Cutting Clay for Making Clay Bowls

Video Transcript

"I'm Kevin, and on behalf of ExpertVillage.com, the next step we're going to do is I'm going to show you how section up, cut with the wire tool that we talked about earlier, cut this bag of clay into sections. So the first thing that we want to do, obviously, is undress this bag, pull it down. Now the clays that you'll get from your clay supplier generally are pretty soft, but I like to have the clay a little bit firmer than what you get from the store. I order it special, and you might find that you like that better too. But anyways, I kind of jumped the gun. What I started with is we're going to cut it, like I said, into sections. So what I want to do is start right in the middle, pull it straight down, give it a tip, and pull your wire through. What you don't want to do, and you'll find this out, is let your wire cross like this, because what happens is your wire tool starts to fray and you'll clean your wire tool off and when it starts to fray you'll have a little bit of wire sticking up. As you pull like this, it sticks you in the finger and it makes you mad, and that's not good. So, anyway, I cut this in half, and since I already know what I'm going to throw, I'm going to throw some bowls. And it's a good idea to, once you have an idea of what you're going to throw, you don't want to throw just one. You want to throw four or five pieces, because that's how we get better at what we're getting at. So, I'm going to cut this up, I've already cut it in half, so now I have one, two, three, four, five, six sections, now I can throw six bowls. I might only need two, or three or four for an order, but I'm going to cut them all up."