Centering Clay on a Spin Wheel

Video Transcript

"The first step is going to be centering the clay on the wheel. You're going to take your nicely rounded ball of clay and throw it right there into the center of the wheel head. Now, when you're centering, the important thing is to use your body weight for stability. You don't want to fight this clay with your strength, you want to use, you weigh a lot more than this ball of clay so you should be able to push it wherever you want. I'm going to lean onto my left forearm onto the slash pan and push through to the heal of my left hand. You can also put your elbow into your hip if you find that that helps to get you leverage for your body weight to push into the clay. With my right hand I'm going to get my sponge we enough that if I squeeze it water comes out but that it's not dripping on its own. My right hand is going to be pushing towards my left hand, and my left hand is going to be the stabilizer. I'm going to get this clay nice and wet. My first thing I'm going to do is push down with my right hand and towards and up, towards my left hand, and up. Then I'm going to make my right hand into a fist and I'm going to push down. All the while, if it gets a little bit dry you squeeze the sponge. The left hand is keeping the clay on center it's really just stabilizing. Make sure your pinkie is pushing in just a little bit so that they clay doesn't spread out all the way across the wheel. Once the clay looks and feels like it's not wobbling or moving very much, it's on center and you're ready to start opening up the piece."