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Chris Cook received a BFA in ceramics and sculpture from Southern Oregon University where he studied raku, studio ceramics, stoneware, and various firing techniques under Jim Romberg....read more
"Okay, now that we've got our clay sectioned up with our wire tool here, we're going to go ahead, and take the extra clay here and put it away because' we don't want it to dry out. And it's really important, because clay does not grow on trees; I'll leave that right there. So the easiest way that I've found to do the clay prep is to get this chunk of clay and kind of roll it around like this until it's about the same size. And you can slam it around, feel like that. I mean, you can use a scale if you want, but you don't need to. And the piece that we're going to be doing today is going to be on the smaller side. So we're going to go for about a pound and a half, which that's about a pound and a quarter, which will work just fine, and another one, and another one. And if you want, you can take these pieces, and line them up like that, and that should give you a rough, there; a little extra on this one, a little extra on this one, and that one is good, extra clay right there. So the next thing we want to do is to wedge these up a little bit to remove the air bubbles and to make sure that the clay is consistent throughout the entire round; you don't run into any problems down the road. We make it nice, and you want that spirally end to be on top, not on the bottom where we're going to put it on the wheel head because that'll run you into problems down the road."
eHow Article: Pottery Clay Preparation
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