How to Make a Ceramic Teapot, from Beginning to End.

This may just be the longest and most detailed video that I've made yet. It shows the entire process of making one of these small teapots, from soft clay to finished piece set in stone from beginning to end. As always it starts off with clay preparation. I wedge up a large lump of clay which removes any small pockets of air and makes the whole mass one even consistency. I then weigh out and then individually wedge each lump of clay ready to be thrown into the bodies of these teapots. I keep them wrapped up in plastic, that way they don't dry out too much as they sit waiting to be thrown. I then carefully attach a wooden bat onto a pad of clay which I've thrown onto the wheel head. This allows me to lift the teapots away once they've been made without touching the actual form itself. I then begin by centering the lump of stoneware clay, toning it up and down a number of times to make sure that it's really well centered. Once the ball of clay is running very evenly beneath my hands without any wobbles or undulations, I begin to open up the form to create the base using my thumb and index finger. They're pushed down into the very center of the lump of clay and then I ease them out, widening the base and using my thumb to compress it. I then pinch the clay up where it's thickest at the bottom and lift it up, moving my hands together at a very even pace whilst maintaining the same amount of pressure pinched from bottom to top. With each pull, the balls get thinner and thinner and I aim to the throwing gauge's pointer which you can see coming in on the left hand side here. I use this gauge so that I can throw each pot to the exact same dimensions time and time again. Once the height is almost there, I'll then start to shape the teapot, pushing out the belly considerably as eventually that'll be quite a sharp angle like you may have seen at the start of the video. I then squeeze the top in, collaring it and now that the rough shape is there, I can begin to really define it, throwing in the sharp angle around the waist and forming the gallery where the lid'll sit eventually. As these teapots have a gallery thrown into the rim, I purposefully leave the clay there a little bit thicker as if it's too thin and there's not enough material to work with, it can be quite difficult to form an edge that's robust enough. I then take a pair of calipers to measure the opening of the teapot. This is important to get right as I need to throw the lids to this exact measurement, more or less, otherwise they won't fit perfectly. Once I'm content with the shape, I can begin to clean up the form. I remove a thin skim of clay around the base and then I use a sharp metal kidney to clean up the walls of the teapot, removing excess slip and defining the shape further. I also take this moment to scrape clean the wooden bat that the teapot's been thrown on as it's best not to keep these too wet for too long, otherwise they can warp and deform. Lastly, I take a chamois leather and I just soften the rim slightly. The pot is then wired off and that's it finished for now. All of these thrown components need to dry off to what we call leather hard before they can be assembled and made into what we know as a teapot. The next part to be made is the lid and these are simple in comparison and very fast to make. As always, it starts off with the clay being centered, which can be quite tricky when it's such a small lump of clay. I think each one of these weighs about 50 grams. I then open up a small hollow in the middle, leaving the rim nice and thick. Then I separate this using a wetted index finger to create the inside locating flange. This will be the part that sits inside the teapot and below it, the wider part, is the lid itself. I then take my measured pair of calipers and I check the diameter. I don't mind if it's a millimeter or two wider than it need be, as that way I can trim it down to fit the teapot perfectly. Again, it's better to have too much material than too little to work with, as removing clay from a thrown form is easy, but adding it back isn't. Once the edges have been smoothed, I then chamois leather the finer points and then I scrape away a bit of the excess clay around the base of the lid. This creates a band of clay that won't be too sticky, so that I can easily lift it off with just my fingers. I wire it through and then I clean the slip off of my fingertips and I carefully lift the lid away, spinning the wheel in the same instance that I lift it up, which helps to break any seal there might be. And that's it for the lids. I always throw a few extras, just in case. The same goes for the spouts too, just in case something goes wrong when I'm assembling them. The last component to be thrown is the spout. I throw these off the hump, which is what we call it when you throw individual pieces atop a large mass of clay. When one's finished, you can simply grab clay from beneath it and throw another, and another, and another, without having to continually wedge up new lumps. These can be quite tricky and very fiddly to throw, especially when they're as small as this. I form the rough shape, and then very delicately, I insert the end of a wooden dowel, which I then push the clay up against, which