Beginners guide to throwing a lidded piece ( Drop in lid)

Hello you dirty potters, how are you today? Today I'm going to teach you guys how to make a lidded jar or actually a lidded piece in general. Now there are three different main types of lidded pieces or different types of lids in ceramic artwork but today we're just going to talk about one and this is one of the more easier or one of my more favorite lids. This is called a drop-in lid. You get it because all you got to do is drop it in drop it in like you get it. This is most likely the easiest type of lid to make right now for your skill level simply because you've most likely already gone over how to make a cylinder because you need to make a cylinder for every other shape most likely or at least those things aren't too complicated and then you've most likely already gone over a bowl and a cup. This is just a big old cylinder so all you have to do is do the thing you already know how to do but with more clay but it gets a little bit hard once you get to this part. You're trying to make a drop-in lid and you're trying to make it fit nice and tight so today we're going to learn how to make the top portion of this right here but first we have to throw ourselves a nice cylinder. Potter tip! You should always start off with a smaller than normal cylinder. Don't pull it out way way out here because the larger your cylinder is the larger you're going to have to make your lid later on but as an extra little tip if you do have a super small cylinder like this you can always get the end of your wooden knife right here put it against the clay body just like this and it'll make a very straight line for you and if you ever want it bigger all you have to do is put your hand in there after widening it a little bit and put it right against that wooden knife right there. It'll get a little bit bigger and it'll straighten up some because this wooden knife is most likely an extremely straight angle. Now you have something that's a little bit wider and it's extra extra straight because you use this angle right here to cheat your way into getting a straight angle you little cheater. And there we go we are about halfway there for our lid but don't take this off the wheel just yet. Your job is to now measure this and there's a couple different tools you can use to measure the inside of this right here. Because we're making a drop-in lid and we're going to be making a little part that drops in here for stability to make sure it doesn't move around too much your job is to measure the inside of this. Other lids will measure different parts of the vessel right here but for this one specific type the drop-in lid specifically we're going to be measuring the inside circumference of this round little top right here. Now before you take this off the wheel it is your job to measure the inside of this because next you're going to make the lid and you need to know how big to make that lid. So your job is to get a ruler or some type of measuring tool and put it right on the inside of this right here. Please do not make the mistake of measuring from this point right here to this point right here. You are specifically measuring from the inside point to the inside point because your job is to make the drop-in lid to go on the inside of your vessel and not the outside like some other lids might. Now there are two different ways you can do this and when I was new I was always taught to get a simply put it on the inside of this without touching it a little too much and measure from right here measure it in inches or whatever you might want to use and go all the way to the inner part of the next wall right there it is about right there there you go three and a half inches your job right now is to write that down somewhere. But Dante I'm gonna make my lid now why would I write it down? Be quiet Amanda listen to me. You're going to write that down somewhere and keep it in your notes simply because you need to know how big this is just in case you ever need to come back to it. So let's say you're in class you only have enough time to finish the bottom part of this and not the top part and you didn't write it down. What happens when you come to the class the next day? But Dante I am the smartest of students I can simply measure it again. No no Jason you can't measure it again because all clay in the world dries and that means it shrinks and every different type of clay has a different shrinkage rate and since you most likely don't know the shrinkage rate of your own clay and you don't want to do all the extra math to go ahead and minus 0.6 off of 10 inches of clay and then you're going to have to measure the entire vessel and see how much it has shrank overnight. You don't want to do that it's better if you just measure it now. Now when I was a young warthog I would use stuff like this to measure the inner circumference of my vessel right here to see how big my lid should be but as I got older I found out there's more tools to do this with. There's a tool called calipers. Calipers look just like this and they're made for measuring the outer as well as the inner part of a vessel. Let me show you. This is actually one of my favorite tools for ceramic artwork because it crosses to measure the inside of a vessel and it opens up way big to measure the outside of anything you might need as far as your vessel goes. So at the moment we're measuring the inside of the vessel so what we're going to do is we're going to cross it and we're going to put these two edges right here at the very edge of our vessel just like this. Boom and that is how big the drop-in part of our lid is going to be. Now you don't want to lose this right here so your job is to take this turn it over and screw in this screw as tight as you can right and from this point on you can move it around and nothing will happen to this measurement. You have now kept this