How to Throw a Bottle on the Pottery Wheel (Step-by-Step Wheel Throwing)

How's it going everyone? Welcome to the first episode of Wheel Throwing with Riley. Just thought of that. Oh man. Today we're going to be making a bottle. If there's anything I'm pretty skilled in it's making a bottle. Here's a bottle I've made. For the past let's say past year I've been focusing on bottle forms. So happy to share this with you guys and I hope you enjoy it. First step is you get three pounds of clay. This is Speckled Buff Cone 6 from Laguna. Probably not gonna go step by step through this. Just gonna make it and talk about what I'm doing here. Usually I tap center but I just forgot so I skipped that step. But I usually seal the edge over here by pressing with my middle finger and ring finger just to get that skirt really sealed onto the wheel head. Keep adding water. Do a little coning up, coning down. When you're working on the pottery wheel you kind of want to do things and do them fast. The more time that you're spending on the wheel means your clay is going to absorb more and more of that water and you don't want that. You want your clay to be not dehydrated but you just don't want mushy clay. Sometimes I go up and down more than once. This time I feel like that's pretty good. If you do a good job wedging you don't really have to go up and down that much. Finding the center there. Drill down. Kind of using my left hand to steady my pointer finger as I'm going down so I don't get a wobble on the inside. Sometimes that'll happen. These bottles I've been working on, I don't bother trimming a nice foot on them. It just takes more time and these bottles that I make, while they're functional and food safe, they're mostly decorative and people just put them somewhere in their house that they want a little decoration in. Sometimes I'll check how thick the base of my pot is. I like to go really thin on these just to maximize the clay that I can bring up. I'm really shooting for a lot of height here. It's about good. I haven't been throwing in a while actually because I'm a new dad and I have some college stuff I'm finishing up so it's the first time throwing in probably I don't know a month or two months or a month and a half probably. Once you go drill down, a huge important step is to get with your inside hand go to the very bottom and start thinning and pushing that out. See it starting to expand? The more you thin out down here before you start pulling, the better your first pull will be. Your first pull is, in my opinion, the most important. You could get so much height if you just slow down and be very careful about each step. All right, first pull. Here we go. Got a little wiggly at the top but that wasn't that bad. I did go a little wider than I wanted but that's okay. You can always bring it back back in. That's what I'll do right here. Squeeze at the bottom a little bit. Squeezing in at the top and I'm also pushing down trying to fix that little wiggle I introduced. These bottles I really like to have a narrow spout at the top if you will. I don't really thin out a lot up here. Make sure to clean out the inside. You really don't want water sitting on the foot of your cylinder. That leads to cracking, I think, on my pots at least. Okay, I'm not going to really choke it in that much more. I'll just try and pull it in. This one I'm going to go a lot slower on the wheel. There we go. Okay, I'm going to slowly down, slowly release. It's okay to take a break. It got a little dry and these bottles I make, I make standing and if you're seeing there, my water is actually dripping off the off of my wrist and not my fingertips. I don't want that. Okay, I might just might just push it back in. It's pretty thin right here. I don't know why I've been focusing on bottles lately. I think it's a pretty complex form and it requires a lot of skill throwing and then not just getting like a tall cylinder. Also, shaping your pot gets kind of difficult sometimes. So, I'm going to correct this little wiggle with the rib. Just holding my rib steady and pushing out from the inside. It's a little form of a compression. Make your clay a little more solid. Okay, it's a little better. Kind of do the same up here. This is right where I stopped pulling. So, it's a little thicker. Best practices is to start at the bottom of your pull and go all the way through. So, I didn't really do that this time but that's okay. I feel like this is pretty good. That was my second pull. I'm gonna try and really go big for this last one just to thin it out. I have to keep my... Yeah, it's really thin. Yeah, that is very very thin. Okay, I don't want to ruin this. I'm gonna stop again. Even it out again just because it got so wobbly. I like my pots to be as symmetrical as I can get them. So, even that out. Okay, that's pretty good. It's kind of... I usually get a knife and I'll cut away at the foot just to thin it out even more. So, I'll do that at the end. Hope this video helps someone out there who wants to get a little better at their wheel throwing. And not that I'm better than you or anyone. It's just watching other potters sometimes leads to thinking of new ways to do things. So, this is a three pound cylinder of it that I think I could get. Actually, maybe I'll try thinning out just this top section a little bit more because that's where I kept stopping. All right, let's see. Water on the inside, water on the outside. Okay, got a little more height out of it I think. Probably do that again if I wanted some more water. Water in this. Get a little swirly. This would be a lot easier to do if you were sitting at a wheel. With me standing right here, you can see my angle's really funky. But, it worked out. I got a little more height. I think when you stand might be better for your back. For me, it lets me walk around the studio a lot more if I need tools or I need to answer a phone call. When I was sitting at the wheel, every time I needed to get up, I would have to get up, sit down, get up, sit down, get up. Then hours of sitting, you know, that doesn't feel good after a while. For me, I really like taking the slip off of these things early just so my pot can start to dry up a little and start to get its strength back. If