4. Pottery Tools - Tips for Wheel Throwing Tools

Welcome. I hope you're doing well. Today we're going to talk about pottery tools and especially pottery tools for wheel throwing. We're going to talk about the kind of tools that is kind of a must-have and the tools that are nice to have and why you may want lots of tools and why you may not need all those tools. And we're going to talk about where you can buy those tools and where you can buy them cheaper than most people do. Okay, so let's get on with it. The thing about pottery tools is that you don't really need as many tools as you may think. One of my favorite potters, Matthew Kelly from the US. I've been following him a lot, had a bit of conversations, and he does a lot of really nice videos on YouTube. I will put the link down here in the description. I recommend you go and watch his videos if you don't have already. He's very good. But one of the great things about him, that personally I kind of admire, is that he uses very few tools. Basically, he just uses a screwdriver, a single rib, and a sponge. That's basically everything he needs. And you may wonder what he's using the screwdriver for. Well, one thing of course is to get the bats off the wheel, but he also uses it to clean up clay in different places, especially when he's doing sectional throwing. So he's actually using the screwdriver quite a lot. And of course, he's using his rib. But that's basically what he does. And if you look at a lot of the Japanese wheel throwers, a lot of them use hardly any tools. And if they do, it's just like one or two very simple tools, and still they come out with this amazing pottery. So the fact is, you don't really need that much tools. I used to be in the music business for many years, and it's kind of similar there. You know, there's a tool fetish in the music business. There's no doubt about that. People love nice guitars and microphones and stuff, and so do I. I used to be a sound engineer, and I was having a recording studio, actually several studios over 15 years, and produced a lot of music. And as a sound engineer, I like nice tools. I still do some music production. I have a studio in my house, but not for living anymore. And I have microphones that cost more than 10,000 kroner, or $10,000, sorry, 100,000 Danish kroner, and they're nice. They're really, really nice, and it makes my life as a sound engineer much easier. But the fact is, in the final product, the final CD or sound or whatever you hear the music today, Spotify, the final production, you won't be able to hear much of the difference. One of the albums I produced some years ago, we recorded it in multiple locations, multiple different studios. In one of the studios, we were using this really, really nice high-end vintage microphone that cost more than $20,000. It's nice. It's really nice. Some of the recordings we did in another studio with a $1,000 Chinese microphone, a good Chinese microphone, but still, you know, completely different range. I did have to put a little more work into it as an engineer, working with the cheap microphone, but I promise you, when you listen to the complete album, all the different songs, you won't be able to hear the difference. Maybe some crazy sound engineers will be able to hear it, but the music is not made for sound engineers. It's made for you, me, and you won't hear the difference. There's not a distinct quality difference. Also, recently, you probably heard Billie Eilish's album. A very good album, in my personal opinion. That was all done on a $3,000 setup in their bedroom. Basically, they had like a fraction of the equipment that most professional studio engineers would kind of require to do an album. Now, they didn't need it, and they made this crazy Grammy Award album. It's really good. It sounds great. It's more to do with creativity, and of course, it's nice to have good tools, and you may want good tools. You may think it makes your life easier. You may be able to do stuff that you think you couldn't do otherwise. That's fine, but just be honest with yourself. You don't necessarily need the tools to do great pottery. Having said that, I like tools. I like great tools. I like it because it's fun, I like it because sometimes it's a little bit easier to do certain things than if you don't have the tools. At least, you know, with the limited technical skills I have, but I don't really need as many as I have, but I have been buying tools over the years. I have been creating my own tools over the years, which I recommend that you try and do, and I've been buying tools in many different places. So, let's look at some of the basics. I also use the screwdriver a lot. That's something that I learned from Matthew Kelly. It's actually very useful, more than I thought, and of course, almost every time I throw, I use my rib. I like this type of rib. It's kind of like a hard metal. It's very strong, has a sharp edge here. I like that, and sometimes use a different rib, this kind of rib, and the reason for that is that I have