More Ways to Pull Up the Wall of Large Pottery Cylinders

Video Transcript

"Now I'm ready to lift up the walls and again it is called pulling using the lobster claw. I'm going to really try not to squeeze too much at one time because it is really easy to rip off a little bit of it and doing that. I'm going down to the bottom and my fingers flat, tilting in, creating that lump and pulling it up. One of the very very important things to do when you are trying to throw a cylinder is to make sure you go narrower than you think. Make it tall, make it skinny, you can make it a little wider later but if you make it too wide in the beginning there is no way to bring it back in. You take your time on this it is a lot to bring up a tall cylinder without it wobbling, collapsing, twisting, so really listen to the clay. The clay is going to tell you where it is too thick and where it is too thin. One of the goals that I make my advance students do is try to make a twelve inch cylinder and you can get that twelve inch cylinder by using four pounds of clay. You have to make sure all that water is out of there otherwise it would crack it. "