So the next shape we're going to talk about is lids and I threw a six or so very basic shapes down here that we'll throw lids for. But first I want to throw one over them and kind of talk about some do's and don'ts and things to watch out for, on the best or on the lid. There are two basic lid types. The first is a lid that sits inside of a flange. And the second type is a lid with a flange. So what I'd like to talk about first is a lid that sets within a flange.

So I'm just going to throw one of these simple shapes down here and talk about what a flange is and some do's and don'ts on there. Basically what a flange is is the locking mechanism that combines the lid in the body of the piece and they need some way to lock in there. You don't want to lead just sitting flat on top of the piece like a slab or something that's just gonna fall off as soon as the pieces Picked up, I stayed with fairly simple shapes so you can see the difference a lid can make on a piece the difference, the different feel that it can give. So I'm going to go ahead and open this up as normal, pulling out my wall. And again here I'm throwing off of the hump, just for the purpose of demos and allows me to move through several shapes and show you several things in one setting without having to get up and grab balls of clay.

But in my own studio, I would not recommend throwing I wouldn't throw lids or the bodies of a loaded piece off a hump like this and I don't recommend that you do either because when removing pieces off of the hump, it is very easy to tweak them or bend them ever so slightly when removing them and then again that taco in of the shape or bending of the shape can come back during the firing because of that molecular memory. So if that happens, then you go to throw your lid on the piece and all sudden it has a wobble Most likely is because the lid got bent during these early forming stages. So, we're doing this just for the demo purposes today. But again, I would not recommend doing the lids like this in your own studio, just go ahead and use several bands that we can set them up on the side.

So what I'm going to do now is throw a small vessel that has the flange on it so then the lid is going to set within the flange. I'm pulling up my walls is normal, but I'm leaving my lip here a little extra thick, because what I'm going to need to do with this lip is actually cut that in half, using part of it to create the flange and part of it to create the outer wall. Now there's two ways you can do this. One is with just your fingers. And to do that, I'm going to brace the inside with my index finger and middle finger and the outside with my left thumb and then just lower my index finger down and cut that rim in half. Or the other way that works very well especially with smaller pieces like this.

Is to use the spoon side of your wooden knife. The hand positioning is going to be basically the same finger supporting the inside thumb supporting the outside thing in my hands on top of each other and slowly lowering that spoon side down, cutting that rim roughly in half. Something that looks like that. Next to come in and clean that up, picking up my flange around this outside edge right in here. Okay, so now that we've created our flange again, this is a very basic shape. But this is a again will allow us to easily compare the different fields of different styles of lids.

So let's take a look at what I've just done. do is just going to cut this in half so we can see a cross section of it and talk about what's working areas to watch out for. Okay, so what we're looking at here is this is our flange right here. This is where the lid is going to set. When we go to measure our lid, we're going to be measuring from this corner to this corner of the flange across the diameter of the piece right there. troublesome areas to watch out for is any time that their clay is in contact with the clay, okay, because that's gonna be clinking around and if edges are too sharp, it can cause chipping issues.

So your flange you want to make sure it's thick enough to take the support. You don't want your plan to be your flange to be sharp or pointy or too thin. Something like that. Okay, that'd be too thin and be very likely easily to be chipped from that lid clinking on there. A little bit thicker. This is sidewall right here should flare out slightly, just slightly, never inward.

If it flares inward, then your lid has to be small enough to cover that outside wall. And then when it gets to the inside of the plant would be in here. It's gonna have a wobble because it had to be small enough to clear this area, and here, okay, so slightly outward, and that'll also help your lid to slide into position. It's really important when forming these lids that you have a nice tight fit. That's one of the first thing people from the first things people are going to come up and check when a piece has a lid. Grab the base of the piece, grab the top of lid and go like this and see if it has a proper fit.

And if it jiggles too much, you know they're going to give you that look. So you want to make sure you have a nice tight fit. Starting off making lids I generally recommend make at least two lids per piece if not three, because most likely only one of them is going to have a proper fit. And there's it's not only the proper fit that you need to consider, but there's also the aesthetic issues. of how that lid relates to the form, because you're not dealing with with just one form anymore, but you're combining two components and you want a nice uniform flow between the two. So here I've had this straight wall vessel right here, if I had this real high pitch lid, I was as big as the vessel.

Is that really gonna make sense? Probably not, it's probably gonna look a little funny. So you want to think, you know, is this gonna look nice with a nice rounded lid, or maybe an overhang here to create some shadow? You know, there's a lot of formal possibilities that need to be considered. And again, that's why it's a good idea that I think that we stayed with these simple shapes so you can compare them, but also why sketchbooks are so important to work out a lot of these formal issues, about design issues, things that you you know how you want the piece to look before you actually sit down and start working on the wheel. I think, yeah, I think we're ready to sit down and start throwing some lids.

So the first thing we're going to do is throw some lids that fit inside of the flange, which would be this type of body, and then we'll move into lids that had the flange them themselves.