Now that we've centered our clay, we're ready to pull our cylinder. Now everything on the wheel is generally speaking based off this cylinder based off this cylindrical form. And once we established this cylinder and you know learn proper control and technique here, this is just going to explode into all sorts of different facets and areas to be explored, you know, formally wise, but first, it's all about control. You must learn control first, learning how to center learning how to pull, even thin walls level tops, all these steps. So let's put it all together. We center it up for clay and keep in your control position we may need you're going to control position with your elbow buried, index finger thumb out, leaning for placing your right hand on top of your left using This Valley as your guide, my hands are in our locked thumb on the back of my hand, you do not want to assert your finger straight down, that's gonna be real easy for that clay to push you around, keep them in contact and coming in at an angle.

If you find those inside fingers bouncing around, squeeze that thumb against your left hand and lock those fingers. Because if they're bouncing around, that means your insight is getting off center, even though your outside might look perfectly centered. If those inside fingers are moving around, your inside is all centered and it's going to be an uphill battle for you. So let's put it all together. Elbows are locked in tight, lean forward, inciting them and now you might see I'm going in with three fingers, but the main contact point is just that middle finger, these two fingers just go ahead and let them float up on top of that middle finger. And they're there to support that middle finger and slide them down all the way down to about a quarter inch from the bottom and this quarter inch is important.

That's our proper thickness. That's going to give us enough room on our floor to create a nice trimmed foot and create a nice finished quality. Now, it can be difficult to visually tell if you've made that quarter inch point yet or that mark. To check it, we can do a stop there we'll grab your pin tool inserted into the floor of your piece mark with your finger and lift we should look in about a quarter inch or so there. Mark lift and we're looking pretty good. That's a pretty good workable thickness right there.

Now you may see some Potter's open up their piece with simply their thumbs. Now again, I don't recommend this because it's going to limit your working time and it can easily get your body into a weird position and things can knock off center pretty quick learning this technique will allow you to move Work with larger pieces of clay and keep the clay a little more under controller definitely more under control. Alright, so right now, the inside of your vessel should look something like this. Okay nice rounded view. Next we're going to open up our bottom. tray wear looks something similar to this, the bottom shouldn't be nice and flat, the base should be pulled out slightly farther than the top which is going to establish this cone shape.

That cone shape is important that's going to be key to gaining height in our cylinders. Now for that next step Don't be afraid to use a lot of water in these first initial vessels. game we're remaining in our control position, right fingers on the inside, bracing the walls here and it's simply gonna be a little dance between your hands. Moving in unison, you're not really squeezing with that outside hand, but it's more of a guide, it is there for support. Now, when you're doing this step, the most common mistake I see here is students will let that inside hand float up, it is important to keep that bottom nice and flat. If it looks more of cone shaped like this, it's gonna make pulling up those walls very difficult.

And you're going to run the risk of getting those thick bottoms that like to blow out and during that initial bisque firing. Now I'm just going to simply pull this clay back towards my body. So I reach the desired depth of my bottom and lock and hold my position to finish the rotation. So my base of my piece is pulled out slightly farther than the top. I'm going to shoot again looks something similar to this flat pulled out farther here you can see right where my fingers were placed in there pulling it out. Sometimes you may even need to poke your fingers a little bit to pull it out.

Now there's a couple common mistakes I see here that can knock you out of center pretty quick. If you rush this step, you pull it out and then take your hands out right away, that can create a spiral on the inside of your piece, something like this. And what that can do, obviously, this part of the spirals been pulled out farther than this side. So again, even though your outside may look centered, now your insight has been knocked out of center, when you pull it out, lock and hold your position for a rotation or two and keep everything nice and tight and keep you in the center. So all these steps up to here have been in our control position. Now we are ready to move into our throwing position.

Now our throwing position, we're going to slide over here to the right, you can think of this wheel head as a clock. You never want your right hand to go beyond three o'clock because you going to be moving on top of the clay. And that's going to easily knock you out of center. The same sense you never want your hands to move beyond six o'clock because then you're going to be working against the momentum of the wheel. This pie area right here is going to be your working area. Now why don't you want to be working against the momentum of the wheel.

Okay, right here, we're gonna throw in position. The clay is sliding through our fingertips, we're working with the momentum of the wheel. So keep in mind, these motors are very powerful on these wheels. If you get over here on this side and you're working against the momentum, or the clay is spinning into your fingers, if your fingertips were to dig in there, that's either going to tweak your wrist or knock your piece out of control. And you know, definitely cause some bad things. Staying over here with the clay sliding through your fingers will keep everything tight and under control.

Now, our hand position, we're going to slide our right elbow out, leaning towards our right, bracing our arm, palms up, thumb, making contact with that middle finger. basically make a little video With our fingertips right here, but that main contact point is going to be this middle finger still, so it's just a little pinch. At the basic piece when we throw it, we're going to be moving fingertip to fingertip. Your positions should look something similar to this. Catching that ring of clay right here and pulling it up fingertip to fingertip. Laying that left arm over to make contact with your right hand will help those hands move in unison.