you leave that water on there, it just will slowly get absorbed by the clay and you're slowly losing strength. Alright, so I'm going to take the last bit of water out that I can and we'll start to shape this. I'm trying not to add water on the inside anymore because I'm about to close this form and I don't want to have to... For bottle forms, it's amazing. Okay, that's good. I like to have this little claw technique for closing the forms. There's lots of different techniques. This is just the one I've been using lately. Let's do it again. I'm starting to get a little more closed. Great. This way that I do this, it just makes this shoulder right here. That shoulder, I like to round off. Alright, so let's get the tool. This is from... Let's see if this says... Oh yeah, XEM or X-I-E-M. It's not sponsored by them, but hey, if you want to send me tools, send me tools. I'll use them for bottle forms. It's really cool because that's like the size of my thumb and my thumb's pretty big. If I ever get water down there, this is just like the perfect tool to get it out, especially after I've already closed the form. So I've kind of choked it in a little, but I'm going to pull it just to get a little more height. Start under that little shoulder and I'm actually pulling in or trying to pull in just to help with trying to close this shape up. Most of the time spent on these bottles is closing and forming them, and if you have a bad, ugly shape, no one will want to buy it. Okay, got a little smaller. Good. Let's do that again. Okay, we're definitely getting there. Get out in here with the water that I can. The sponge is cool because when you push at the bottom of your pot, it folds over like that, and that's really nice. Okay, let's see. More water. Okay, for these bottles, I really love the flat edge and the rounded edge of a metal rib. Just scraping off that slip. Now lighten up over here because this is where I want to top the shoulder. That's where I like to spend a good amount of time getting that detail in there. Okay, I'm going to flip it over, clean the edge, and I'm actually lifting from the inside here and guiding it with the rib on the outside so it doesn't fall in, but you start to get a weird, funky shape. I've noticed I really like the rounder shapes, like the top of an ice cream cone or a spherical shape right up in here. Okay, this is where I start to try and add as little water as I can because I feel like I have to scrape it off so it doesn't collapse. Okay, I'm starting to get to the point where my fingers don't fit inside. Okay, make a little neck. Start pulling it. I need to clip my nails. I'm leaving a lot of nail marks on this thing. Okay, it's a little balancing act here. Get all the water out again. If you pull out and maximize the height on the top of the bottle, you start to thin it out and that's not good. You really want to have a strong point right here, otherwise it falls. It's going to start pushing in a lot now. See what that did. All right, starting to look like one of my bottles. Get the slip off again. See, I'm already starting to get that shape down there and I'll cut down to emphasize that. Sometimes I'll leave like a little line up here, something like that, but I really want this to go in more. The smaller the spout, I think the more people like it. I think that's what I've noticed with what's sold. Okay, so this might be the last time I can get this in here. Okay, I'll stop right there. See, it's already starting to want to fall on me. It's a constant battle. Scrape down here. I want this little section to go in more, I think, so let me just push it in. Try and do it without cutting it off. It's starting to get thin right there. I'm not OCD about these things. It would probably be better if I didn't care as much, but people like them. See, here's me using a knife just to cut it so I don't have to trim it later. I like being done with stuff once it's off the wheel. There we go. Try and get it good on the wheel so that every other part just adds to the complexity and the artwork. See, lots of clay still down there, but that's where I get more of that cone shape. Small on the bottom, gets wider up top. I'm gonna spend some time up here now. Don't have a needle tool, but I usually cut that with a needle and be right back. Next time I try to make a video, I'll remember to have all my tools ready at the start so I don't have to just walk off camera. Just kind of evening it out. I'm not going to keep that shape. That's ugly. When you make a small little spout at the top, or neck, or head, whatever you want to call this, the eye, I think, gets drawn up top. This is ugly. This is ugly. You know what I'm saying? There we go. That looks a little cooler. Maybe add some details right there. You know, if it gets a little wobbly, who cares? You're only going to see the wobble on the wheel. On the wheel, all those wobbles are emphasized. There we go, that's not long. Sometimes I use the back of a feathering knife to add some cool rounded spots. Give it a little more interest. If you don't care how it looks, maybe no one else will care how it looks and not buy it. Okay, I could soften that later. Okay, did it. Did it. It's not, did it get destroyed? We're okay. Okay, okay, I think I'm done here. So when you're when you're done, if you scrape the slip off, it becomes a whole lot easier to take it off the wheel head. Add some final touches. Maybe one there, one here. I'll just do one. All right, that's the video. Don't like that. Just kidding, it's not the video. Get my sponge out. Say that's done. Just gotta cut a little spot down here. Get the wire to go. Cut it off. It's my three pound bottle or one of them. Hope you enjoyed. Let me just wash my hands and take this off the wheel. Okay, if you've ever struggled with taking pots off the wheel, it's always best to scrape off all the slip you can on your pot and dry your hands. If you do that, the pot will stick to your hands like glue. I'll show you one other trick too. Don't forget to cut it off with the wire. Try and get your hands really dry. So tricks, make sure you scrape off the slip, dry your hands, and all you do is you touch and turn your wheel slowly and it comes right off. There you go. Hope you enjoyed.