How to Throw on the Pottery Wheel. Making a mug in 5 Easy Steps.

Hey everyone, my name's Madeline. You may know me as Madceramics if you've seen me on TikTok or Instagram. Welcome to my pottery studio. Today I'm going to teach you guys how to throw a mug in just five easy steps. So let's get started. Step one is to weigh, wedge, and center the clay. So obviously you're going to need some clay. I use a porcelain mix clay, but you can use any clay you fancy. The first step is to wedge your clay, and when I'm making forms, I like to weigh out the clay to a certain amount of poundage or ounceage to make sure that I can get consistent results when I'm throwing multiple mugs or multiple bowls, or you get the point. So for a typical mug that's 16 to 20 ounces, I weigh my clay to a pound and a quarter. So a little bit less, and perfect. The whole point of wedging your clay is to get any air bubbles that might be in the clay out of the clay, because you don't want any air bubbles when you're throwing it, and especially if there's air bubbles left in there when you fire, it is possible that they could explode and your pot will shatter in the kiln. So there's different ways to wedge, but the way that I like to do it and the way I think is the most easiest is called the ram head wedge. So this is basically, if you can see here, it kind of looks like the head of a ram, how it's got these points here where your palms go. And so it's pretty simple. You are just going to push the clay in and down, and then you're going to lift it up and roll. And see how it's creating these layers here? That's how you know you're doing it right. And you're also pushing kind of in towards, your hands in towards each other to keep the clay from splaying out, because if you just do it really fast like this and you're not really paying attention, then it kind of splays out like this, and that would actually be not beneficial because it can add more air bubbles to the clay. So after you've done this about 20 or so times until you feel like the clay is nice and air bubble free, then you're just going to roll it once, really good like that. I like to smash down the edges, and then I'm just going to pound this into a ball shape to make it easier to throw on the wheel, like that. It's always satisfying. So now that we've wedged the clay and we're ready to throw, we're going to center the clay onto the wheel. First you want to get the clay to adhere to the wheel firmly so that it doesn't fly off. You want to keep it nice and wet the whole time, so add water as needed. I'm going to press in with my left arm towards the clay, and I'm kind of bracing it against my body here to make sure that it stays in place. And then with this part of my hand here, I'm going to push down directly on top of the clay, and do that at the same time until I feel it adhere, and it also is kind of centering as well. Now it's nice and adhered to the wheel, and we can finish centering. So to center, you're going to be pushing in with this arm once again, and with this arm, and you're going to be coning the clay up in this kind of motion. The key to throwing on the wheel is to use even pressure and timing. You want everything to be even as you go up, so that there isn't lumps of clay left down at the bottom, or too much clay left at the top, because that'll just make things really wobbly and make your life harder in the long run. So once I cone up, I'm then going to push the clay with my palm directly down, and kind of to the side. So down and to the side with the same palm. And this palm's just kind of like keeping everything nice and centered, and keeping it from wobbling too much. You can cone as many times as you need until you feel the clay center. And you'll feel the clay when it's centered, because it won't be wobbling, and if you put your hand up to it like this, your hand's not going like this, and it's not trying to push you off the wheel. That's when you know that it's centered. Step two is to puck and open. So coming from the top again, just like we did when we adhered the clay to the wheel, I'm going to push in with this hand, and I'm going to push directly down using the side of my palm to make a hockey puck shape. That's how you want it to look before you open up the clay. Now that we have the hockey puck shape, we're ready to open the clay. I'm going to be doing that using one to two fingers, depending on how large you want the opening to be, or how big your fingers are. You're going to go directly down the center of the clay, and you're going to push down with even pressure, and add water as needed. Once you get down to as far as you think you need to go, it's always a good idea to check the width, the depth of your bottom. To do that, I like to use a needle tool, and I'm just going to push it down until it hits the bottom of the bat, and then put my finger down to the bottom of the clay, lift that up, and I can see exactly how depth, I can see the exact, I don't know what I'm saying, I don't know what I'm saying there, let's see, alright. What is this called, the depth? Is that called the depth? Is it called the width? See, that's how much clay there is down at the bottom, which is good. You know, that's like a good point right there, maybe a little bit more would be fine, but you definitely don't want it to be any thinner or any thicker. After you check the depth, it's a good idea to just kind of smooth out the bottom of your clay to make sure that the hole that you just made gets covered up. Now that we've opened the clay, we can widen the bottom of the base. By doing that, you'll use your two fingers again, and you're going to push your fingers, you're going to put them in the bottom, and pull directly back towards yourself, until the base is as wide as you want it to be. So for a mug, we're not going to make it too wide, so we're just going to put our fingers in, make sure it's nice and wet, and pull, and you see how, here's a hot tip. I'm constantly bracing my fingers, or bracing my arm against my side, because you're fighting against the spin of the wheel, which is going to want to spin out of center. So you're constantly bracing your fingers, or bracing your side, to make sure that everything stays in alignment. So once I open that up and get it to the width that I want, I'm