Trimming a Foot of Clay Pottery Bowls

Video Transcript

"This next stage I will be trimming the bottom of the pot and I'm going to do this in two parts cause it is a long process. I'm going to start by showing you the tools that I use; I use these metal tools and I carve into the leather hard clay. So leather hard just means like a belt. Let me just put these tools down and show you a little bit about what I mean by trimming the foot. Right now this bowl that I'm made yesterday I took off the wheel and let it dry a bit and I have this very rough edge that is not what you want to see on your table, you want to see something smooth. You want to see a finish bowl with a range foot on it. Okay that is called this one is called a pistol foot meaning that it raises the pot up off the surface a little bit. Now when I center, now when I center for trimming a pot it much like a centering you know pushing down or whatever with a soft clay but with this I'm just going to kind of push the pot into the center of the wheel. I like to use a foam disc and it is just a piece of foam attach to a mat and I do that mainly because a lot of my surfaces rise up a little bit. If I use a hard surface like the throwing bat it would ruin the actual surface of the pot. So to put this down on a wheel I'm going to put my finger back here and you are going to see how it is all center. It hits my finger just at one spot. I want to get that center I can eye it a little bit, I can bring it over and see if that is center it is not really center. It is kind of hard to do that what I'm going to do instead is put one hand here and then I'm going to hit the pot when I see the pot hit this finger. This method is called tap center. Now it is hitting my finger in the middle and this pot is ready to be trimmed. "