102. Throwing a Wet Chuck for Trimming Small Opening Vases / Bottles with Hsin-Chuen Lin

The vase is shaped like this. I have a small opening. If you want to trim the bottom, you will have to let it sit on a chuck. Today I'm going to show you how to make a wet chuck. Usually I keep my chuck at the leatherhouse stage. The reason why I'm doing it, I explained it before. Because the leatherhouse chuck, it's easier for your clay to stick. Your chuck will be easier if you need to do some adjustment. Like if the opening is not big enough, you can always trim it off. And also when you use a clay ball to skewer, because the wet chuck is still wet, so it's easier for you to clay ball to stick on it. So I'm going to show you how I make my chuck. Usually I have about six, seven pounds of clay and I use the whole clay. I make my chuck a little bit thicker so it's a little bit heavier. And when you are doing the trimming, the chuck doesn't fly away. And also when your chuck is a bit thicker, it's not easy to get warp. I don't fire my chuck. I just keep it that way. Keep it at the leatherhouse stage. Okay, for making a chuck, it's just as usual. You do the same thing that you would try to get your center as good as possible. And then you open the hole and you open the hole all the way to the bottom. You don't leave a bottom. So I'm going to throw a multipurpose chuck so that your chuck can fit maybe six inches wide for your base, at least. And then you just dig a hole, So that you can see, because I told you that I like to have them sit on different sizes of openings. So from the outside, if my part is wider, I can let it sit on this part. If my opening, the shoulder is smaller, I can let it sit on this part. And also, if even I have a smaller opening, smaller shoulder, I can flip over using the other side. So this is the multipurpose chuck. You can see that I keep it quite a bit of a thickness. So my chuck is thick and heavy. So when it sits on the wheel head, it's very steady, doesn't fly away. That's the idea of making a wet chuck. And also, I usually let my chuck, I keep it at that stage. And pretty much I can use that forever if I don't let it dry. So after every use or before use, I just keep it in the water or spray some water to it. So to keep the moisture. And after I finish, I just wrap it in the plastic bag. So basically, it can last forever. You don't need to make a chuck, a new chuck for every one of your piece. Just use one and then it lasts forever. Okay.