Beginner throwing lesson and a challenge using 315gms of clay

Good morning, this is Vaughan at Let's Go Bell Pottery. I thought I would do a video on just centering and cylinders again because a lot of people have been talking about it sounds like they're beginners. And we've taken a lot more subscribers since I did my last video. So this one is just a repeat for a lot of people and it will be a new one for a lot of people too. But I've got two cameras so it makes it different than the first one I did which was my ultimate beginner's throwing video. And this one is now the second ultimate, the penultimate. Anyway, I will have less than a pound balls of clay because it's very small so people can center it pretty easily. And that's the most important of course. So, let's get going. Okay, so I clean up my wheel head. That's very important when you start doing a piece of pottery. Make sure your wheel has no water on it and no bits of clay. At the very beginning one, you'll see what I do after I've had one thrown. That's a damp wheel head, not a wet wheel head. Now because you're a beginner, dry your hands off so there's no water left on your hands because you're holding that sponge. And then beat this into a ball of clay that's rounded. You'll see in my videos I use a square block all the time for small pieces. And you can do that once you are not a beginner. But at the beginning stage, it'll make it a lot easier for you if you actually get rid of any creases like that because that's an air bubble that's waiting to be formed in your clay. So it's totally smooth without any crevices and cracks. Alright, that takes like 20 seconds. It's called throwing because you throw it down on the wheel, but because you're a beginner, you should place it so you know it's in the center and then just hit it three times or four times so you know it's solidly on the wheel. And then you can actually start it going and wet your hand and just with it wet, just press down. And that will seal it to the wheel head a bit more as well. The one thing you have to do is anchor yourself to the wheel head with your thighs touching the splash pan and your chair pulled right up to the front of the wheel. So it's practically touching the wheel. It should be touching the wheel. And your head is right above the ball of clay. I hope you don't see the top of my head when I lean into this. But anyway, in that way your body weight is helping you center the clay, not just your hands which are actually not that strong. You've got your arms and your head and your forearms all anchored right over the top of the clay. Your elbows or your forearms should be resting on your thighs if they're high enough, but if not on the splash pan. And you can put a rubber insulating pipe insulator across your splash pan edge if you want to soften that so it doesn't hurt you. And then you just have to get your pans totally wet and place one over half the ball of clay and place the other one on the wheel head. And actually that's going to push in from the side and by anchoring to your thigh with your elbow and your forearm, your arm shouldn't push backwards or forwards like this. That's the biggest mistake. And the top hand is just covering half the clay so you can see what you're doing. You can feel it usually, but it's nice to be able to see it too. A lot of people will center like this, and I've always done it this way. So you can go to another video and watch the other direction that people will throw and center. But anyway, wet both hands, and you've got to do this quick. Before they dry out, turn it on really fast and push both hands in. And it won't be centered at this point, you're just getting it less round, less bumpy. And that's actually not centered, even though it looks pretty centered. But here's something that helps. If you then cone it, and you've got to angle that piece of your skin there, so it doesn't kind of... I'm trying to think what I want to say there. But basically you're trying to make that form an ice cream cone. See, it's not centered at all. So you're just simply coning up to make an ice cream cone. And then you push down, and your left hand is anchored on the wheel head, so you can see the clean area, that's where my skin is touching the wheel head. And the top hand is actually, you can see from the video actually, it's covering half the clay. And if you press hard enough, it should sort of go into center, but there's a little bump in this one, so I know it's got some maybe stiff piece of clay, so I'm going to do that all over again. When you buy new clay, you expect it to be perfect, but often there's a little bump in it, a bit of stiffer clay, so you might feel that. Anyway, this is what you're doing. And then you let go as slow as you can, as soon as it feels a little dry. That's pretty much centered. Alright, so, replay that in the video, just backtrack a little bit. And you can see from the top of the... Oh, my head's not getting in the way here, but basically you can see half the clay's covered. This hand cleans the wheel