Making a hinged box out of clay 🫣

This video is sponsored by Squarespace. As you know, I've been playing around with hinges lately. My first hinge was in that Polly Pocket video and then I made a hinge for that book project. Eventually I stumbled upon the work of Melbourne Potter, Tufts Studio. And I knew I would have to try this hinged box. So let's do it. I have to give a huge shout out to Tufts Studio for this one because not only did she make this really cool design but she also showed the entire process on YouTube. Tufts Studio has an amazing YouTube channel. You should definitely go check her out because she's incredibly talented and she explains things really well. Unlike most Steel Like An Artist videos, I actually feel like this project is way less guesswork than most of my Steel Like An Artist videos. The question is, can I do it? Not like, how did they do it? Because she shows the whole process, which is pretty cool. So I'm going to start with the lid and we'll see if I can manage. It has been a while since I've thrown on this channel. I feel, I'm excited to be back. We'll see if I can still do it. I always make plates and like, in this case a lid but I always make plates too thin. So I'm gonna err on the side of, that would be too thick. It might already be too thin. I like that's good. I always have luck with my first piece that I throw. I feel like it's fine. Let's see if I can wire through without destroying it or should I let it set up? No, I'm gonna let it set up, right? Because it's not gonna wire through the same path. Even though the wire will be cleaner now, it's not gonna wire through the same path. So I'm gonna tap double wired it. Okay, we're not gonna wire through. I feel like that's pretty good. So you see, it's got like a little, you know, one of these action. So that's gonna be how it sits. So I need my bottom part to be 21 centimeters. We'll see if I can manage this. I wasn't worried about the lid. I'm worried about this part. This is very sloppy right now. Don't worry, we're trusting the process. Nope, let's do one. We are right on the edge. Way thinner than I would prefer. I feel like it's looking pretty good, but I'm worried that the bottom is too thin. So should I throw a second one like as a backup? How did you get like a centimeter thinner? Oh, I see, we got a little lump here. Okay, okay, make it wider. I need to stop touching this now. I feel like this is good, despite the chaotic way I threw that. But let me throw another one just as a backup because yeah, I don't trust this bottom at all. Okay, even though it's shorter, I think this is better because it is 22 centimeters. I don't know why, like I did the top first because that's what Tough Studio did. And I figured, okay, maybe the top is like harder, but I think for my throwing skills, I should have done this bottom part first, I think. But it's fine, I think I'm gonna be able to make one of them work. What are the chances that they both fail? Okay, because they're attached bats, we can, I'm afraid he's too small. It's like a half centimeter too small. I think I'm gonna put this one back on the wheel. Perfect, so I am gonna keep this third one just because why not? They need to dry to leather hard before I can flip them, and then we can trim them. And the majority of the challenge of this project is happening during the next phase when we're trimming, and then we're going to make the hinge. So very exciting. Let's take a little break to talk about today's sponsor, Squarespace. If you've never heard about Squarespace before, they're an all-in-one website platform that artists and entrepreneurs use to stand out and succeed online. I've been using Squarespace pretty much ever since I started my online business because it has incredibly easy to use features, including their drag and drop website builder and integrated SEO tools. Whether you're just starting out or managing a thriving brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website to sell anything from physical products to memberships, digital products, and even services. You can also schedule appointments, create on-brand invoices, and send newsletters. And for the artists watching, I know you will love their cutting-edge design tools where you can create a bespoke website that perfectly fits your brand or business. So head to squarespace.com right now for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash potter to the people for 10% off your very first website or domain. Now let's get back to the video. Okay, I'm going to flip these, and then I think I'm gonna have to wait a bit longer so that the bottoms can dry. And hopefully I don't cut through the bottoms. Okay, this is the one with the very thin bottom, but I think it's actually okay. It didn't cut through at least. Ooh, oh