If your fingers begin to get off, it's gonna knock you out of center again. And that's key right now these early stages is just that control remaining center remaining tight. So first, we need to learn to work with our most important tools, which are hands. proper use of these hands proper pressure contact, proper pulling motion. Cover that first but pretty quickly, we're going to want to transition into drawing with the spine but first just to get to fill the clay, we're going to do a couple pools with our hands using lots of water, sorry, my right elbow out, fingers on the inside. All the pressure should be coming from this outside hand pinching and pulling up.

The left side hand is simply catching the clay. This will keep your forms in tight for those tall cylinders. If you start to push out from the inside, that's going to cause your walls to flare out. We'll talk more about in a minute. Okay, pinch from the base of the piece and you can see I'm clearly digging in a ring right here. Pinch and pull up.

Nice tight throwing rings. lighten the pressure up as you move to the top and finish your pool all the way out of the top. Now, as you are pulling you are going to need to use more pressure at the base of the piece than you are at the top simply because the clay is thicker there. So pinching more pressure, more pressure and lighten it up as you As you move up to the top and it is important to begin to lighten this pressure, because if you do not and you're using the same amount of pressure here at the base of the piece is common to get really a thin spot here, about an inch or two above that floor, and often pieces will like to tear there so began once you move about an inch or two up, begin to lighten that pressure and finish that pool at the top.

But again, I'd rather see my students tear their piece in half from pulling too much clay or being too aggressive with it. Then doing this all day and not moving any clay because it's always young. Sometimes you need to go too far to know what is too much strength what is too much pressure and then you can begin to back it off to find the proper amount of pressure. Now as you do your pools, you're going to want to compress your rim down every other pool or so and this is going to help keep your rim tight and level and under control to compress that rim. I'm bracing the walls with my inside fingers. The outside walls with my thumb is simply lowering my index finger down, something like that.

Okay, now we're ready to come back in and do another pool. Now if you find that your pools are starting to look something like this, that means you're either moving your hands too quickly or your wheel too slow. Notice my wheels about a nice medium pace, my hands are moving nice and slow along that medium pace of the wheel. So if this starts to happen, slow down your movements or speed up your wheel. If your wheel is going too slow, then you're basically have to do everything in slow motion, it can make this throwing process very difficult. Just keep a nice even movement all the way up.

Nice tight, throwing things out the top. Check your RAM, and you should be good to go. Now when I was talking about making this little fist with your fingertips right here, I want you to hold your hands that way because that's gonna make that transition into throw in with these sponges. Very simple simply going to be the exact same position, just raise your thumb, stick your finger in there, your sponge in there, and you're ready to continue on. Again, practice with just your hands first, before we move into that, throwing a sponge, but the sponge will help it will make pulling up these vessels easier, it's going to create a layer of moisture between you and your hands and allow you to move a little bit more freely through these vessels. Okay, now as we're pulling up these vessels, keep in mind you do have somewhat of a limited working time.

The longer you work on these vessels, the more moisture that they're going to absorb. And as they absorb this moisture, the clay is going to become softer and looser, and it's going to become less workable. It's going to want to kind of class on you. The shoulder is going to want to class and it's not going to want to hold it shape. Okay. The old timers will tell you you should have your cylinder pulled up within three pools.

Now this is unrealistic. Right now we're just starting off, but I like to mention it to keep in mind that we do have a limited working time in here, the sooner you can get your cylinder up, the longer you can have to focus on your shaping and fine tuning of your your pieces, the expressed intent of those vessels. So I'm here about on my fourth pool or so I think it is. So we'll just go ahead and do a one last pool and finish this up. So I have this nice tight cylinder. And from here we can come back in and now start working on this piece.

Okay, now before I move on, I'm gonna remove the moisture from the base of my piece. And this is important especially before you take your piece off the wheel. You want to make sure you get all that water out of the bottom because if you leave it in there is going to turn the base of your piece basically to mush clay is going to span it's going to crack. Okay. So now that we have our base cylinder, so our basic tools that we're going to be dealing with right here from the beginning is our Pin tool, our wooden knife and our wire tool. Okay, and again those kits I know they have more tools they have ribs and metal ribs, wooden ribs, this and that.

We'll get into all that but again, first we start off with our hands. Then we introduced a sponge. Now we're introducing our basic tools right here, our pin tool. This can be used for popping those air bubbles. If you feel a little air bubble within your piece again, it's going to feel like that blister. Just take your pin tool, poke it for five eight times, then continue throwing and it will smooth out and you'll work that air bubble out.

You can also use this pin tool to cut your rim straight. If you find that your rim you have a high side and a low side most likely that means you're a little bit off center or perhaps you're throwing along and something got oh no something got messed up along your piece or he got bumped and you need to clean that up. You can do that with your pin tool. Now To use this pin tool, you want to brace the inside walls with your fingers and the outside with your thumb similar to when we're compressing the rim down. Okay, general rule of thumb when you're working with your vessels. If you're working on the outside, brace the inside if you're working on the inside, brace the outside.