head there, so you know I'm... That's why I've got a Band-Aid on, because I wear my skin away in that location there. But anyway, it's actually duct tape, not Band-Aid. Band-Aids wash off, duct tape lasts for a couple of days before it comes off. Alright, so we've got a lump of clay. Here's a trick. You can do that, and you can totally make it centered with just holding this against it. And on the top too, if you want to, you can just kind of push it down. You've got a total centered piece of clay, but that's cheating. It's just it will help you if you're having a little problems. Anyway, wet the piece of clay, and this is how you put a hole in it. You put your finger, and you feel for the center, and don't press down until you feel like you've really found the center. And then just go down a little bit, and this will help you. You put some water on your fingers, dribble it in there, and this is the middle finger, and you go down even further, but you've got a lot of water in there now to actually lubricate. And then you pull out, and now leave about a quarter inch of clay at the bottom, and that's hard to guess because when you get the pin out, I don't do this at all anymore, but when I was a beginner, you did this with your finger, push the pin in, push your finger down until it touches the clay, you pull it out, and you have, where are we going, you've got that much, get the focal point right Vaughn, there you go, that much clay at the bottom. And that will fill in with clay as you're doing the rest of the piece. Now, this hand has never moved. It's always been in that place there as the clay has been spinning around. It's this hand that's been doing all the work. And so for one more time, one more part of the process, you leave that hand on the left hand there, and you pull to as far as you want to go out, and as soon as it feels dry, you let go slowly. All right, so that wasn't quite as far as I wanted. That's as far as I wanted. And then you run your finger. Somebody asked me about S-cracks. Peacongura, I think it was. I always put my finger at two o'clock from where I'm throwing, and pull it back to the center so that I'm compressing the clay in the opposite direction to how I opened it up. And that seems to even the pressure and the stress in the clay out a little bit. I was taught that 40 years ago. All right. You're wetting the clay. Now, whenever you dribble water on the clay, you should dribble it. Don't just throw it on. Just hold the sponge and dribble it so it goes either side, left and right, left and right, and then you know you've got water on both sides. Now, these two fingers and these two fingers are going to be opposing each other and at a slight angle. All right. So basically, I'll say 45 degrees, but that's a guess. And what I do is I join my thumbs together like this with my fingers like that. This one is touching that little corner where my finger just started that pull to the center, and then this one's just above it. So the clay will hit this finger, rise over the top, and then hit this finger and rise over the top of that. So it actually pushes the clay wall up. And then the same with that finger on the outside. And this finger starts at the bat's bat head, and this finger starts at the clay level. And so these fingers are a little bit higher. So watch what happens. And you pull up at the speed that the water is drying out underneath your fingers. So you're chasing the water. Sounds like I'm from Dune, those of you who are into science fiction. Chase the water. There we go. Water right on the rim, so you've gone both inside and outside. Put your two fingers again, and whatever speed you really feel comfortable at, and then you do the same again. Watch where my first finger on my left hand is holding the clay in a little bit. Oh, look, we've got a little ripple because I made it too thin. And you can go back and stop that and then continue up there. And that will all disappear in a second when we get a rib involved here. All right, if you get a ripple, that's a good thing to show you. Totally get rid of it. Just hold your metal rib or a wooden rib, but metal I like better, and just get rid of it. By putting your fingers on the inside all the way up. And because of that ripple, I've got a rim that's really uneven there now. I'm going to try and put some water on there just to even it out a bit. And if not, I'll just trim it. And then you hold your finger down at the top. It's still a little bumpy, so let's trim it. Now, here's the bit that everybody hates. Put the pin in opposite your finger. As soon as you've gone through, you lift it off. And then you hold a sponge across the rim, and you've got a level rim again. All right, so this mug's giving problems, which is good because you get to see it. And then put your foot in. I'm going to quickly take this one off and start another one. You've seen a couple of problems that people have with mugs. Centering cylinders, basically. Sponge on a stick. All the tools of the trade. There we go. I felt a lump in the clay as I