creates a much narrower opening than if I were to use my fingertips. I then flip the tool around and use the needle just to clean and smooth over any rogue bits of slip that might be inside. I want the edge of the spout, the rim, to be quite sharp so that it cuts through the liquid when I stop pouring, which should hopefully mean that it pours better. I then take a sharp, curved metal kidney, and I very carefully remove the outer layer of slip, again refining the shape and removing the wet sticky slip, which would otherwise cause it to dry a lot more slowly. I then carve out a small groove around the base of the spout, and then very carefully wire it off and lift it away. This view shows the mass of clay beneath a bit better. It won't all be made into spouts, but equally, it's quite nice throwing at this heightened position, especially when making smaller things like this, as you can really see what you're doing. And that's it for the thrown components. What comes next is the assembling, which usually happens the following day, once all the pieces have dried out to what we call leather hard, like they are here. At this point, I can handle the pieces without worrying about damaging them. Previously, this would have completely deformed the pieces, but as they dry, moisture leaves them, and you can handle them, and this is the stage when they can be trimmed and assembled. Although, I don't just let them all dry out together. The spouts, for instance, I like to keep a bit damper than the other components, as it makes them easier to carve and blend onto the forms later on. So I wrap them up with plastic, and I keep a keen eye on them, just to make sure that they don't dry out too much. Really, one of the most difficult parts about making teapots is knowing when to connect all the different pieces to one another, and then how to dry them out without any problems arising, such as cracking bases, handles, or spouts. But, all of that is learned from experience, and I certainly still learn so much every time I make a batch of teapots. The bases of these were still a little bit too damp, so I flipped them all onto their rims, so that the bases are more exposed and dry faster. And once both of these components are at the perfect leather hard stage, it's time to start trimming. The first thing I do is make sure that the lid fits the body of the teapot just right. So I tap center the lid into the middle, and secure it down in place with three lumps of clay. As I threw the locating flange on this lid to be a millimeter or so larger than the opening of the teapot, I start by trimming it back just a tiny amount, before testing the body against the lid once again. I want it to fit precisely, so that the lid doesn't end up rattling around when placed on top of the teapot. I also take this moment to trim the lower part of the locating flange, and the inside sometimes too. Once it fits perfectly, I can remove the lid, and then start to trim the teapot body itself. But usually I just do a little bit of refining on the inside too, and burnish over any particularly sharp edges, just with the pads of my fingers. The lid is then removed, and the body of the teapot is firmly stuck in place. I do this by wiping some water over the bottom, and then I firmly rub the teapot into the center of the wheel. The friction creates slip, and the slip dries, and holds the piece firmly in place. It can take a moment or two to get it just right. As I do this, my eye is watching the rim of the piece, and as soon as I see it spinning without any undulation towards one particular side, I know it's centered. I then use a rubber kidney to squash in a tiny portion of the wall into the wheel head itself, which helps to stick it down even further. And I like to trim like this, as it means there are no lumps of clay that get in the way, or mechanical holding arms either. I then gradually trim the walls layer by layer, refining the shape, and making these curved portions straighter than they once were. This process also makes the vessel lighter. Not that they were heavy to begin with, but I'm a potter who likes to trim his pieces until they're as light as I can feasibly make them. I use a smaller trimming tool to define the gallery, and then the useful thing about the teapot body is I can use it as a chuck in which to trim the lid itself. So I place it in situ, and then I score in a line with my calipers and needle. This marks the outside diameter of the lid, and it ensures that the lids of all of the teapots are more or less the same. I can then trim back to that line, and this entire time too, I keep my left hand pressing down from on top. This keeps it firmly in place, as sometimes the pressure exerted from the trimming tool onto the clay can be enough to cause the lid to jump up out of place. So by keeping my left hand there, I'm just keeping an eye on the situation as I'll be able to feel what it's doing long before I notice it with my eye. Once the outer edge of the lid has been trimmed, I can begin to turn the top. Here, I'm doing a few things. The first is that I trim a slightly concave surface onto this part. This will allow my glaze to cool really nicely in a thick layer without extending up too much. I like to keep the outer edge very sharp too. This way, my