Tips for throwing cylinders and bowls

Wheel throwing tips from David Voorhees

David Voorhees is a functional potter from North Carolina with over 40 years experience in ceramics. He is the instructor of the online workshop "Porcelain Tips For Wheel Pottery" at TeachinArt.

Several potters have problems with opening and pulling up consistent cylinders or bowl forms. Some of the problems are uneven walls with too much thickness at the bottom, uneven rims, and slumping clay.

These are all common problems associated with skill development and learning to use porcelain on the wheel. Porcelain does require a bit more of us as craftsmen. It needs to be prepared better and we need to limit the amount of time it is allowed to be fully wet during forming.

Here are my suggestions for those experiencing these common problems:

• Wedge well, but don’t dry the clay out too much. Keep it covered!
• Center the best you can, using enough water to keep the clay uniformly slippery.
• Move directly into opening and compressing the bottom.
• For cylinders, make a pronounced corner on the inside.
• First pull; aim for uniform thickness with slight taper. Don’t worry about an uneven rim as the clay is being further centered with the wall pulling.
• Second pull: raise the clay most of the way, you likely will double the height with this pull. Again, aim for a slight taper in wall thickness. If your rim is uneven, trim it now with a needle tool and round and smooth.
• Continue to raise and shape but use less water as it gets thinner. This stage is where ribs and sponges help. Try wet trimming the “skirt” of clay on the outside base before using ribs.
• Work in a series to build skills: 6 cylinders or bowl of the same size and shape or several bowls with each slightly larger (weigh them out). As you advance you can throw to a pointer stick. A chopstick in a wad of clay works well. When you have a form that you like, set the pointer ¼” off of the rim. Then work toward making the other like the model pot. Later, you can take weights and measurements so that you know how to produce consistent items. I use 420 grams of clay to make mugs thrown to 4 ¼” tall by 3 ¾” wide at the rim.
• Work toward following a step-by-step procedure as you work on a series of pots.  Ask yourself what is working and what is not,  then repeat the successful sequence and eliminate the steps that don’t help you. The more that you can develop your own sequence for forming an item like a mug, the quicker that you will make them. This will lessen the stress on the clay.
• As you master the smaller items like mugs, then you can extend your size range or complexity range. An advanced series may be something like a set of dinner plates, a graduated canister set with lids or a tea set.  Most of the skills that you need will be served by mastering the basic elements that I am covering in my online workshop Porcelain Tips For Wheel Pottery.

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