was centering it, and I think that's probably what that was all about. There's a slightly piece of stiff clay here. Okay, so we've got a cylinder. Let's make sure it's a good cylinder, though. I'm going to push out the bottom a little further. That's a good cylinder, so that's savable for something. There we go. I left my bag of clay open last night. I think that's what it was about. But it's so humid at the moment with that storm coming up. It's not going to hit us, thank goodness. That's the second one. Getting it off the wheel is just a matter of turning the wheel slowly and moving the clay as you've got the wire halfway to two-thirds of the way through. And then you lift it off, and look at that. That's what it looks like. It's a pretty good straight cylinder. All right, so when I've got a piece of clay pulled off the wheel, there's always a little bit of clay left on. So my hands are really... Let's put this down a sec. My hands are really wet, and this is a major problem I see my students, when I used to teach classes, doing. They would grab the ball of clay with wet hands, and they would bang it into a round, if they hadn't done it previously. But you should never do that, because basically the clay is just going to have all this water put on it. It splashes clay everywhere, and it simply makes it slippery. So if you dry your hands out first, you can get a nice, perfect round ball. And place it. Hit it as many times as you want, but three or four is usually enough. Wet one hand, place it down on top, and squash again. Wet the other hand, and bring it in from the side. And press your top hand down first, and then your side hand in. And you can see the wheel cleaning now, as I start pressing. Because my left hand is cleaning the wheel head. And move it around a little bit. This one doesn't have a lump. There we go. It's sometimes better just to give up on a piece, if it's got a lump or an air bubble that you can feel. Air bubbles you can usually pop right out. Okay, that was the centering process. So let's just repeat what I did. It's not centered. You wet the piece, you bring your top hand in, just a fraction of a second earlier than the side hand. And you rest your elbows on your thighs. You get the wheel going fairly fast. And you put pressure on with both hands, so you can see the ball of clay. And put pressure on, and then let go when it's centered. Let go slowly, and that's it. So putting the hole in, you press down in the center. It's dry now, so I've got to put some water in there. Should have done that at the beginning. Once you feel you've gone deep enough, you start pulling to the outside. Towards your body. And let go slowly. Alright, so then, it's wet on the inside. I put my finger, find a corner at 2 o'clock, say, and push down, and then pull towards the center. So push down, and pull towards the center. There you go. And then, you bring your two fingers at 45 degrees, resting on the clay on the inside and the bat on the outside. And you put pressure on, and you pull up. And you don't go too high, because you want to get your fingers in there, and you let go slowly. And you get the sponge with some water, and you dribble it right on the rim edge. And you put your fingers together, press again. Not too thin this time, I pressed a bit too hard last time, I think. And you pull all the way to the top. Let go as it gets to dry. Every rotation, your fingers dried the clay in that level. Put the water right on the rim, goes inside and outside. Now, this finger touches that finger these times, and that's all for support. Everybody will have different ways of doing that. But basically, I'm trying to support my hand as many places as I can. And I've still got those two fingers on the inside pressing against the two fingers on the outside. And I'll leave them in position as they come off, like that. All right, so we've got a nice shape this time. So, here's how I do my feet. I've got this rib, this is a wooden rib that you just buy. And I've recut mine down and shaped it the nicer shape that I prefer, so let me show you. It looks very much probably like the one you have. But mine has been shaved off at this end quite a bit, and at the front, and all that. So it's not as sharp at the front, and it's more squared at the back. So what I do is I put the front in, and it pulls a bit of clay out. And then I put the other end of the rib in, and I push down. And I've got a foot pre-made, so I don't have to trim it. And then I use my metal rib, which is less... I wet my hand and get it inside again. And watch how I do this, too. I push out a little bit on the inside, against the rib, and belly it. And then I push in with the rib on the outside, and my thumb is pressing on the rim on the top. And that kind of controls the width at the top. And that goes slowly. And then I skip a quarter inch and go up above it. And make that double rim. Tankard rim, as somebody called it. And that's a pretty nice shape there now as well. And then use your sponge on a stick to get out all the water. And don't