Closing the Dome of a Clay Birdhouse

Video Transcript

"Now once you've got your thick cylinder you're ready to close the dome of this house. The first step is going to be pulling up and in on the top half of your wall. You're going to want to do this gently and slowly. You're still pinching between your two hands and pulling up. But the movement is towards the center of the wheel. Now once you've done this and got it in a little bit of a cone you're going to go ahead and take your rib and compress the walls. This is going to make them stronger and thinner. But you want to leave the thickness at the top part of this wall because you're going to use that to pull in for the dome. So I've still got a good amount of clay here to pull with and I can center it in and get closer and closer. Now before I get all the way to the center I want to go ahead and put in the shape that I want this birdhouse to have. So I'm going to stick my hand through that hole and I'm going to use my rib. Now I want to give the birds just a little bit of extra space down here so I'm going to make it a little wider. Because that's where the nest is actually going to be sitting. So now I'm going to use a method called collaring. Get the clay in your hands nice and wet and slowly pinch your hands together. And once you've got that you only want to put one finger in the hole and use that to pinch up and in several times until you get it all the way together. Now once you're about an inch away from closing the hole you want to just pull kind of straight up and in. That gives you something that you can use to collar all the way together with your fingers. And you're just going to slowly collar this until it's completely sealed. And now we have a sealed dome."