Now
that the walls of the pot have been pulled up and roughly shaped, it's time to
go through a series of finishing procedures in order for the thrown vessel to
be lifted neatly away from the wheel. There isn’t only one way to do this, and
in this tutorial, I’ll show you various techniques together with when to
utilize certain ones, what works best for me, and all manner of other tips and
tricks.
8.1 This brings
up another topic: the longer you throw one individual pot, the less strength it
has.
8.2 So if it
takes you 10 to 15 minutes to throw one individual pot, then this might not be
the technique for you.
8.3 Of course,
it does depend on the complexity of the pot at hand, but with something as
simple as a mug, you should really be aiming to throw them in about two to
three minutes.
8.4 What I mean
by all of this is that if you are spending a longer time throwing your pots,
they’re going to be more saturated with water, and therefore inherently,
they’ll be weaker, and they’ll have less strength, which means they’ll be
harder to lift off.
8.5 There is one
thing you can do, which is to place a piece of paper onto the top and then
lightly press down around the rim.
8.6 I then wire
the pot off like normal, lift it away as I previously showed, and the paper
holds the top of the pot in place, and in most cases, it prevents the rim from
distorting—there are, of course, exceptions.
8.7 I then place
the pot down and very carefully peel away the paper, which can then be set
aside and used for the next pot.
8.8 I
occasionally still do this, but it tends to be with very delicately thrown
complex objects, though it shouldn’t be a skill you rely on for something like
mugs.