press too hard at the top. I like to keep my mugs a little narrower, although somebody said they catch their nose on the rim at the other side of my mug sometimes. And there really isn't a response that I could have given to that, which wouldn't have got me in trouble. So I just said, OK, I'll make my mugs a little wider. There's a nice mug. That's my usual shape of mug. Dribble water all the way around, and then use the wire. So it looks how slow the wheel's going around. And you start there, and you pull through. And about two-thirds of the way through, the mug should start moving. And then you can pull the rest underneath like that. But you've got to be controlling the speed quite well. And that's what I was looking for with the other one. OK, so dry your hands. You won't have to do all this eventually. I'll show you. But I'll do one more this way. Take a ball of clay, round it off. I don't do it this way, but basically this is the way it was taught. You should round all your balls of clay off before you start throwing. It just takes time to do all of that, and it's usually pretty boring to do that. But it's a better idea to do it then. But I will show you the way I do it after I've done this mug. So you dry the wheel out. You leave a little bit of clay on the wheel head. And that helps to make this one stick. Place it. There you go. A lot of banging, but it's stuck on the wheel. Top hand, just to put pressure down to make sure it's sealed on the wheel. And then all the positions I've shown you. Leaning on your thighs, the splash rim. This hand touches the wheel head, this hand is on half the ball of clay. And you go fairly fast, and you put pressure on with both. Top hand first, then bottom hand. If you hit with the side hand first, the clay will spin right off the wheel. And you move it around a bit. Just to see that you've got the strength to actually make that ball of clay go where you want it to go. And then when you feel like you've got it centered, you let go slowly. That's the clean bit where this band-aid is actually touching the clay. So it shows my finger. That's why I wear my skin out there. Because my finger is actually always on this wheel head. And I was throwing on one yesterday that was a bit sandy. Wet the whole top. Dimple in the top. Fill it full of water. Press down. You're feeling for that central part. When you've gone down far enough, you pull to the side. Let go slowly. Finger goes to the 2 o'clock position. Pull back in. You can do that twice if you want to. You're not thinning. You're just putting some pressure on. And that's a thin area of clay. It's almost like realigning the molecules. I don't know whether that's true or not. You're just relieving stress because you stretched it out one way. Now you're going the other way. Fingertips. Inside. Right on that corner. And more pressure with the outside fingers. And go fast enough so you don't let it dry out underneath. It's drying now. See, that's how fast I went and it still was drying out. So dribble water. Fingertips again. And you're basically chasing the water all the way up. I always put my finger on the rim there just to flatten it a little bit. So it helps keep it in center. Fingertips. I do this height because it's the length of my finger. So I can get my second finger. This is the second finger. To touch the clay at the bottom again. And then I put pressure on with that finger on the inside against the pressure with the fingers on the outside. And I pull up. And see my other fingers are all touching each other. To give support. And then you actually put your foot in. Because that's ready. That can be done at any time really once you've got the height and everything. And then you do the second part of it. I have a wooden rib that has both of these in it that I sometimes use. But I'm not going to get into that now. Oh, I actually have it right here. Let's see what I've got to show you here. This is another shape I used to put on my... I don't do it as much anymore. But I made this tool so that I can put a foot on my pot. That I don't have to trim. So all I would do... And this one's been done already. I'll do it on the next one. But anyway, it gives me a pre-made foot. Okay, dribble some water down the inside wall. Fingers go in again. Put pressure with the middle finger on the inside to push the belly out. And come up. And now the thumb comes in on the rim. To pull that rim in a bit. You could even do this with two fingers. If you can't control it and it's still flaring out. But by putting two fingers like that, you will control the rim. Width. And then you just make your double rim. Tankard rim. Alright, so that's the mug that I do. I've done for decades. It was based on a form I saw in a pottery in Kent in England. And they made a much smaller mug. And it was a much wider ship's mug basically. But I modified the design and narrowed it. The bottom's not as wide and the top is a bit wider. So that I think it's a regular... It's not a ship's mug anymore. But just a nice stable mug that you can use and won't