glaze will break over it, revealing the bright warm clay underneath. Then, I pierce a small hole, which is very important, and I'll show you why in a moment. This allows air to be pulled through the form as you're pouring the tea. Here's what happens if I cover that hole as I'm pouring. So not only does it prevent the teapot from glugging slightly as you pour, if the seal of your lid is incredibly tight too, that alone could actually stop your teapot from functioning altogether. So the hole is vital, really. After I've pierced the hole, I'll spend a moment cleaning it up. There isn't much to do on this top part, but when you see the underside, the exit wound, so to speak, can often be quite messy. I use the flat edge of this metal kidney just to burnish over the clay, smoothing away any of the wiring-off marks that could be left, and generally just creating a smoother surface. I'll then flip over the lid and begin to clean up the underside of that. This is a rather precarious process, as I simply tap-center it on top of the pot without anything supporting it whatsoever. But as long as you don't do any drastic trimming or try and remove too much material, it should stay roughly in place. I clean up this outer edge and again burnish any particularly sharp edge with my fingertips just to soften them ever so slightly. I then go back to cleaning up the pierced hole, making sure it's perfectly smooth on the inside. I then switch to a particularly small trimming tool just to clean off the burrs around the edge too. And then just one final burnish with the hole piercer and the lid is finished. The trimming isn't finished yet, though. I still need to turn the lower half of this vessel, and I begin when it's still firmly attached at this stage. Again, I keep my left hand firmly in place, applying slight downward pressure as I trim, ready to catch the piece at a moment's notice if it does come off. I then use a sharp metal knife to slice the teapot off of the wheel head and then place the freshly trimmed lid upside down onto the wheel, which, thankfully again, acts like a chuck for the teapot body itself. I gently tap-center it into the middle and then secure it down with three lumps of clay. The body of the teapot can then carefully be placed over top and the lower half of the vessel can now be trimmed, allocating flange of the lid, holding it securely. Although you may not be able to see it from this angle, whenever I'm trimming, my two hands are connected in some way. This helps to build stability as I trim. And as I work, I'm also leaning my upper body weight onto my arms, which helps to anchor everything in place. Once the excess clay has been trimmed away, I use a sharp metal kidney just to burnish and smooth over the clay like I've done so previously. Then it's time to trim the foot itself. I turn a beveled edge onto this corner, which removes what would otherwise be a very sharp angle and one that would likely be chipped with use, and then begin to trim the very bottom, removing the wiring-off marks and making it nice and smooth and flat, most importantly. Then I stamp it with my maker's mark, rocking it back and forth, corner to corner, so that it leaves a good impression. Now that all the trimming's out of the way, it's finally time to assemble the teapot. As I'm trimming, to the left of my wheel, I keep a board prepared with all the tools that I'll need for this next process. So after each one is trimmed, I simply lift this into place and I'm ready to go. I keep this board as clean as I can, that way no burrs of clay or bits of dirt get stuck into the freshly trimmed base. I take the spout and I cut it at a particular angle. I then offer it up to the teapot to make sure it's the correct size and cut to the correct angle. I then use a sharp knife to carve away any extra material from inside the spout. I find it easier to throw them thickly and then trim them down like this afterwards, as throwing very thin, collared forms off the hump can be a pain, so I prefer to throw them thickly and quickly and then trim them out like this. Then what I do is take a sponge on a stick like this, wet it, place it inside the spout, and smooth off all the interior walls. You need to have a section that meets the teapot that's large enough to have quite a lot of holes drilled in, connecting the two. If you don't have enough, the liquid won't flow with enough force and the result is a teapot that pours badly. Once fettled with the sponge, I then use the smooth edge of one of these hole piercers just to burnish the inside to even out and smooth the surface. I'm sure any potter watching this will know about the endless search for the perfect spout. The one that doesn't drip or dribble. And sometimes, even if you've done everything perfectly, the way the glaze settles inside the spout or around the holes inside can be enough to change how well it pours. I then place the spout onto the teapot and carefully trace around its outer edge with a sharp potter's needle. I then take it off and then carefully pierce the holes that connect the teapot to the spout. It's within this carefully marked area that I'll pierce them if you can make it out. It's quite faint. As for the holes themselves, I start by drilling out the central row and I do this entire