Pottery Making Tools
Ancient potters used bones and pieces of wood to form and shape balls of clay into pots, bowls, pitchers and plates. It's entirely possible to create your own tools for making pottery or use everyday household items such as eating utensils or cleaning sponges. Many tools are available for purchase online and in art supply stores to assist potters in shaping clay. Many of the tools used in pottery making are multipurpose and may be used to perform various tasks in the art of making pottery.
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Preparation Tools
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Wedging tools, such as wedging tables or hand held wedging wires, are used to remove hard pieces of clay and to further mix the clay if it was a powder mixture. To wedge the clay, the wedging wire is used to slice the ball of clay over and over again. This process also works to soften the clay to make it more easily malleable by hand.
Wetting Tools
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Water and various kinds of sponges or clothes may be used to wet the clay if it begins to dry or to make the clay more malleable when working on the pottery wheel. Potters also need to wet the clay down with slip (a liquid mixture of clay) when hand modeling or coiling clay, in order to fuse separate pieces together. Rubber nozzle syringes and paint brushes are also used for this purpose.
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Shaping Tools
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A wide variety of shaping tools are available for use in pottery making. Shaping tools can be used in making pottery by hand or on a pottery wheel. Pottery ribs are pieces of plastic with shaped edges, used in shaping or cutting pieces of clay. Another shaping tool is the ribbon tool. Ribbon tools are wire formations on the end of sticks that are used to cut ribbon strips from clay when working on the pottery wheel or to produce textures or crave out hand modeled pieces. Modeling sticks are similar to pottery ribs and are shaped for the same purpose. Sponges and wedge wires may also be used as shaping tools.
Cutting Tools
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Wedge wires have a third use as a clay-cutting tool. Wedge wires, pottery knives and pointed tools are used to trim edges. All are used extensively when using the pottery wheel to remove tops that have become misshapen. The potter's pointed tool is a needle attached to a plastic or wooden handle.
Slipping Tools
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Wetting tools are used in slipping, as well as the potter's pointed tool. The purpose of slipping tools is to first create a scratched surface on two pieces of clay that are going to be joined; this is what the potter's pointed tools are for. The second job of the slipping tools is to wet the scratched surfaces with slip so that the two surface will stick together better.
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