get knocked over easily. Alright, so this is the get releasing. Put water around. Keep it going that slow. When the wire pulls tight, it goes under the piece. About two thirds of the way through, it will release and come off to the edge. And you pull the wire all the way through. And then you push it onto your fingers. This one, I haven't used it in a long time. I simply do that. And I have an instant double ring foot. I hope you can see that. Now I just wet it already, didn't I? So I wet my hand. Hand goes inside. Middle finger at the bottom where that rib is. I just push out. Make my little double rim. Skip a quarter inch. Which is about half a centimeter or something like that. Get the clay off the rib. That often acts as a drag too. And then sponge on a stick. If you look at my early pieces, there's a site called Live Auctioneers that I get emails from whenever my work comes up on that site. And I've been tempted to buy things back. It's a joke. Some pieces go for way more than people paid for them. And other times, I saw one thing where people got some major pieces for $20. And all that. So that was... I don't know what happened there. But one of the pieces was a couple hundred dollar platter that they got with some other pieces and it was just $20. It's just crazy. And then other times, there were some people buying some pieces that it was almost double what they were worth. But they're only worth what somebody values them at. Anyway, that's a nice mug. And there's the double ring. So once again, dribble the water so it just lands next to the foot. Put the wire down. Press hard. And pull through 2 thirds of the way through. The clay comes off. And you finish pulling it through. And you slide it on your fingers. Alright. I'll say that's enough. Here's what we did. Beginning mug. There's a little lump in the clays, my guess. Then the next one. So as you speed up, you're probably going to be more confident because these clay balls were very similar in size. But anyway, you can get bigger pots as you start throwing and you repeat. Your pots will get a little bit bigger because you're getting a little bit better each time. And then on a 315 gram mug which... I can't remember how many pounds that is but it's way less than a pound. Maybe 3 quarters of a pound. And 315 grams. How big can we get it across and tall? So I just weighed 2 of these. So I've got them at 314. I don't know if you can see this or not I bet not because it's a very dark scale. There you go. That's 314. And that one is 314 as well. So it's just a gram under 315. Let's see what we can get here. OK. Round off the bottom. Bang it down. Centering. I'm trying not to pull any clay off here because I'm trying to keep it at the 314 grams. Moving it up and down. Keep a good amount of lubrication so I don't scrape any clay off. Center it. It's about... I think it was 3 1⁄4 inches across but I'm going to make this probably 3 1⁄2. 3 1⁄4 is very narrow. We're going to catch our nose on that mug. 3 1⁄2 inches. OK. There we go. Don't go too thin. Open it up. Move your finger back from the outer edge to the center to compress the bottom. That's about half a centimeter thick I guess at the bottom there. These bats tend to move a little bit so I'll try not to make it judder. Pull up. So I've got about 2 1⁄2 inches with that one. Maybe 3 and a bit actually. I don't usually do a third pull but I'm going to try it just to see how much I can get from this in height. Completely lubricated. I did go thin, didn't I? Gave a wobble there. That's my finger touching it. I want the weight that's down there. That was thin with a second pull I guess. There you go. I try not to go too thin with the mug because you don't want somebody to break it the first time they use it although I know a lot of people throw thinner than I do. Kurt Heinz, if you're listening, he was my old assistant in Ohio. He was a great thrower. He got really good. I don't know if he ever continued or not. Last I heard of Kurt he was working for Mary Dewey but Mary Dewey died. OK, so we've got that. Are we straight? Yeah, we're straight. Let's see what we have. 3 3⁄8 across. I'll hold it so you can see it. There we go. So it's 5 1⁄4 inches tall. 3 3⁄8 across, 5 1⁄4 inches tall. So we can try another one to see if it can be consistent. Usually I make it spin when it comes off but we can do it without the spin. There we go. We will play on 314 grams again. I just felt the bat move then. This is that system I made myself out of some bats that I found at a recycling centre. I think they might have been centres of sinks that were being installed in a hotel or something because there were like 32 of them. OK, this is a touch wider, I think. I'm going to throw a great pile of Biggs mugs after this. I'm running out of some of my mugs in the gallery. So we're going for a slightly wider one just to see how tall we can get this one. This is just 2 poles. How tall did we get there? I think my tape measure needs oiling with all the clay in it. So what did we get with 2 poles? Just over, about 5 1⁄8 