process by eye. I don't use any guides or anything to help me get them evenly spaced and I don't worry too much about the exit winds at this point. In fact, that's the one thing I forgot to film in this entire process, so I'll just explain it quickly. Once these pots are bone dry, I take a sponge on a stick and I use that to rub over the holes on the inside of the vessel. This removes the burrs of clay and smooths over the holes and thereafter, I just dump all the clay dust out into the reclaim bucket. You could also sand that area at the bisque stage too. I think either of those options are easier than attempting to clean them up now when the pot is leather hard. Anyhow, that's how I clean up the back of the holes. The fronts are a lot easier to do. This is a process that needs to be done at the right stage as well. If the walls of the teapot itself are too soft, the pressure exerted from punching the holes could be enough to distort the shape. Then, once all the holes are pierced, I use a knife just to skim over the top, removing any burrs or bits of clay that might be stuck there. Then, I use the tapering end of my potter's needle, placing it into each hole and rotating it. This widens them ever so slightly and also corrects their shape if one has been slightly deformed when piercing the hole next to it. After all the holes have been cleaned up, I prepare the area around them for attaching the spout. I simply use the sharp end of a potter's needle to score lines all the way around. This roughens up the clay and when combined with a little bit of slip, it creates an area that's quite soft and one that will adhere to the spout nicely. Another thing I do is for a brief moment, I soak the base of the spout in water. This softens up the clay and it makes it incredibly easy to blend into the teapot body, although it's important not to leave it in here for too long because it can also go the other way if it becomes too soft. It can actually become even harder to attach as the clay loses pretty much all of its integrity and just disintegrates. So I gingerly place the spout on, checking and double checking that it's protruding from the right angle. You can also see just how firmly it's attached just with a little bit of pressure like this. Then, if there are any adjustments that need to be done, I can do so at this stage very easily as the clay is still so soft and only once I'm completely happy with it will I begin to blend the spout into the teapot's body. At first, I just use a finger so that I can really smear the clay onto the walls of the teapot. Once it's roughly joined all the way around, I can begin to use a bit more force. And for these particular shapes, I'm trying to make the join feel as seamless as possible so that once coated in glaze and fired, it looks as if the spout was always meant to be there. So I just smooth it in bit by bit, trying not to push too hard as that could deform the spout itself. I'd say this is the hardest part of making teapots. It's slow, delicate work, at least for myself, and it's a process I hate to rush. I like to take my time and make sure that each one is right before moving on to the next. Once all the finger work is finished, I then use this tapering sponge on a stick to smooth over any smears of clay or finger marks and scratches that can be left over from joining the two parts together. The texture left by the sponge though isn't ideal, so after I've used it, I spend a couple of moments just going over these areas with a thumb or a finger, pushing back in the specks of sand that were exposed by the sponge and burnishing it one last time. And with the spout finished, there's only one last thing to do for these, which is to pull and attach the handles. For the handles, I begin with a larger block of soft clay, which I roll out into a sort of long teardrop shape. I grasp the thicker end with my left hand, and with my right hand, I wet it, and I gradually pull the clay down bit by bit into a long length. I make sure that each pull is consistent and quick, as ideally I want the entire length to have the same cross section throughout. This longer length will be separated into many smaller individual blanks, and then each one of these blanks is attached to a teapot, pulled again, and formed into the looped handle. The cross section I'm aiming for at this stage is ovoid in shape, just over a centimetre thick and about two centimetres or so wide, although it isn't crucial that you get it absolutely perfect at this stage, as these handled blanks will be attached to the teapots and then pulled again. So if there's a little bit of variety between them at this stage, I don't worry too much about it. I then lay them against the edge of the board, and I use that edge to neatly snip each one off at the desired length. And like I've mentioned a few times in this video previously, I always make them perhaps a little bit longer than need be, as I'd rather work with more material and simply get rid of the excess than struggle with too little material. There's no waste during any of this process either, as long as the clay hasn't been fired. Any scraps can simply be slaked down in water and eventually reused and thrown into new pots. Once these have been pulled, I'll attach them immediately to the