How to use 10 simple wooden tools for forming and finishing your pots!

Hi folks, whether I'm out on the road teaching workshops or working here in the studio forming and finishing my work, I use a group of very simple wooden tools. Let me show you how I use them. I often use a small diameter dowel to create a series of notches at the outside of the rims for some of my pots. This creates a textured surface and actually strengthens the rim by compressing it. I'll use a slightly larger diameter dowel to notch the whole rim from the outside to the inside. Again, it compresses the rim. And all these tools are very cleanable using a piece of green scrubby. Now I'm using an even larger piece of dowel as I rope the rim, that is, push the dowel through the rim at a slight angle and give it a slight twist. I'll often use the dowel medium size to finish off the base of a handle. And small details, using small additions of clay to many of my pots, can really help finish the piece off. In this case, I'm going to fill in at the bottom of this handle between the pot and the handle itself. Using a small coil, which I point up a little bit, I wet the pot and now fill in with the coil. The handle is set up just a little bit, about 20 or 30 minutes. And I'll use a dowel at the inside of the handle to create a curve. And this visually ties the handle to the pot at the base of the handle. I'll often add a thumb stop at the top of my handle where it meets the pot. In this case, I use a large dowel to give it a really handsome curve. I'll often add one more small detail to many of my handles, which is a bottom finger stop or finger rest. It's done with a very small piece of wet clay. And again, I add a curve to it using a small dowel. I occasionally hand build handles using a piece of rounded edge slab and create some textured lines using a piece of square stock. And once I have the length of handle cut, I'll use a large dowel to create the curve inside the handle as it touches the pot. I think the rounded curve at the top of the handle is a good addition to this rounded pot. And again, I'll use a large dowel to connect the base of the handle to the pot. I'll often use the ends of the dowels to create texture across the slab handle. Using a dowel to attach the handle at the top of a casserole lid gives me uniformity from one side to the other. And I often finish off each handle end with a little trim technique I use. This rounds are pretty important to many pots. In this case, I'm making a leaf-shaped handle using a large diameter dowel, pressing both sides of a tapered coil, and then wrap it around a dowel to create which shortly here is going to have feet attached and turn into a shallow fruit bowl, is also an option using dowels. I work methodically on most pots. What I do to one side, I do to the other, and just keep rotating the pot until the job is done. As you see here, the first attachment is made with my fingertips. And then I'm using a large dowel to finish off each end of the handle, giving it a curve that gradually, and hopefully nicely, connects to the pot. Using a smaller diameter dowel, I wrap the ends of the handle just a little bit around the rim of the pot. This visually connects the two pieces. Very occasionally, I add coiled feet to the foot of a pot. Again, I've textured these coils, attached them to the base of the pot uniformly, and used a series of dowels to connect the feet securely to the pot. Adding a dowel-pressed mouse hole at the foot of a trimmed pot can add a bit of visual interest to the piece. In this case, I'm putting two mouse holes at the foot of this trimmed bowl, but you could put more than that. One, two, three, or four. Using the corner of a piece of square stock, you can create some pumpkin edges or lobes around a vessel. I'll use the end of a piece of square stock to create some grooves running up and down over a pre-thrown texture. These are all you can adjust the rim of a bowl to be much more interesting than just a pure round bowl. In this case, four little indents create a clover effect at the rim of this bowl. Now I've flattened the rim of this bowl. I'm doing the same thing I did on the prior bowl, grooves to the flat rim of this bowl using my undercut rib tool, and I'm going to use a up against the soft clay. In this case, I'm leaving a gap of about a quarter of an inch and pinching the rim to create a little bump at the outside, which adds a piece of interest to the outside of the bowl. Squaring cups is something I do often. In this case, I'm going to square the top area of this cup and leave the base of the cup round. I'm forming the corners, knowing that the area between the corners will take care of itself. Rerounding the rim of the cup with a wet fingertip defines it a little bit more and makes it more useful to drink from. I often square up vase forms, and in this case, I'm going to square this form from the foot to the rim. I removed all the slip and slurry from the outside of the pot, and I start by squaring off, creating the corners at the foot first. And just like the cup previously, I form the corners, knowing that the walls of the pot press the belly of the pot inward, and then each end gets also pressed and sharpened up just a little bit. These flat surfaces I'm creating with these boards, it ends up being a great surface to decorate on later. Taking a round baking pan and making it square is one of my favorite things I often square up also, but I create tight corners on some of these. First thing to do is square it up with soft corners, and then use two pieces of press board and create tighter corners. Attaching handles to my baking dishes is something, again, I use the dowels for. I'm always looking for that nice curve from the end of the handle flowing downward into the pot, and these large dowels do the job well. Now here's a funny object, a wooden egg that I use a lot. It's a little detail touch at the end of a handle. Now I've run out of pots here to demo on, but I wanted to show you a hand built handle. Starts with a coil, and then a pressed tight edge using a dowel, and some linear lines added. Trim both ends and attach it to, in this case, a board. That sharp curved end or edge goes up against the pot. Wet fingertips and attach that sharpness to the pot, closing it off, and finish it off with a small divot from a wooden egg. These wooden eggs I also use to create spoons, forming the cup of the spoon over the egg, trimming it, and then adding a handle. And lastly, making deviled egg trays by pressing the wooden egg through the base of the pot on a bone batten. So, I hope you've gotten some good ideas on how to use these very simple wooden tools, but if you don't want to go out and collect them yourself, we've put them together in a little tool kit that's now available on our webpage at vangilderpottery.com. Hey, thanks for watching. I'm anxious to hear your comments. Let's go get to work.