Trimming on the wheel

All right, so this lesson is on trimming our wheel thrown forms. We're using bowls specifically. Trimming is pretty similar regardless of the form, just the placement of the foot is different. And talking about the placement of the foot, we're talking about the placement where that exterior little ring is going to be on the bottom of our pieces, right? So the tools that you're going to need. I have a trick in how to measure the thickness of the bottom instead of you trying to guess the thickness of the bottom, which can be kind of scary because you don't want to carve through the bottom of your piece. So these sticks and my pencil are for the trick that I'm going to show you guys in a second. You're going to need a couple sponges. You don't need a bucket with water, but you do want wet sponges that are clean. This one's super soggy. This one's only kind of soggy over here. You're also going to want a larger loop tool, all right? If you're trimming a lot off, you're going to need this one. I'm not going to be trimming a lot off this piece, but if you have like a huge chunk on the bottom of your piece each month, you can start attacking it with this one first. And that's a large loop tool. I also like to have a variety of ribbon tools. These are called ribbon tools. They're called ribbon tools because it's almost like a metal ribbon. So they have a blade. I'm not going to touch your blade, but it's sharper. It's not just like a loop of wire. It's kind of like a ribbon of metal. I especially like this one right here. It almost looks like a weird little foot. It's like a heel and a toe. And I also like this one that's kind of like an arched side and a straight side. So this one's ideal, but sometimes you want a little bit of a smaller one as well if you're going to do some more detailed work. Sometimes they do break. Put it aside and bring it to me and I'll redo it, all right? So don't just throw the tools out if they break. You're also going to want a pin tool, all right? So you have your wooden dowels, a pencil, variety of sponges, ribbon loop tool, pin tool, okay? In addition to all the tools, you're also going to need a chunk of clay. Don't want super smushy clay because you'll stick this on your piece. Pieces from the newer slug or a little bit dried pieces are ideal, all right? So you're going to have some of that because that'll hold your piece down. All right. So our piece is leather hard. This could be dried probably like another minute or two with a hair dryer, but it's good enough for I want you guys to study your piece before you turn it upside down because putting your foot in the proper place is really important. It actually adds stability to your piece. Stability meaning it sits better on the table, not going to be rocking and rolling, and it also adds a nice kind of visual aesthetic element to the bottom of your piece. You want the placement of your foot to be where the bottom of your piece starts to become the wall. So that curve where the bottom starts to become the wall, you generally place it underneath that area. If it's like a smooth curve all the way up, you have a little bit more freedom, but if you have a cylinder, it's going to be a flat bottom straight wall. It's going to be that wider one. It's going to be a plate. It's going to be where that well of the plate starts to become the wall. Always want to think about placing it underneath that. So you always want to study your piece before you turn it over. So I'm looking at this. It's kind of a soft round area. Right there is about where the bottom becomes the wall, right? So I'm going to eyeball it and put two little markers, which means that's where I'm going to put my foot, okay? Two little markers. You're also going to study the thickness of the wall. So you're going to run your fingers down. My piece starts to get a little thick, right about this. So a lot of this is on feel. You can see where I put a little fingernail mark. Those little marks are guides where I'm going to start turning more excessively, right? So anywhere up here, I'm not going to turn it, but from here down, this little chunky nugget right here is going to go with that. This extra little chunky nugget is going to get trimmed off, all right? So now that I know where my placement of my foot is and where my wall gets a little thicker, I'm going to figure out how thick the bottom of my piece actually is. And this takes the guesswork out. There's lots of other techniques, like with a pin tool and stabbing them on your piece. I'm not going to lie, I don't like stabbing my pieces. So I found that this trick is super helpful. So you have a dowel. There's one dowel resting across the top, and you'll see that some of them have little lines all over with pencils, and now you're going to understand that. You're going to rest one across the rim and one in the deepest part of your piece, and you're marked with a pencil on the vertical one. Make sure you know which mark is yours, all right? So I marked vertical, and then you're going to take it outside your piece, and you're going to have it flush against the wheel head. Mark again. So the bottom of my piece, what is that, like a half an inch maybe? About half an inch thick. It's not super thick, so I'm not going to trim this excess amount right here off. So when I come around to help you guys, I'll probably ask you how big is your foot? So I can see, because I don't want to put my hands on your project and help you and then carve the bottom, right? So this is a really good gauge and a really good guide, okay? So for this side, I'm going to remember which one is my marker right there. Now that we have, we got to know our piece, we're going to turn it over on the wheel head, and again, our piece is leather hard, so you can handle it without being super sticky. If it's super sticky, hit it with a hair dryer again, or put it on the heater and trim a different one. You're going to use these guides of the wheel head as guides to center the rim of your piece, all right? So we want our foot to be centered with the rim, so generally I'm going to try