a 90 degree angle here, and it's a little more flexible, so I like that. I'm actually looking also sometimes to use a softer one. I don't have one right here, but I do use that sometimes. What I also use a lot of times is these metal ribs, and you probably know them. They come in all kinds of different shapes. Now, this is a good example of stuff that you can actually buy much cheaper than most people think. If you go to a normal pottery store, I think they charge, you know, maybe a couple of dollars, maybe even more for each of these. They're all made in China. Nobody makes that in our part of the world, so instead of buying it there, you can go to wish.com, and you can buy like a whole bag of these, maybe 10-12 different sizes. That's what I did. They're exactly the same as you do get in a pottery store, and you can get a whole bag for, you know, maybe a dollar or something, so that's a good thing, and in fact in Wish, you can buy, you probably know wish.com, you can buy tons of things there, and they do actually have a huge selection of pottery tools. Some of the tools that are trying to mimic high-quality tools, I wouldn't buy there, because they are not high quality, but if you're looking for like simple tools that is produced in China anyway, even the ones you buy in all the pottery stores, you can go ahead and buy it. I bought a lot of, you know, simple things like these modeling tools, things like a pottery needle, potter's needle, which of course I use a lot, and I also bought tons of cheap brushes that I use for things that I'm probably gonna throw away anyway when I'm after I use them. I also bought some loop tools, but I would say, I mean, the loop tools that I got from Wish.com and from China may not always be the best quality. They can be good for certain things, but when I'm trimming my ceramics or the pots, I need tools that are really sharp, and they're not always that sharp, so I also bought some more high-quality loop tools from local pottery stores or European or American pottery stores, some of them really, really big that I use for certain things, and yeah, I like that, but again, you don't need a thousand different or even ten or twenty different ones. Find out what works for you, and you know, what you need every day. That's important. Also, I mentioned a sponge loop tool. Again, you can go to a pottery store, you can buy really expensive sponges. I don't know why they have to be so expensive. What I usually do is I go to a hardware store, and I buy these sponges that are made for washing cars or something like that, and I basically cut out the sizes that we need. This one is kind of worn out now. We should probably throw that out and cut a new piece, but this is like, I don't know, I think it's less than a dollar or something for this, and you can cut out quite a lot of nice little sponges, so that's another good trick. In fact, hardware stores have become one of my favorite places to buy pottery tools, because tools that are not made for pottery, for some obscure reason, tend to be much, much cheaper than the tools that are made for pottery. So, in the hardware store, I also bought a lot of nice little, you know, things for making patterns. I bought in the kitchen department cheese cutters, which is nice to cut out slices on your ceramics, and what else do I have here? Yeah, I mean, basically go and search your hardware store. Yeah, another thing I bought from a hardware store, the car department, which was actually very, very useful, is this leveler. It shows you level on all directions, and I use that when I'm trimming my pots. So, when you put your pot, especially if you have a chunk, you put it, a chuck, you put the pot in, then you need it to be leveled before you start doing, especially the bottom, and I use this little thing to put on top. You can buy this from a photo store. They use it for photography as well, and then they cost you 20, 30, 40 dollars, something. But you can also buy it in a hardware store or a car gadget store or something. I bought it from the car department in a hardware store, and it was, I think, five dollars something. Really, really cheap, and it works just as well as any of the others. So, this is a good tool that I use as well. Now, having talked about all the cheap tools you can buy, I must admit that, as I was talking about in the beginning, I do like nice tools, and some of these tools, you know, the nicest ones, they are more expensive. The handmade ones are really nice. One of the tool providers that actually also do a lot of really, really good videos is a Taiwanese guy that lives in the US called Hsuan-Lin, or something like that. I'm pretty sure I don't pronounce his name correct, so if you are watching this, I'm really, really sorry. I do admire your work, but I can't pronounce your name. Anyway, he does a lot of tools, and he actually creates these tools himself, and they're very high quality, and yes, they are a little bit expensive, but if you look at the quality, I don't actually think they're too