Centering Clay on the Potter's Wheel

Video Transcript

"O'kay now we are ready to throw. The first thing you want to do is take one of the vats like I showed you earlier and position it on your wheel head. There are two pins on your wheel, most likely, most wheels have these and you just put that right on there like so. Then you take one of the balls of clay that we have prepared, you want to hit it hard right in the center of the wheel and that gets it stuck firmly to the vat so that when you start to center it is not going to fly off. The next thing you are going to want to do is get your sponge wet enough so that you can squeeze water out but it is not dripping. Get your hands wet. You are going to take your left hand, put your weight on your arm on the wheel head and then you are going to lean into the clay with your left hand while you pull into the clay with your right. You want to have the bottom part of your clay upwards into your left hand which should not be moving. So you pull the clay up and then you take from above and make a fist and you push the clay back down. All the while your left hand hardly moves. You know the clay is centered when it doesn't look like it is moving when it is spinning and now we are ready to pull."