with 2 poles. So let's go down again. I tried to grab the weight that was in the bottom there in the last one and it buckled in the centre so I'm going to try not to do that this time. This is a good exercise for control but I don't recommend making mugs really thin just because of the sake of it because they won't last as long. Fine China is really thin but I remember breaking the handles off that and my grandmother and her getting really upset. I think that set came from Japan or something back in the 1960s because I remember you could hold it up to the light and you could see a dragon in the bottom of each cup so when you finished your tea you could empty it and see the dragon at the bottom of the pot. Maybe this is the same width as the other one. 3 1⁄4 inches across and we know it's tall. Let's get the water out. I'll see if I can widen it and see how much it shrinks to. I'm not going to add any water when I'm widening it because the base is wider but the top is a bit... Let's go for a little extra width and see what we get. I must be pushing it out a quarter inch. 3 1⁄2 inches across now. I lost my sponge. I don't know what I did with it. I'll just take this off I guess. Anyway, that was just a little experiment for somebody who had a question so I'll post this at the end of my next video I guess. I've got one downloading now with about an umbrella stand but it seems like YouTube has held it back. I looked this morning and it was supposed to be already online but it wasn't. So I wonder if it's because I added a music track that I downloaded from YouTube into it. It was actually supposedly royalty-free music but we'll see whether they send me an email saying I have to do something else besides download it. Okay, so I made two on video and I made a third. So you've got them between 3 1⁄4 and 3 1⁄2 inches across and they're all almost identical height at 5 1⁄4, wasn't it? Let's have a look. 5 1⁄2? Okay. So you can see two and I've got to be able to see two. 5 1⁄2 inches high and 3 1⁄4 to 3 1⁄2 inches across. Alright, I hope that helps. Okay, those mugs that I threw earlier are now dry. It's a day later, I had them in my damp cupboard. It is so foggy. We've had days and days of high humidity and lots of fog. So it's lifted today and now we've just got heavy, heavy cloud but there's a tropical system off the coast it's not going to come here but it's driving lots of moisture up here from Florida. Anyway, I'm going to pull handles for those mugs. Let's get you set up here. I'm watching my gallery too while I'm doing this. I always pre-sausage my clay and obviously you don't want to pull too hard otherwise the clay will snap. I've done this before in other videos where I'm just doing this quick but your hand determines your handle profile and the main thing is you keep working on that bottom piece right there. So keep working on that bottom area because if it builds up a little lump at the end it'll snap the clay off. I wet my hands until they feel like they're sticking and then wet them again or you can dip the clay in the water either one but you've got to keep working on that bottom piece and keep rotating the clay. I like a strapped handle rather than a rounded handle. The profile of my hand is that so that's what thickness I'm going to get and I will squeeze my thumb to my hand to get the handle a little narrower my thumb just gets closer to my hand as the clay gets thinner and keep working on that bottom area down there and keep rotating it so that you actually keep your handle fairly even. Now I've got a really narrow you can see it's very narrow down there so my thumb is flattening the two lumps that have formed either end either side of the handle and at some point you have to determine the size of your mug dry your thumb and forefinger off just a touch and you simply snap it off. Okay, now I have to put the handles on these pieces and I fold my handles there now this is important you should be able to easily move your mug when you put a handle on so it's not soft when you throw it and it's not leather hard, it's in between and you should be able to touch it and get some clay on your finger from the surface so it shows that it's still a little bit tacky and what I do is I just to speed things up I have all my mugs on a little round bat on a wheel and then I basically wet them all these handles were pulled about an hour ago maybe just over an hour ago so they've stiffened up just enough and I place them on my little double there's that baby seagull again just push it down move with your finger behind pressing back and then it's stuck now moving it around, up and down, side to side makes it stick and then you bend it to the shape that you want I usually like to get three fingers in my mugs at least I'm a small guy so basically anybody who's got big hands, tall guy would probably like to get at least three as well so you've got to remember to make it generous so I'm just placing it same with this one, flatten it, give yourself a little solid area place it where you've just wet move it up