yeah, that's thin. Do you see how it's starting to sink? Oops. I could let it dry this way a bit longer, but I feel like the bottom is just too thin. I feel like that might just be how it is. Okay, let's do these ones. The ones that I'm hoping aren't too thin and that will turn out. Probably should be doing this on the wheel. Ooh, come on. I've been too hasty. I need to check on my dog. Okay, I need to let this dry a bit longer. I hope I warped it a little bit as I was moving it. I hope that is not a death toll for this project. I need to check on Beanie Sparky. I've been too hasty. I think I'm going to remove the bat anyway though. I need to get them to dry. I feel like it's gonna be fine. These need to dry a bit longer now before I can actually flip them, so I'll give them a few hours. Everything's drying so slow right now because it's winter and basement studio. Good morning. I would very much like to assemble this box today. They are a little bit on the wet side. I've had my dehumidifier running now for the last hour, so I'm hoping that that cleaned it up. And then the top was quite wet, so I put it actually on my radiator, which is right over here. So the bottom is getting a bit dry. I feel like he's starting to warp a little bit, which is not cool, but we shall see. I'll start with this guy, which is the guy I think we're going to go with. You can see how that goes. And then we'll get to the lid. Ooh. Oh my God. What is happening here? This is vibrating. Can you see that? I got this fancy new tungsten carbide tool and it's adding all this chattering that's not intentional. I'm realizing it's just like chattering. Why is that happening? It feels smooth. Oh gosh, it is really, it is really chattering. Oh my. I normally just use these cheapos. These ones that you get like at literally any pottery store. That's not good. I mean, should we just lean into it? We could just lean into it. That was not intentional. Do you use these tools? Because this is the first time I've used it. And oh my, does it normally do this? I mean, it looks kind of cool. Don't get me wrong, but I want to control that, you know. Look at this chattering. Kind of extreme, isn't it? I don't know if I can undo that. So I think we're just going to lean into it. And let me smooth this bottom. Or should we leave the bottom? Are we going to have like a super textured? Why don't we just do it? Let's just lean into it and pretend that that was intentional. We could also like leave this bottom part unglazed. I feel like they're meant to be sharper, which means that should allow less chattering, but it literally could just be my technique. It could be not the tool at all. I could be messing something up. Okay, let's leave it. Okay, I'm quite happy with them. I mean, they're not perfect, but they're okay. So now comes the tricky part. I do think they look really nice together. I think it's a good fit. Like I do like that there's a little tiny, tiny overhang. I think it just makes it, it like punctuates the piece. And I don't know how to describe it, but I like it. So I need to have a look again how she does this. I need to make like a little template thing. Okay, I just cut it out. If you want more detailed instruction on how this works, please go check out the original video. I'm going to link it down below in the video description. Basically, I cut out this shape and then I added a half centimeter around all the way around, like a half centimeter gap because this is going to be our wiggle room. No more delaying. We have the tricky part. Nichrome wire. I think she called it Kantha wire. I'm not sure. Somewhere that doesn't fall apart in the kiln. You can use the wire from old elements or you can just buy this. I think I got this from eBay. Pottery suppliers also sell it. Oh, I need snippers. One second. My problem is that my nichrome wire is totally bent. So I need to get some straight pieces. And how long? I mean, I'm just going to have to make it as straight as I can. That flew. Okay, how long do I need to cut these? I feel like if they stick in a centimeter and a half each way, that should work. Oh, it can't even stick that far in on this one because it's too, it's not very long. I might've already messed this up. I might have made this part too small because we only have about a centimeter of space to stick the wire in. We're going to make it work. I feel like a centimeter should be okay. One centimeter, one side, one and a half, the other side, half centimeter gap. That means two centimeters. Math. Three centimeters, three centimeters. Math. They are not perfectly straight, but it's going to have to work. That's the best I can do, y'all. I'm going to stick this guy in halfway, I believe, until there's one half centimeter left. Status. It wasn't so bad. So I need to dig