How to Center Clay PERFECTLY on the Wheel (Beginner Pottery Tutorial)

If you're ready to learn how to center on the wheel, this is exactly how I teach my students to do it in one day. It took me over two months to learn how to center clay. I took a six-week beginner's wheel throwing course and I had a studio membership for over a month before it finally clicked. And now I've developed a way of teaching it so that my students typically learn how to center clay in one day. So I'm going to tell you exactly what I tell them. So first, let's talk about how we're sitting at the wheel. The first thing you need to do is make sure your stool is all the way pushed up against the wheel and that your legs are literally touching the wheel and you're as close as possible. This is going to allow you to use your body weight to move the clay versus just using your arm strength. Next, you're going to want to stay tucked into your body the entire time. I rest my elbows on my inner thighs at all times. For hand placement, there are multiple ways to hold your hand to center clay. This is the one I found most effective. First, you want to get your clay connected to the wheel as close to center as possible. So throw it down on the wheel and then push it as close to the center as you can. If you're right handed, listen to exactly what I say for hand placement. If you're left handed, reverse it and make sure your wheel is spinning the opposite way. So if you're left handed, you want it spinning clockwise. If you're right handed, it should be going counterclockwise. First, get your hands nice and wet. You want your hands wet the entire time. Anytime you feel the clay start to stick to your hands, come off of the clay and add more water. For hand placement, anchor your left elbow into your inner thigh and push with the heel of your palm into the side of the clay. You should be pushing from the bottom left corner of the clay. Now a mistake a lot of beginners make is pushing from the bottom of their left hand. This will push the clay in at the bottom, but not center it up at the top. So you want to make sure that you're pushing with the whole of your heel so that you're pushing the entire side of the clay. Once your left hand is there, you want to take your right hand and karate chop right on top and across the center. You have to make sure you're going over the center, otherwise if you're off center, you'll get a little nipple here and you want to keep it completely flat. So you have to be tracking straight across the center. Now, the back of the palms should be connected. If they're not connected, the clay won't move to the center. Once you have your hand placement like this, connect your thumbs and hold your hands together. Make sure your right elbow is also tucked into your right inner thigh. Then push equal pressures into both hands. If the clay is moving down too far, that's because you're pushing too much in your top hand and not enough in your left hand. And if it's going too high, it means you're pushing too hard in your left hand and not hard enough in your right hand. Ideally, you want to keep it in this disc shape and you don't really want the height moving around all that much. Now, if your clay looks like this and you're getting a mushroom top and maybe stuff starts to snag off the top here, it's because you're pushing with this part of your left hand, like we talked about earlier, and need to shift the weight into the heel of the hand to avoid that mushroom top. Now, a way to think about this that really helped it click for me was to use your right hand to keep the clay from going any taller. So you hold your right hand steady. You don't want to let the clay come up. And then you push in with your left hand until it stops wiggling. And then your clay is on center. You can tell that the clay is centered when you cannot see any movement in the clay. At the top here, I can't see any wobbling. Whereas, if it's off center, you are going to notice the wobble. And if you put your hand on top, your hand's going to wobble. So again, left hand, heel is pushing into the bottom left corner, right hand, karate chop straight on top. Back of the palms connect. This is so important. So many times people will do these hand motions and they'll be out here. But as soon as you bring those palms together and push with equal pressures, the clay comes together. And then when I hold my hand over it, it doesn't wobble. Now, if the clay is very off center like this, your left hand is going to want to move with the clay like this. And this is where a lot of beginners go wrong. They have their hand placement right. It's correct. But they're not putting enough force and steadiness into their left hand. So let me show you the difference. Right now, I'm just moving with the clay. And then I push from my leg and work to hold my left hand completely still. My arm's not wobbling at all. And it will come to center. Anytime you feel that clay bumping into you, push into it harder. And it will center. And that is exactly what I tell my students to help them center clay their very first time on the wheel. I want you to try this the next time you're in the studio. And let me know in the comments how it went and if you have any additional questions. If this was helpful, make sure to like the video. And if you want more full in-depth pottery tutorials like this, make sure to subscribe to the channel. And I'll see you in the next video where I'm teaching you exactly how to pull even walls.