Clay Pottery Extruder Tips

Video Transcript

"So this right here is my extruder. It's a round model, they also come in with square barrels. Each works equally well, it doesn't matter what kind you get. Now the way that this works is the clay goes in the top. This plunger pushes the clay through the extruder. And this hangs on the bottom, and it holds the die in place. Now what a die is it fits into the bottom and it determines the shape of the clay that's going to be extruded. So this one for example has a bunch of different sizes of just cylindrical coils. And this one selects which one you're going to use. So you just cover everything but the size that you want up. And when you extrude the clay will only go through that circle and make a long cylinder. There are a number of different commercially available dies that have different shapes. This one has geometric shapes, this is my handle die, that comes with several different options for handles. There are ever dies that will extrude hollow tubes. That's what this one is for. You see the negative space is where the clay will be pushing through, so you'll get a long hollow cylinder. And if you don't like any of the commercially available dies, you can buy a blank die. This is made of hard plastic and you can drill a hole into it and then use a jewelry saw or a band saw to cut out the shapes that you would like. Now I'm going to show you how to work this, first you select the handle or the shape of die that you're wanting to use. Cover over everything else, fit it right in there, and then hook this on. And now we're ready to actually extrude our handles."