural and geometric forms. The slab is rolled then allowed to slowly dry to to leather-hard stage before being cut and joined with other stiffened slabs to create the form.

Stiff slab shapes can be merged with other leather-hard clay components, such as stiffened slump-molded slabs, thrown components, or pinched components. For example, a soft slab may be slumped into the opening of the stiff-slab pot as part of creating a lid for the pot. Another example is adding a foot to a stiff-slab pot by joining an open thrown ring to the pot's bottom.

The possibilities are nearly endless. If you haven't made a slab pot before, check out Make a Basic Slab Pot and let your creativity guide you.

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