How to Finish Pottery After Firing

Video Transcript

"I'll be showing you how to take your ceramic piece from start to finish. In this next clip we are going to move on to what to do with your pieces once they have been fired. It's a good idea when your kiln has finished firing, let it cool down to about room temperature so you can actually handle your pieces. Although, nothing is perfect. So one thing to keep on hand is welder's gloves. Welder's gloves are really, really great to use because they have a really nice length to them and they'll actually protect your forearm when you are reaching into a really hot kiln against each of the coils. The coils on the kiln will light up just like your oven at home and you can see there are many, many different layers and they go right from the very top of your kiln right to your bottom. So there is a lot of heat that happens when your pieces are being fired. So give it time to cool down as to not shock your pieces as well. When you're picking your pieces up from inside your kiln, you want to make sure that you pick your piece up and sometimes you'll get lucky and your stilt won't stick to it and your stilt will stay to your shelf. Pick your stilt up and you're going to put that in your stilt bucket. And then, you can barely see them, but your stilt mark will actually leave three tiny little nicks on your piece. And what you want to do is you really want to make sure that these are sanded down so as to not cut anyone. Because your glazes you are using are just like glass, when it's fired it will actually melt a little bit over the tip of the stilt and create a little sharp piece when you break the piece off or break the stilt off. One really handy tool is this guy right here. He's a sanding block and what you do is you just take the sanding block, put it against your piece, give it a little sand. Turn it over, give it a little sand. Turn it over again, get that last guy and now he is nice and smooth. Give it a little rub with your finger and just see if you missed any sharp spots but of course be careful because it's really easy to cut yourself at this point. Then your piece is ready to be handed back to your customer and ready to go."