Now that you've been working on your cylinder, you're probably getting to the point where you're starting to have some keepers, some vessels that you would like to keep. So we need to talk about removing those pieces from the wheel head assuming that you're not using a bat. And there's a couple different techniques that you can use for this. I'm just gonna go ahead and go through the steps as a review here right at the beginning of centering, very my left elbow bending my wrist back again using my natural body mass, compressing the clay down, right hand on top, squeeze till we center it up and float away. I'm sure throw a basic cylinder here. So on that control position, index finger and thumb out down to about a quarter inch from the base Opening up the bottom, plane back straight back to your body lock and hold that position to finish the rotation.

Next, moving over into my throwing position, starting my right elbow out leaning towards my right, bracing those arms, pinching from the outside catching the clay on the inside and pulling up those walls. What we're looking for with these first cylinders is control control control, nice tight throwing rings, even thickness along the walls and level rim using more pressure at the base and lighten that pressure up as you move up through the piece. You can lighten the pressure up but always finish your pool all the way out the top. Lighten that pressure up. compress the rim down. Move the water from the base of the piece I'm going to clean up that face with our wood a knife, firm grip that with a knife tip all the way down to the wellhead and slide it in undercut removed excess clay.

And now we have our keeper, a cylinder that we'd like to keep we can use this to practice trimming and to practice our handles on. So first we need to talk about how to remove it from the wheel head and there's a couple of techniques for this. First is to simply pick it up with your hands. Want to dry my hands off, take my wire tool wrapped around my fingers again, compressed tightly holding out under cut the vessel and very gently pick up the vessel and send it over on our wire board. Now this is a completely acceptable technique but it is a little more aggressive. One thing we want to watch out for For this technique is that we don't finger up the vessel especially is very thin, it's gonna be more likely to dance and alter the shape.

And that we can use even pressure all the way around. So when we pick it up, we don't oval the top like so, if that happens, keep in mind that the clay has that molecular memory. And if you overlay it at this stage, there's a good chance that oval may come back during the glaze firing and or could result in a crack in that area that the stress has been put on. Another technique is to use a commercial product, very cleverly named pot lifters. All right, undercut your vessel once again, dip your pot lifters and water, fly them underneath the vessel. And lift again move over to your wire board, set it down.

And these work pretty well. Also, or the third technique, and which is probably my most favorite technique, I feel it's a little more gentle on the vessel is to use a little bit of water Slide it off of the wheel head. Again, this may take a little bit of practice. So essentially, I'm just gonna put a little bit of water on top of the wheel head and as I pull my wire through, it's going to work out water underneath the vessel, a little bit of water on my whiteboard here, that'd be placing the piece on. And I like this technique because it is so gentler on the piece. I'm not necessarily needing to pick up the entire piece at once.

And it also works well with slightly larger pieces. But again, once we get much larger than say Yo, say about, you know, six or eight inches are much wider to like small plates, larger bowls, you're going to want to make that transition into using bats. Otherwise, it's gonna be very difficult to remove these pieces without distorting the shape. But let's go over this technique right here. So I've placed water up on top water on my whiteboard, I'm simply going to drag that water underneath the vessel. And once that water is underneath that vessel, you can see how easily it slides wherever I want to take It holds your wear board even with the bat and simply slide it on.

You can see how gentle that is on the vessel. We did not distort the shape. We did not bring it up, simply brace it at the bottom and slide it off. Next we're gonna be talking about trimming