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2023 Daily updates October

Making a vase but dealing with wet clay! 

Always try to save your pieces even if they have seemed to fail on you 😊

Few tips for this video:

Begin by throwing a basic cylinder. This will serve as the starting point for your vase. Ensure that the walls are even and the base is flat. For a finished vase with a narrow base, start with a narrow cylinder, if you want a larger base start with a larger cylinder. For a narrower neck, consider using the technique of collaring. This involves gently pinching the clay at the top to create the desired shape. Which is what you can see me doing in the video

Now what happens after collaring and the walls are too wet? We start to get collapse, at this moment we want to slow the wheel speed down to reduce exaggerating the problem, we then gently press the walls back into place with your hands. Work from the inside and outside of the vase to gradually restore its shape. You can also sponge off any excess water or slip to help firm up the clay. Water is constantly soaking into the clay walls and making it soft, so sponging can sometimes help hold that processes

Now, for this particular vase, you could use a heat gun to help firm up the walls. But my decision was to redesign how I wanted the it to look. Fiddling with the clay anymore could result in further collapse so it was easier to just approach it from a different angle, make sure your hands don’t have too much water on them either!

We then leave the pot for a day to dry underneath a plastic bag, we then place it on the bat and secure it down with a few coils or balls of clay. This will help us carve a foot ring the base of the vase. What this also does is reduce the thickness in the base as well as the liveability of cracks forming, I have talked about this in a lot of videos in the past that your wall thickness to base thickness ratio should be on average pretty much the same. This allows for even drying ☺️

Hope you enjoyed this post and as always Happy Potting!!! 🥳🥳

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