measurement the rest of the time and if you've tightened that bolt in nice and neat as long as nobody uses this you will keep having this same exact angle right here and this will be the angle to your vessel so you can come back and measure it again if you want it'll be the same exact measurement just like that. Now that you have your measurement and this thing's not going anywhere it's now time to take this part off of the wheel. You're now done with this part. Congratulations you've gotten the 50 percent. Your next job is to get yourself some more clay and center it. Once you center your clay here comes the difficult part. Get your calipers right here and make sure that the centered piece of your clay is smooshed down just enough to be a little bit bigger than this right here because I'm not going to make a lid that has a drop-in this big if my clay doesn't even reach out to these two points. So what we're going to do now is after you're done centering it you need to make sure it's the right size. That's why I always like to use a little bit more clay than necessary for a lid so let's go ahead and do that. See look now we have something that's a little bit bigger than the outside of our measurement right here so what we're going to do now is we're going to open this up just because we need to have a middle portion for our drop-in. Our job is to make a little tiny wall on these two little outside parts right here but we can't do that if we don't have an inner part of our wall so let's go ahead and do that. The main key here is to make sure that this wall or when you pull out anyway doesn't go past this point so what I usually like to do is I like to go ahead and spin this right here put my tool down and put a little etching just right here at the very edge this way I know hey don't go past this line right here when you pull out. Potter tip! There's absolutely no shame in going back to your vessel remeasuring it and recalibrating this right here to make sure you have the exact same measurement that you need so this right here looks just fine. There's absolutely no shame in going back to remeasure your piece with your calipers and then come back to the wheel to make sure that you have that perfect measurement. I'd much rather do it right the first time than keep having to waste clay and do it again and again and again. Plus it's just annoying. It's really annoying. This almost looks like the angle we need. See this goes out a little bit further than what we need so let's go ahead and pull that out a tiny tiny bit and we'll stop right there. Good that should do it. Yep and that works perfectly. Please remember you're measuring the outside of this portion right here not the inside. I know it's a little bit confusing because with the other vessel we measure the inside right here but please remember that the inside of the other vessel is going to be touching the outside of our lids right here so don't measure this part here. Measure the outer right here and you can do that by using the same exact angle. These angles right here should be lined up boop boop with the angles right on your calipers and this will make sure it has a nice snug fit. Now it's time to make that little flangey part you know a little part goes looks like a lid but it's not really a lid it looks like it looks like an upside down bowl a little bit. The way you do this is by putting a little bit of water right here and pushing downwards on the outer edge of your drop-in part of your lid. Now keep in mind I'm not pushing in I'm pushing down and I'm going to put my finger here so you guys can understand that I'm putting force right this way I'm pushing downwards. This will force the clay to spread outwards because it's physics it has nowhere else to go of course so your job now is to make this little flange right here. Bonus Potter tip! If you get to this point go ahead and take your wooden knife and just scratch it on the very very bottom part right here. This will get rid of some of that job you're going to have to do later on when you trim the very top of this and trust and believe you will have to trim the very top of this or if you're like me you can simply get a metal rib curb it and put it right underneath that right here and that'll give you a really really nice curve aesthetic just like this and this will make the lid come down a little bit more when you put it on the vessel and this is pretty much how you make a lid. Now when you're all said and done when you're completely done with this your job is to re-measure it it's better safe than sorry and make sure those two angles right there are all good to go. Potter tip! You can always take something like your wooden knife or your metal rib and make sure that this edge right here is nice and smooth. Most likely when you're a beginner and you're starting to make lids you're going to make sure that this has a little slope and that's not really something you want. You want a drop-in lid to be extremely straight so it measures the inside of your vessel. So what you can do to prevent that is you can get your metal rib and just for a little bit of clearance room you can just go ahead and push it up against this right here. This will give it a much much straighter edge and you get rid of that little arc that you had at the bottom. After you're done with this part you can simply take it off of the wheel just like you did the first piece however you take it off the wheel is fine just make sure you don't morph it or mess it up. Now please keep in mind that this is extremely extremely wet and if you put this on your lidded vessel right away this will stick and become part of that lidded vessel and you still have to trim this bottom part later on so what you're going to do now is you're going to dry it next to your lidded vessel but do not I repeat do not you hear me Jason don't do it put this on your lidded vessel right now you have to wait