Compressing the Bottom of a Clay Pot on the Pottery Wheel

Video Transcript

"O.k. so now that I've got it to the, the size that I want here. I'm going to go and take this rubber kidney and start straightening it out on the bottom, alright. I'm just mushing the clay to the outside wall; you can here it, alright. And if you have to remove some its fine; this clay is you’ll be able to reclaim that into the day. I'm not going to put it in the slop bucket. So right now the bottom goes like this and it kind of goes up; I want to flatten that out and get it good and wet, and start really compressing that down; alright. And any problems like that; just take the clay, put it in there for now and set. Rib just gouged it; alright. At this point I like to go in with my fingers because I got a lot of clay to move; just keep moving it to the outside and while I'm moving it to the outside, not only am I evening it out I'm also compressing the clay to ensure we don't have and S cracks down the road. I guess it would be a shame to got this all the way into the last firing process only to see you got an S crack and you just made landfill, alright. So there; got a nice clean bottom, alright go in there; clean it up a little bit. Alright then; formed the walls."