So I'm going to be working from the outside, inserting this pin tool, so I want to make sure I'm bracing those inside walls with my fingers. It was my elbows are in contact with my legs. Everything's braced, nice and tight under control. Taking that pin tool in my right hand, nice firm grip, holding it tight to the pin. We're gonna lay this pin tool up against my thumb and slowly insert it until I feel contact with that index finger. Finish the cut and lift.

This is not a quick stabbing or jabbing motion, but it's a very slow thing the will do the work letting the will cut the clay and tie make contact and then I'm going to lift it it should look something similar to this. No sticking my Elbows everything's locked in nice and tight, nothing's floating out here. Nothing's loose, out of control, control control control. So important. I'm going to begin my cut below the lowest damaged part of my rim. So that I have a solid cut or solid band all the way around the piece, make contact with that finger and left.

And now we have a nice clean rim to work with again, move that and voila, nice level rim. But again, let's say we're working along and our rim gets messed up again, you can also cut that rim level with your wire tool. Now I find depends on whether you're using your wire tool or your pin tool, they were better at different stages of the vessel. I feel that the pin tool works better earlier on in the forming process where your walls are still a little bit thicker, where the wire tool tends to be a little little more gentle on the vessels. So if you're closer towards the finishing process, Our walls are very thin, you may find it a little bit better to work with your wire tool. Now proper technique for using this wire tool, hold it firmly in your hands, extend one or two fingers, whichever you you feel comfortable with.

And wrap, wrap, wrap and pinch tight so you don't have about an inch gap right here. Similar to dental floss right now our wheels moving at a nice, gentle about medium speed. When I slide my elbows out on my legs, balancing bracing, my elbows leaning forward so my nose is you know roughly over the center of the clay. I'm take this wire tool, I'm going to drop it down to my desired depth, lock my position, finish the cut and lift, drop, lock, lift, and it should look something like this. Drop, lock, lift. And again, we have a nice tight rim something like that nice level rim.

The next tool We're going to talk about is our wooden knife. Now this can be used for removing the excess clay off the base of our piece. And that is important because the next stage of this vessel is to trim it when we trim it with the piece set up to that leather heart state, we flip it upside down on the wheel head recenter and finish the shaping process at the bottom and remove all this excess clay. We use this tool properly now it is going to give us a perfectly centered ring at the base of our piece. So then when we flip this upside down to center it is going to give us a spot to shoot for. Now if you do not in your base looks something like this or there's Clary flaring out like this and you just take this and cut it off with a wire tool.

It's gonna give you a very rough bottom to work with. Again, this is gonna make your life easier with the next step. Now, proper technique with this guy. Again, you want to make sure you have a nice firm grip on it using Both hands holding it close to the the end of the blade. There is one sharp edge blade and there's one flat edge. You're holding on flush with the bezel, the sharp edge of the blade of it should be turned about a quarter inch end.

Nice firm grip bolt hands, tip of the blade or tip of the peace the knife all the way down to the wheel hit and then slide it in the angle of the piece whether it's straight up and down or an angle depends on the shape of your vessel. If it is a flared out bowl, you're gonna hold this knife more than angle like so, a taller cylinder like this, you're going to hold the blade more vertical. nice tight grip, tip all the way down. Again, notice my elbows are laying on my legs, I'm leaning forward which is actually going to put weight on my arms, which is going to brace them, keeping everything locked in nice and tight tip all the way down. slide it into the desired depth. Lock hold that position.

So you finish the cut all the way around. Next I'm going to hold this knife flush with the wheel head or the Bad undercutting the ringer clay that I just cut and removed. Cut that clay away. Okay, now we have thrown a nice workable cylinder here. The next thing to do and we'll say we're shooting for cylinder is to cut this off the wheel head or the bat with our wire tool. Again holding extending that wire tool, wrapping it around our fingers, pinching nice and tight, pulling out with our arms keeping that wire tool nice and tight thumbs to the wheel head, pull it back towards your body, it is important to keep it tight.

If this wire is loose, it likes to loop up and cut the bottom of your pieces out. All the way down, pull it towards you. Now we can pick this piece off, set it off to the side that is set up. Come back tomorrow or then you know the next day depending and trim it but We're looking here with just basic technique and process. So let's see how we did today. Okay, so here is our basic cylinder that we just threw fairly even wall thickness about a quarter inch, nice tight throwing rings.

We have a little bit thicker than a quarter inch on our floor here but we're still within that safe zone. So when we come back and trim into our finishing detail within our piece we can remove all that excess clay and create a nice but there our walls are thick enough that when we go in to do our shaping process and belly and coloring which is also going to thin those walls, it is going to give us some clay to work with. This right here is what I want you to focus on and work on. Establishing proper technique level top tight throwing rings, even wall thickness, because again, everything's gonna be based off this cylinder shape. Once you feel comfortable throwing this, again, things are just going to explode of all the formal Different shapes and formal designs that we can explore