teapots, as I'd like them to be soft, just like spouts. The clay is easier to blend into the body when it's nice and malleable. And again, just like attaching the spout, I score a small area with the sharp serrated kidney, and then I dab a tiny bit of water onto this area. The amount of water or slip that I add at this stage is purely determined by the dryness of the teapot's body. I then take one of the handle planks and I tap out one end, which creates a flare of clay. This creates a skirt of excess clay, which I'll quite easily be able to use to blend into the teapot's body. I then take the spout and I firmly push it into the scored and slipped area. Once roughly joined, I'll move over above my basin of water and I'll blend that flare of clay, the excess, into the body of the teapot, creating a seamless join and also one that's very strong. What I'm trying to do with these is to create a handle that sort of echoes the spout. I want it to project upward at a similar angle and also retain the same sort of visual strength so that there's a sort of symmetry on either side of the teapot. The last thing I do before pulling is I just use a wet finger to rub around the handle join to smooth and clean over any scratches or burrs of clay that are left around the attachment area. Then the actual pulling and shaping can begin. I use a wetted right hand to grip right at the top of the handle join, where it meets the body of the teapot. I clasp my hand tightly and I pull down the excess clay along the length of the handle, making it thinner with every pull. My hand is wet the entire time when I do this and as soon as I feel that there's any kind of friction, I quickly dunk my right hand back into the water and bring it back up to work with. If one of the two components, the handle or your hand, has become too dry, one will stick to the other and you'll likely rip the handle clean off the pot. Once the length of the handle is there, I carefully loop it downward, push it into the teapot body and snip away the excess. I then spend a few moments just correcting the shape if it needs to be done, usually by lifting the handle just a little bit to give it a bit more spring and then with a wetted finger, I just make sure that the bottom join is nice and neat too and that's the physical piece made, although there's a lot left to do. I dry these slowly, upside down, that way the handle doesn't droop and lose its shape as it dries. The reason for wrapping them up with plastic is so that they can dry out very slowly. Cracks around the joined components usually occur when the parts are all dried out far too quickly, so I'll let these sit beneath plastic for a few days so that all the parts can acclimatize to one another. Then, a few days later, I give each one just a quick go over. This is quality control more than anything. I check the base just to make sure that it hasn't picked up any damage along the way and I give everything else just a once over. And hereafter, they just need to be dried out slowly and when I place them onto this board like so, I won't move them again until they're completely bone dry, just to avoid scratching or damaging their bases. Once the pots are totally bone dry, they can be bisque fired in my electric kiln. This is a firing that takes them up to 1000 degrees centigrade over about 12 hours or so, nice and slow. This process chemically changes the clay into ceramic and once fired, there's no going back. At this point, the bone dry pots are unbelievably fragile. If you squeeze them too hard or knock them, they'll chip or break, whereas when they're bisque fired, they're much stronger and they're also incredibly porous, which is ideal as we need them to absorb water, which in turn causes a layer of glaze, the raw materials, to adhere to the outer form. I'm very careful as I pack these, not to bash them into one another and I also place them down very gently too, so that the base doesn't get damaged or chipped. That being said, they can, at this stage and for this firing, be packed as tightly as I physically can and they can touch each other too. There's no risk of them fusing at this lower temperature, especially with stoneware clay. This clay body might look like terracotta, especially fresh from the bag, but it is just a high iron content stoneware clay that's produced with the intent of it being reduction fired. At least, that's when you'll get the best results with it anyway. It also doesn't keep the pink hue that it has once reduction fired in my gas kiln. Instead, it changes to a sort of warm brown grey colour that's speckled with a multitude of iron dots. Once the kiln's packed, I crouch down to check that none of them are sitting too proud, otherwise they could be crushed when I close the kiln's lid. I then switch on the power, set the kiln to the right firing program, which in this instance goes up 65 degrees Celsius an hour until it reaches 600 degrees, thereafter it goes up 200 degrees an hour until it reaches 985. I set this kiln to fire overnight when I'm not in the studio as it's best not to breathe in the fumes, but I can monitor its temperature climb and what stage of the firing it's at via an application on my phone. Once the kiln has cooled down to about 100 degrees, I'll crack it open and then I'll carefully