for this to dry so it's not tacky and sticky and then you can put it on after you're done trimming both of the pieces separately then you can drain them together. So there's our vessel right there and we're just going to dry both of these separately that way it doesn't become tacky and stick on us later on. Tomorrow. Okay it's the second day now and this looks pretty good this looks pretty dry now and so does the lid it's not all floppy now let's see if it fits yay it fits now this here is my favorite part because it tells you a lot about what you just did number one if the lid fits perfectly on your cylinder then you did a great job now you can trim it on top of your cylinder instead of trimming it by itself now that they're all dry here comes my favorite part first let's trim this okay now that it's all nice and trimmed it if you did your lid just right it'll fit on the top portion of your piece then you don't have to trim the lid by itself usually people would put it down on the wheel like this and trim it just like this but if this fits perfectly on your cylinder or whatever you threw then you can just trim it on top of this without battening this down you just got to do this it's kind of like a little chuck and see now that i've battened this down the lid does not move anywhere you can just trim it on top of the cylinder itself and it stays perfectly in place as long as it has a nice tight fit potter's cheat code this lid actually fits very nicely but there's a tiny bit of wiggle room in between these two spaces here so if you ever throw a lid that's not quite airtight but you really really want it airtight what you can always do is flip it upside down and get a little ball of clay after that you score one part of it slip it a little bit do the same thing to the other side and stick it right there if you did everything correctly you can flip it over one more time stick it right on that spot and it'll become much much tighter see that doesn't move now that's because this little ball took up all the space in which it would be moving so that's just a little cheat code just in case you want something that fits very tightly on your lidded jar but you don't want to go through the trouble of throwing a whole new lid you can just put a little dot right there and that takes up the rest of the fit for the inside of the jar and there you go you have just made your first lidded jar now you can stick it on your shelf pretend you're going to put normal things in it but really it's going to be your new change jar now let's do that one more time but with a larger vessel go ahead take your calipers and measure the inner portion of your vessel and there we go that should do it right there and remember you always have this locking mechanism right here so if you never want to lose this angle you can simply lock it in turn it all the way to the right and you'll have this angle no matter how much you move this item now that we squished it down and pulled out a little bit it's time to re-measure one more time remember there's no shame in going back and re-measuring if you're not sure so now what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and make sure this little edge right here the drop-in part is really prominent so we're just going to isolate this part and push downwards with my outer finger right here and just to illustrate that put a little more pressure right here and i think that's gonna fit pretty well right there and once you get your first lid down of this type it's actually fairly easy because in all honesty it's really just a plate with a raised wall right in the middle of the plate somewhere and if you're making a very small one it's really just kind of a flat bowl with a raised wall in the middle of it somewhere when you think about it in the section of taking this part off and leaving this part on this is really just a flat surface raised wall and you're done the main difficult part is to make sure that this wall right here will fit the inside or the drop-in part of your vessel and that's about all you have to worry about as far as a lidded piece now we're going to leave this here to dry overnight but please remember don't put this on your vessel especially if both of them are wet they will stick and it will be very difficult to get off later and you will most likely break it so wait until they both dry and they're no longer tacky and then put them together and trim them and as i said before if your lid comes out perfectly it'll fit the very top of your cylinder which then means that you can trim it while it's on top of the cylinder look at that fits perfectly see look nice and tight it doesn't move anywhere now all you have to do is center this piece right here and trim this and you're ready to go and otter tip remember if your top is too wet and you decide to put it right here and then trim it you're most likely going to put this downward that's going to end up bowing inwards because the clay is still flexible so make sure your lid is nice and dry before you try and do this technique specifically because you'll just end up ruining your lid well thank you guys for joining me today i really hope this helps some of you guys really figure out how to make your very first lidded piece next time we'll probably go over a little jar the difference is a jar has a handle in which you can take off but a lidded piece is just a piece with a lid really you have to know how to make a lidded piece in order to make a jar and the little tricks that come along with making a little jar there's a bunch of little tricks if you want to see any of my artwork the links are always down below for your beautiful potter eyes and i will see you dirty potters next week can you imagine how many teachers are going to be mad at me just for teaching you guys this one little trick right here this is totally a cheat code you should not do this but it totally works in class