A Lightbulb Moment for My Trimming Technique

It’s rare nowadays that I have those lightbulb moments when making, throwing or trimming pottery, as in I suddenly learn or figure out a new technique that might make some particular process easier. Yet, recently, I’ve been trying to find new, faster ways of hollowing out the thick wads of clay that are often on the bottoms of my bowls, the foot-rings.

These are a huge time sink in terms of turning my pots and so, lately, I’ve switched from using a looped steel turning tool to gradually carve away from the centre outwards, to using a exceedingly sharp tungsten carbide trimmer to gouge out a channel of material that then shears away a central portion of clay. It’s tricky and it requires a lot of control but after trimming through my latest batch of medium angular bowls and focusing on this technique, I’m relishing in the few seconds it saves for each piece.

Yes, seconds, but twice that by hundreds of bowls throughout the year and it adds up, and I’m all about increasing my efficiency making this particular shape as truthfully, they were taking me far too long.

I’ve cut down the trimming time from about 10-12 minutes to about 5-6 minutes, twice as fast isn’t bad, but it’s taken coming extremely familiar with this shape, that’s where the confidence in turning quickly really comes from, I think.

Anyhow! My video this weekend explores this specific technique in more detail. There’s not much to it honestly, but it’s a small revelation that I’m quite happy about. It’s the small things.

SONG: Kyle Preston - The Pull of the Deep

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Timecodes:
0:00 - Introduction
3:07 - The "old" technique
3:39 - My new technique
5:13 - Cutting the chaff, tips for working more efficiently
9:34 - Unedited making
14:49 - Talking about timings
15:32 - Clean up

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