take the pots out. The next step for these will be waxing and glazing. I brush a wax emulsion onto any area that might come into contact with the kiln shelf. This means that the bases of every single pot need to have a layer of wax applied to them. Also for these, I wax the gallery on the top of the teapot and on the underside of the lid. I mix my wax emulsion with a tiny bit of boiling water, which helps it brush on a bit more smoothly, but essentially this is just a wax resist. It stops these areas from absorbing water and therefore prevents a layer of glaze adhering to that section of the pot. Tap centering is the skill that really speeds up this process, especially when I have about three to four hundred pieces to do at any one time. It's a method of tapping the pot in the same specific spot time and time again until it reaches the absolute middle of the wheel and only when it's completely centered will I brush the wax on. Otherwise I risk brushing wax onto areas I don't want it and while it's easy to apply, it can be very difficult to remove. Then I wait a moment or two until the wax has dried, put the lid and body together and then brush one last layer of wax over the base. The wax isn't perfect though. There are still a few tiny specks of glaze that settle over it so I clean all of those off later on, just using a damp sponge. Otherwise I don't really need to worry about it much more. During the final gas reduction firing, all the wax just simply burns away. Once all of these have been waxed and countless other hundreds of pieces too, it's time to move on to the glazing stage. Before I dunk them into the bucket of glaze, I take a brush laden with water and I dab over the holes in the inside of the teapot. This saturates the glaze slightly and it means when they're dipped into the bucket of glaze, this area should absorb less or a thinner layer of glaze, which means there's a lesser chance of the holes being blocked up. I then grasp the teapot with a pair of tongs, submerge it for a few seconds and lift it out, letting the excess drip away. The blowing you hear is simply myself blowing down the spout to clear any blockages there could be in the drainage holes. Now it's the lid's turn. Although with these, I purposefully let the glaze settle in the hollow that I trimmed onto the top of them. Here the glaze does fill up the hole but I can easily clean that up later just with the use of a potter's needle. This is a few days later now. You can see how much lighter the glaze surface has become. This happens as the pot dries out as the moisture leaves the once saturated clay body. As the glaze dries, the surface becomes far more powdery and when it's in this softer state, it's much easier to clean up. So it's at this point that I clean up any stray drip marks, clear the hole in the lid and then carefully sponge around any area that I want to be completely free of glaze. This is slow, delicate work and the cleaner the pots are at this stage, the better they'll look once finally gas fired. But essentially, all I'm doing here is fettling down the glaze to make it look as neat as possible and to make any line where glaze meets clay to be as straight and pristine as I possibly could make it. I also use a blunted knife just to scrape away any stray drips there may be, like so. I find that the glaze is much easier to clean up at this stage after it's had a couple of days to dry out as compared to trying to do it immediately just after they've been dipped into the glaze. Whenever I'm cleaning up the glaze on my pots, I always work over a basin of water this way the excess dust simply falls into it and eventually, once I've accumulated enough, I can sieve it back into my main larger bucket of glaze so once again, there's very little waste. The water also prevents much of the glaze from going airborne which is good as you don't particularly want to breathe this stuff in. The most difficult part of the teapot to check are the holes inside but I just use a simple bent wire to clean up any drips of glaze that may have settled inside the drainage holes. I then clean away all of the glaze that might have settled onto the wax on the base as all it takes is one spot to stick the pot to the kiln shelf and that one spot alone is enough to potentially damage the bottom. The rim of the teapot itself I do on the potter's wheel. I carefully centre it and then I use a wet sponge which I hold in place just to remove the excess that has settled onto the wax. This is another process where things can go wrong quickly as if the teapot were to go off centre I can't really catch it with one hand without damaging the glazed surface so I just work slowly and I make sure that the sponge is continually wet that way it doesn't catch on the glaze or the wax. And that's the glazing finished. The next step is to prepare them for the kiln for the final firing. I fire these two parts together the lid propped up above the teapot. To do this I roll out five tiny balls of wadding. This is a material I make in-house from 50% china clay and 50% coarse alumina hydrate which I mix with water until it's a clay-like consistency. I then flatten each of the balls into a little disc and carefully position them evenly placed around the lid. They should stick quite nicely