How to Make a Smooth Coil Pot #potter #beautiful #ceramic

In this video I'm going to show you how I made this pot. I made it using the coiling technique and it has a smooth surface. I'm going to show you how I made the smooth surface on the outside. So the first thing that I do when I'm making a coil pot is I make a batch of coils and I cover them in plastic. That way I've got a batch waiting for me as I'm working on the piece. There is a bit of a knack to making even coils. If you want to know a bit more about that I'll put a link to a video that I've made on how to make even coils in this video so you can check that out. I won't do a full description here because it would make this video very long but do have a look at that if you want to know a little bit more about how to make even coils. So then what I do is I take a ball of clay about the size of a small orange and as you can see I flatten it out with the heel of my hand and you can see that the work surface is a little bit wet just to stop it from drying the clay out too much. I transfer the clay onto a wooden bat just so that I can move it around and cover the piece up between work sessions and using a rolling pin I make an even base for the pot. Normally I'd roll it out to about the thickness of my pinky finger. Then when I'm happy with the slab of clay I use something circular, in this case it's a glaze pot, to cut around to make the base for the pot. I quite often use this particular container just because I like the size of it, it's a good size for the base of a piece of pottery. So I cut it out with a needle tool and then just slice and remove the excess clay from the base and then with a serrated modelling tool that's got a serrated edge I score the edge of the clay base because I'm going to position a coil on top of the base and in order to make the coil stick properly and bond properly with the base you need to score the surface, score the surface of the base and also the surface of the coil. So I score the base and then I measure out the coil by positioning it around the base and then once it's in position I cut it to length and I cut it on the diagonal so each end of the clay is cut on the diagonal, it just means that that join will bond a bit better if it's cut on the diagonal rather than cut square. Then I score the end of the coil too because they're going to have to join together firmly as well, the ends of the coil have to join together firmly. So then I score the one side of the coil that's going to sit directly on the base too and then using a bit of water, this clay is quite soft so I'm just using water to soften up the scored clay. If the clay is a little bit dry it might be a good idea to use slip rather than water but this clay is quite soft so water is fine and then just position the coil on top of the base and then once you're happy with the position of the coil then you can press it quite firmly onto the base obviously without distorting the shape of the clay too much and blend in the two ends of the clay coil and then using a modelling tool I blend the inside of the clay pot to make a firm join, supporting the outside with my hand with my free hand and then using a mixture of my finger, the tips of my finger and the modelling tool just to make sure that it's bonded really securely and then I do the same with the outside I just smooth the outside of the pot with my finger and the modelling tool and then to build the sides of the wall up you just repeat the process adding another coil to the one beneath it and if you want the sides of your pot to curve outwards gradually you need to add the next coil slightly to the outside edge of the one beneath it and just repeat the same process of slipping and scoring and then blending the clay coil onto the pot and it's good to make sure that the inside of the pot is blended nice and neatly whilst the pot is quite shallow because the deeper it gets the harder it is to get your hand in there and actually make sure that the surface looks nice and then once it's blended on the outside with a wooden tool I just go around it with a rubber rib just to make it make it as smooth as it can be now instead of showing you me coiling all the way up the side of the pot I thought I would just jump to a later stage in having made the pot because otherwise the video would be incredibly long and a bit tedious so this is the point that I'm at here is that the pot's as wide as I want it to be and I'm starting to graduate the the coils in again to towards the neck of the pot so you can see I've just blended that coil together to make a clay ring and because the pot is now going to start graduating in what you want to do is position the coil start positioning the coil slightly on the inside of the the coil below and that will gradually bring bring the the sides of the pot inwards just carry on blending in the same way that I demonstrated before now one tip when you're blending the coils in is it's a good idea to blend first of all using I tend to use a wooden tool when I'm blending just because I find it easier so support it support the inside of the pot with one hand and blend with a wooden tool on the outside and blend on a diagonal so you can see here that I'm blending towards my right on the diagonal towards my right and then on the next coil you change the direction that you're blending in so that on the coil beneath you're blending in one direction the next coil up you're blending another direction the reason for doing that is it makes the pot a bit stronger and you can see here that I'm just reaching the neck of the pot so I'm repeating the process and if you want you can just leave it there you can just finish off the neck and have a sort of a teardrop shape with this one I'm going to add on a long neck an asymmetrical long neck so once you're happy with the size of the pot then what I do is I scrape off some of the excess clay with a metal rib just to smooth it out smooth out some of the ridges and then I go over it with a rubber rib and that compresses the clay and makes it nice and smooth at this point you don't need to be too worried about it being really smooth the reason I do this is just to make sure that I'm happy with the shape of the pot and also to get most of the major sort of lumps and bumps out of it but I am going to go over it with a shredding tool later so that will get rid of any any remaining bumps and make it nice and smooth so at this point I'm going to start modeling the neck with using coils as well the neck is going to be an asymmetrical shape so what I'm doing is I'm just cutting out a little section there of the coils to build it up on one the height of the neck I just use a combination of my hands fingers and modeling tools to shape the neck tidy it up and shape it how I want it to be and when the clay is leather hard I use a shredding tool to smooth out all the remaining lumps and bumps on the surface of the pot and then after I've used the shredding tool I use a metal rib to lift off the scoring marks that have been made by the shredding tool and then finally I use a rubber rib to go over the whole pot to just compress all the clay and smooth it all out and around the neck I use a combination of a craft knife and wooden modeling tools and the rib tools as well just to finish the the detail on the neck and here is the finished piece if you like this video please do give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel thanks for watching bye