and down, side to side so you feel like it sticks then I just smudge a little bit from the side just to give it a little extra adherence and then hold it, look at it and your eye will tell you that you've got it right and then you just look at it, make sure it's level it's straight and then pull up, keep your little bits of clay because they will be used in a minute if your hand's too big to get inside there you need a brush that's fairly flat and you place it right opposite where you pushed in the bottom there and you push with your finger, thumb I should say and you pull down, pull down, pull down and then do the side, pull down, pull down, pull down same on the other side and the brush is behind there so it's giving it some resistance and then you can work on the bottom just by doing your thumb across like that and there's your handle shape so same again push up and because I'm production, mugs is just intense I make hundreds so basically I've got this set up so I'm as fast as I possibly can be I don't have to put brush or tool up and down and look for it each time I wet the paintbrush just to make sure you've got a little bit of so it doesn't stick to the inside of the mug smudged in if it feels like it's sticking a bit you just wet the paintbrush and you don't want it to stick alright so now I roll on and now this is that old brush that I've taped together because it's my favourite brush but anyway, can you see this? so it's a matter of just rolling the brush up the handle into the pot and smudging it in same on this side, rolled up to the handle and smudging it in then roll it across the top so you get that nice, kind of like the branch of a tree the handle is growing out of the pot and then you just use your sponge, your brush to smooth it out make sure there's no fingerprints on it I get pieces, people will pick them up and there'll just be one tiny little notch of clay that's sticking out and they don't like it because they can feel it with their hand when they're drinking out of the mug, so brush it down properly and then I do the same to the bottom brush it, and then the back of the paintbrush I just wet it a little bit, you can still see this yet I then, with my finger underneath the handle I roll with the paintbrush down the handle, into the mug to smudge that little bit of clay into the mug too now sometimes I add a little bit of clay in there if the handle's a little thin or if I'm going to put slip on these pieces then I would put a little extra piece of clay down there but these are not going to be slip so anyway, there you go, then brush it just make sure that's nice and smooth look at it from both sides, basically it's important just to get it nice and smooth then one of these pieces of clay that you took off is your little button and the handle's very soft at the moment, so I just place it there and wait for it to firm up just a little bit, and I'll do the rest of the handles while I'm waiting for that, and then I'll press the stamping okay, now I've got all the handles on and you can see they're all very consistent nice gap, so we can put three fingers through there I wouldn't be surprised if I could get four yep, I can get four fingers underneath there so basically plenty of room when they've shrunk to get three and then I use my stamp, I've got a little ball on there support underneath the handle so you don't squash it down and behind the rim, and you just press down to give yourself that little decorative ball and I would suggest anybody who wants to do something like this you find an image, I mean I've been using a spiral so basically that's been with me now for god, decades and you could use a little leaf shape you could use a little animal head just anything you want to do as a decorative element for your pieces that would identify your work as yours, because everybody has to lift the piece upside down you could use your initials obviously but there you go, and then I just take the paintbrush and make sure I didn't leave anything rough because I'm not kidding, if one little sharp part on the rim people will not buy that mug because of it it is handmade and all that kind of hands-on type stuff means we're going to leave marks on things, but a little sharp little bit on the mug, rim, or on the handle will stop people buying the piece and then, if you've made a lot of denting in the pieces you can use the back of a styrofoam plastic cup and place it in there and just make sure that when I twist it to come out, inside twist it to come out, and you've got your mugs completely round they haven't been disfigured anyway, I keep pretty careful on my pieces so that means you've still got a round mug I'll give you a quick look outside today since it's what a lot of people would call a classic Nova Scotia day we're totally fogged in there's a tropical system not too far away, just south of us and it's supposed to be coming up here, but it'll go out to sea instead of hitting us but it means that we're getting all the heavy humidity from it, so that's pretty Thanks for watching!