How to Wedge Clay

Video Transcript

"Okay we are going to get started. The first thing you need to do is prepare your clay. You can buy your clay online from Laguna Clay. There are a number of clay companies who will ship it to you or I live in Austin, Texas and we have a great clay supplier here in town called Armadillo Clay. That is where I get my clay. This clay has been through a pug mill which is a machine that takes the air out of the clay. You do not want air in your clay. This is very important because when it fires air expands and if there is any air in your clay it can cause a crack in your piece or even a big bubble so if your clay has not been de-aired or it has been used and you are going to be using it again the very first thing you have to do is called wedging and the way that you wedge clay is you take your chunk of clay, take both hands on either side and you push down with your body weight into the clay and then roll it up and push in again. There are a couple of different ways to wedge but this is the way that I do it and I think of this as a duck head, it looks like Donald Duck, that is what you want to see whenever you do this style of wedging and you want to do this if this is clay that has not been de-aired you want to wedge it probably a hundred times. If it has been de-aired you only have to do it a few times because you are just trying to get it worked soft and into its basic shape."