to center your rim amongst these lines on the wheel head, all right? I'm going to check it out real quick to see how good it is. I'm going to turn you on slow, and that's pretty solid. That looks like it's basically in the center of the wheel. If it's off a little bit, like right here, I can see it bumping over this direction, just gently shift it over, all right? But you want your rim of your piece to be centered. Perfect. Thumbs up. So now you're going to take that extra little bit of clay, and again, this clay should be not super squishy, because if it's super squishy, it's going to stick to the side of your piece. So you're going to pull off a couple little nubs of clay. Since our piece is centered upside down, you need to hold it in place. There's lots of gadgets and stuff that they have to hold things in place, but this gadget's like, you just do it the old-fashioned way, figure out how to center your piece. Again, if it's bumping in one area, you move it away from that area. You can tell it's bumping by looking at the rim. You can put your finger, if it bumps your finger, move it away. But having it centered is just as important as having it centered when you're actually throwing it, because you don't want a weird crooked foot, okay? So it's better to err on the side of having a couple little pieces, too many, than it is too few. These little pugs are stuck to the wheel head, and just kissing the side of my piece. You're not like mashing the side of your piece, they're going to make your piece deform. So just kissing the side, and I'm pressing them to the wheel head, so it holds my piece in place, all right? Another trick that I like to do, I like to use my pin tool, and I like to pre-score all the areas that I'm going to trim off, just so I know exactly where I'm trimming. This also gives your tool an easier path to follow, instead of gouging. So these little pre-scratched up areas give you, A, a visual, and B, will help the ribbon tools to cut more easily, all right? So right there, all that scratched up area is going buh-bye, and this area here, about two millimeters, is going buh-bye. All right, so now we have our path to follow, the pre-scored pin tool. I like to start with this guy, this ribbon tool. It looks kind of like a little foot, a little heel, a little toe. You don't want to attack it with a flat side. You have more precision and more control, and you're less likely to gouge your piece or rip it off the wheel head, if you use just this little heel area. Make sure the tool is clean, there's no crusty, dry clay on it, all right? I like to start getting rid of the, like, massive amount of excess clay, like right here is all gone by. It's also important that you work, remember, four o'clock. I'm not pressing hard, I'm letting the rotations of the wheel, with a consistent pressure in my hands, to remove that clay. You're not going to attack it like this, you know, the rotations of it. So I like to actually trim pretty fast. So if you're on the wheels over here, switches are going to be up. All right, so once we got that bulk, you can see it kind of removed pretty easily, especially with that pre-scoring. So this is a subtractive method to create a foot on your piece. You guys did your pinch pots with the additive feed, now you're doing a subtractive method to create stability. So this will actually make your piece more stable than sitting on a table. Stable on the table. Also adds to the aesthetic too, all right? So now this inside curve is really echoing the outside curve, is what you want. It's not a thick spot at the bottom. Remember, this isn't very thick, so I'm not going to take too much off. You can see I'm just using the heel of this ribbon tool to get more precision. You can see that I'm trimming from the outside in. I'm leaving a little nugget for right now to see how deep I'm going. Now I'm going to get rid of that nugget because I think I've taken enough off. You don't want to leave that little nugget in the middle because then you just have like a weird fat chunk in the middle. Again, remember these are kind of like blades, so you don't have the sharpest part touching the clay. A little bit of the flatter side of my ribbon tool just to kind of compress and smooth out that bottom. So just one little pass with a flat side. You can see I'm not removing a ton, I'm just compressing it. I'm going to switch around to this rounded side again. I like to use this rounded side to help shape my pieces. You can have some fancy feet with little carved out notches. You can have them be more discreet like what I'm doing, but essentially you want your foot to have a balance and aesthetic lightness. All right, you want your foot to be with a beveled edge so it's not sharp where it hits the table. You can do that by gently holding this tool at an angle, both on the inside and the outside of the foot. So now you're going to take your not so wet sponge. You don't need a foot. Make sure it's nice and flat, no crumbs on it. Clean up that inside area, bottom of your piece. Smooth everything out. Again, you do not need a lot of water when trimming your piece. I'm going to stop my wheel, check it out, see how I did. Oh, a little crumb. Get rid of that crumb. Not many crumbs on our bottoms of our pieces. All right, so I'm happy with how that looks. I'll write my name and date it, and we'll gently pull these pugs that were holding your piece down to the wheel head away, freeing your piece. This clay can be used again, whether it be used for trimming another piece in the wheel or putting it to the recycled clay area. Now gently pick your piece up, rotate it over, and then you would use your not so wet sponge again and clean up the rim. You want to clean up the rim, make it nice and smooth. If it got dented at all, you can just kind of smooth that out. We also have that rim enhancer that I can show you later on. If it became kind of misshapen, we can re-round it out with a rim enhancer, okay? So once you're done and it looks how you want it to look and it's perfect and looks lovely, you would put this piece in the back on the greenware rack, okay?