to the wax but otherwise you can use PVA glue to do the same job. I then carefully place the lid on top of the teapot in such a way that neither the lid or the teapot are actually touching. Instead it's just suspended. I fire them together for two reasons really. First is to just save space inside the kiln and the other is to ensure that they look the same and therefore match one another as in a reduction fired kiln there can be some differences here and there so if I were to fire them all separately some lids might not end up fitting or matching the teapot they are intended to be on. The kiln I'm using is a Roda KG340 meaning it has an internal capacity of about 340 litres. It's fuelled from a main supply of gas which is useful as it means I don't have to rely on bottled propane where you constantly have to worry about them running out and ordering new bottles. I light the kiln early in the morning with the door open as always and once each of the four burners are lit I close the door and seal it up for the firing. This process takes about nine and a half hours to take it from zero degrees to about 1290 degrees celsius. Along the way at 860 degrees I set the kiln into a reduction atmosphere this is when the fuel inside begins to burn inefficiently as I throttle how fast the exhaust can escape up and out of the chimney. I slide what are called dampers over the flues in the back of the kiln and I also greatly increase the gas pressure too. This causes the fuel to seek oxygen to burn with as there simply isn't enough inside and in its search for oxygen the fuel ends up taking oxygen molecules from inside the clay and the glazes of the pots themselves changing what is a red iron oxide colourant into green hues. If these same glazes were fired in an oxidised atmosphere like in an electric kiln instead of green colours you get rather putrid yellows. The entire process is manual so every half hour I check my notes and then adjust the kiln accordingly either by altering the gas and air pressure or by opening and closing the dampers. Alongside the pots inside the kiln are two sets of pyrometric cones it's these I'm looking at when I open the spy holes. Here's a before and after of what they look like. The coloured cones are before being fired and the molten white ones are what they look like once fired. The colour is simply dye added to the mixture so that you can tell them apart more easily but essentially these bend over at very specific temperatures indicating not only temperature but a heat work which is heat over time and a measurement that's very important when firing pots. When I look through the spy holes what I'm looking for is for them to be fully bent over and when the last one is touching toes I know it's time to call it a day and end the firing. To do this I simply switch off the gas and then turn off each of the four burners which is always accompanied by a beautiful silence after nine straight hours of the noise the kiln makes not to mention the air compressor next to it. I then fully open the dampers and remove both bungs from the spy holes in the door before quickly letting the kiln crash cool back down to a thousand degrees celsius. This helps to retain colour and keep the work nice and glossy. Here's a quick view of the cones in situ inside the kiln this is what I'm looking at when I open the spy holes. Then about 36 hours later once the kiln has cooled down to about 150 degrees celsius I can open it. There's always so much to see in each firing but I'll keep this video focused on the teapot we started with. The pots at this point are still quite hot so I'll let them cool down fully before I move on to the final cleaning up steps as there are still two more things I need to do before I can call these properly finished. The waddings that I placed onto the lids are quite easily removed it's just a little bit fresher. And here are the cones from that specific firing which were very even which is a good sign as it means both the top and bottom of the kiln were more or less the same temperature which isn't always the easiest thing to achieve. For the lids, to grind them smooth I smear in some of this valve grinding paste I put it around the flange on the lid and then place it onto the teapot and then twist it until it sounds glassy smooth. This is another process that takes a while especially with 50 or 60 pieces to do but it's really worth it and it makes it go from what is quite a grating coarse sound to one that's much smoother and glassier. This carborundum valve paste is then removed and then I give all of the pieces a wash with hot soapy water. And then finally, I also just sand the bases of each teapot on some wet and dry that's submerged underneath a thin layer of water just to remove any particularly coarse specks of sand that might be left in the clay body on the base. And that's more or less it. Really this is week's worth of work squeezed into what is relatively a short video compared to how long it actually takes to make these pots and given their appearance changes so much under what light you view them in there are a few proper photographs I took to really show them off. Thanks so much for watching especially if you've made it this far. Let me know if you did. And, as always, I'll see you next week.