expensive. Some of the first tools I got from him were these trimming tools, and they are the best trimming tools that I ever had. They do cost more than the average. I can't remember the exact pricing, but I think it's, you know, maybe something like $20, $30 each, or something. They cost a lot. And here you can see his name, if it will, you know, focus. I don't think it will. Anyway, I will make a link to his shop, where you can buy all these tools. The thing about these tools is that they're razor sharp, and you can sharpen them over and over again, and they just make your life, trimming your parts, so much easier. You can actually make these tools yourself. I made some. You can see they don't look as nice as the one he made, but they still function really well. I made them out of a hacksaw blade. You can still see some traces of it here, I think. Made out of a hacksaw blade, and then you heat it up, so you can bend it without cracking it, and then basically you grind it to whatever, you know, sharpness and shape you want. The great thing about making them yourself is, of course, you can make shapes just the way you want them, and I made a couple of shapes that Hussain didn't have, and that I needed for special applications. They're actually pretty good. They're very sharp, and I can keep them sharp for a long time, and they cost literally nothing to make. I'm sure you know what a hacksaw blade costs in a hardware store. It's very, very cheap. I also bought some other tools from Hussain. Some that I love a lot is these wooden ribs. These ribs are... I mean, you can buy all kinds of ribs, but what I like about these ones is that, first of all, they're really nice. I just made very, very nice, but also, I mean, I don't know if you can see it here, but the way that they bend around the corner means that when you're using it in a button of a bowl, you can go over the edge. I mean, the problem with many of these ribs is that if you go to the other side of the edge, and the wheel is turning into the rib, it will kind of crackle or make, you know, scratches in the bottom of your bowl. With this one, you can take it all the way from one side to the other, and it just makes the bowls really, really smooth. I bought a package of three of them, and yes, they are quite expensive. They're handmade, but it is a very good quality, and I haven't been able to find something even closely as good as this. Talking about the little more expensive tool providers, one place that I also bought a few things is from a company called MTM Tools. They are specialized in wooden tools like this. So, with these kind of tools, what I use them for in wheel throwing, because I mostly do wheel throwing, is that I roll them onto the tube that I throw, and they create these wonderful patterns when I then extract them. Here's a couple of examples that you can see from what I've done with this. I will make another video where I show exactly how I use them, and how you can combine them with different techniques. The thing is, again, this is not the cheapest rollers. You can find cheaper rollers, but I think the quality and the design of the patterns are just better than anything else that I personally found. So, I like them, and I can fully recommend MTM Tools. They have very quick delivery service and very nice support. So, they're nice people. Anyway, I think the last thing I'm going to show you before the end of this video is the newest tool that I just got. And I actually have to turn the camera a little bit, because it's something that I attached to a bat on my throwing wheel. And if we take it here, I think if we look down here, yeah, I think you can see it. This is a grinding disc. Oh, it's turning a little bit too much. There we go. This is a grinding disc. This is a diamond-based grinding disc that I mounted with some glue onto this bat, so I can easily remove it. And this just makes things so much easier when I have parts that maybe some glaze drips a little bit down on the button, or maybe it's just cracked a little bit, or there's something broke off or something. You probably know it when you do wheel throwing, and after you fire it, sometimes it comes out with these little edges that you don't want. And of course, you can grind it with a manual grinder in your hand, but this is so much easier. Just put it on the wheel, I spin it, and I put down my pots like this, and then it grinds. And it makes it totally even, and it's much, much faster than doing it by hand. So, take it off again here. This is what I had for you today. I hope you find some inspiration in all the crazy tools. Of course, I told you I like tools. I admit it, and have lots more tools than what I showed to you today. In the future videos I will do on my channel, going into more specific techniques, doing different things. I will show you how I use these tools. I hope you enjoyed it, and please remember, you can subscribe to my channel somewhere down there. There's a link. Then you will be updated with new videos. Thank you. Have a good day.