just going to take my sponge and smooth out the bottom. This just kind of helps condense the clay, and ensure that there won't be any crackage in the drying stage. Step three is to pull up the walls. This is the hardest part, but also the most satisfying part, so definitely be patient with yourself, and slow the wheel down if you need to. So to pull up the walls, this left hand is going to be inside of the pot, and it's going to be bracing and guiding only. You're not going to be pushing or doing any kind of shaping with this left hand. With your right hand is where you're going to be really putting in the pressure. You're going to be pushing pressure against this side, and with both hands you're going to be pulling up and guiding the clay with even, steady pressure. As even and steady as you can get it will really help you in the long run. Make sure everything's nice and wet, as always. I like to use the sponge to pull up, but you can also just use your finger like this, or like this. So I start by putting a little notch in the bottom there, and that just kind of pushes all of this clay that's on the outside in, so that I have something to grab onto there, so that I can easily pull that clay up. You want to pull it all the way up to the rim, and then I like to always condense and smooth the rim out after each pull, just to keep things nice and clean. So a rule of thumb is to get your pot to the height that you want in two to three pulls. That might be harder on something that's taller, but on a mug it's typically a two to three pull before you shape it. So I just did my first pull, and I'm going to do my second pull. Again, I'm making a notch down there so that I have something to grab onto and push up. You really want to slow the wheel down and take your time on this part. Smooth out the rim, and I think I'm going to do just one more pull before I move on to the next step. Here's another hot tip for you. If when you're pulling up the walls, the clay splays out at the top, which often can happen, to make your life easier, you can collar that in before you do your final throw. So to collar in, you're going to be putting your hands and pushing them into the clay as you're pulling up, or sliding up, is kind of the motion. And you see how the rim pushes in? And now we're ready to finish pulling. So on my last pull, I often like to kind of get the general shape that I'm going for before I officially shape my mug. So on this last throw, I'm going to use this hand, and I'm going to push out just a little bit, and guide with this hand, and do less pushing in with this hand, and more pushing out with this hand. See? And there we have more of a mug shape with a pot-bellied. There's so many different mug shapes you can do, but today I'm just showing you how to do a pot-bellied mug. So there is pulling up the walls. Step four, shape the mug. Before I start shaping my mug, I'm just going to collar in the rim just a little bit again, just to keep everything nice and tight to the center. So I like to shape my mug using this tool here. It's a metal rib. There's lots of different kinds of ribs. There's rubber ribs. There's wooden ribs, and they come in all different shapes and sizes, so you can really just experiment with them and figure out what works best for you. So I like to get the rib nice and clean and dry as possible before starting to use it, and I'm going to be using it to make more of a pot-bellied shape. So from this angle, I'm going to bend the rib like so, and I'm going to be using the curved angle here, so I'm bending it, and it's got this curved, smooth angle here, and I'm going to be putting that right up against the clay, and with my left hand on the inside, I'm going to be just slightly pushing against, pushing the clay against the metal rib to shape it, but also to get all the excess slip off of the mug. See all that slip that came off with that metal rib? That's why I like to use these metal ribs. Okay, so now we have the basic shape that I'm going for. I could use the rib as many more times as I need to to really enhance that pot-bellied shape. I might do it just one more time here, but I don't want to do it too much because then the mug will become really thin and likely to flop, which we don't want. So first I'm going to do the rim of the mug. I could just leave it like this. This would work perfectly fine, but I like to do kind of a lipped mug on my shapes, so I'm going to use the same metal rib, and before we were bending it like this, and now I'm going to put it flat and bend it like this. So bending the metal rib, I'm going to use my fingers on the inside to push against the clay and push it up against the rib, and this is going to create a nice lip on my mug here. And you want this wheel speed to be pretty slow while you're doing this. And see how I'm just kind of guiding the lip over the rib with my fingers, and it creates that nice lip. Step five, clean up and wire off. Once we got our rim how we like it, we can smooth everything out, clean everything up before we wire it off. So you want to clean up any excess slip on the outside, and make sure to sponge out the inside because there's lots of water that builds up the bottom of your mug while you're throwing. Okay, now that we have finished throwing our mug, we're going to take the wire tool, and we're going to wire off the bottom, and that way you can easily remove the mug once it's a little bit drier, or you can even remove it while it's still wet if you're really careful. But I like to let it sit for a little while before I remove it so that it doesn't get all warped. And there you have it, a pot-bellied mug. All right, now you know the basics of how to successfully center and throw on the pottery wheel. I would just like to say that there's no one right way on how to throw, and to find your groove you're just going to have to do a lot of practicing. And if you would like to see more tutorials, then hit that subscribe button. This time we did a mug, and next time I'm going to be doing bowls, plates, oil bottles, all kinds of things. If you have a special request, something that you want to learn how to do, drop a comment in the comment section below and let me know. Also, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. And yeah, I hope to see you next time.