little channels for this now. I've pre-marked where it should line up. I'm going to try and carve these channels without carving through. This is the goal. Oh, getting thin now. Should have put the pin a little bit higher, AKA closer to the bottom of the lid because I'm having to cut so deep and I'm worried I'm going to cause structural problems in my little crevice here. Ideally, how I understand it is I want the pin to kind of be like free-floating in here. I don't want it to touch anything. It's just a little on the edge now. It's getting too thin. I mean, it should be okay. This one's free-floating really nicely. This one is also free-floating, but let's face it. Okay, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. Let us attach these together. So I'm going to attach these upside down and then I'm going to flip it onto a kiln shelf, which is a genius move by the original artist so you don't have to move it anymore. I wish I had thought of something like that for my book because movement before firing is the death of hinges. So I need to make like a layer of clay to seal it off, but I need that clay to not sink down to touch the hinge. I'm just going to try it. Something like that. I mean, it has to sink down a little bit to like get a grip. Just try and smooth this out. Oh no. I'm going to let this dry for a minute. I don't really have a strategy for tidying this up. I'm just trying to make it look smooth. Like it's not going to matter to the function because this is going to be on the inside, inside of the rim, inside of everything. Like if it sticks out a little bit, it's not going to impact the functionality, but obviously I want to make it look tidy. Also because the weight is going to be on it once I flip it. It's as tidy as it's going to be. If I do anything more, I'm going to mess it up. Okay. So the genius part of what the original artist did is we're going to transfer this directly onto the kiln shelf. And we're not going to take it off the kiln shelf until it's fully done. I'm not even talking about after the bisque. I'm talking about fully done. So this is not going to squish it. Ta-da. Ooh. You can see the pin sticking through. That's annoying. What if I just push it down? Will that go away? That's annoying. I'm going to need to use a thick glaze then. Why do you do this? It's the first time I'm making this. Mistakes can be had. They're still loose, which is good. Okay. We're going to let this dry now. We're going to fire this and we're going to see if it works. It might not work and it might also be ugly. It's just the way it is. Goodbye. So it's been about a week. My box is dry and ready to go into the kiln. I can't get a proper look at my hinge, but it looks like it's cracking a little bit. I have to say. I don't know if this is like a deathly crack and it's going to completely fall apart. We just have to wait and see, but I just wanted to say it's not looking very good right now. So we'll see how it goes. This, however, looks fabulous. I do kind of like the chattering now. It was very unintentional, but I think it looks cool. Okay. I need you all to pray for my poor lid. Okay. I'm about to unload the kiln. I am nervous about my crack situation. I'm nervous that it has gotten worse and that, I don't know. I can't tell what's really going on there. Okay. I just wiggled it a tiny little bit. It feels solid, I guess. We're just going to glaze it, fire it. And then we see, you know, that's all we can do. So I was trying to figure out what glaze I want to glaze this. I think I'm going to go with my green. I can't see in this light. Sorry. The lighting is so bad in this room. I just don't know what to do about it. Anyway. Can you see? Call this my frog green. Anyway, you've definitely seen this green before. I did add some clay, the glaze glue to it. So hopefully it will paint well. I'm just going to paint it directly on the kiln shelf here. That's what the original artist did. I also pretty sure I'm choosing green because her piece was green as well. Just looks nice. I don't know. I used a fairly plain clay. I just used my simple white clay with this. So I thought I should have a little bit of nice variation in the glaze itself. Okay. I put three layers of glaze on each and I did have a little bit of drippage with this guy. So I kind of shifted him a little so I could wipe underneath him. And then I took my needle and like kind of scraped off the drips that went down in between. I don't really know what to do about that. And then likewise, this one, I decided to leave the line a little bit bumpily, bumpily too, because of this chattering. And I don't know. I feel more confident about this line because it looks more intentional. This might just look like a crappy glaze job. We shall see. Let us put these back into the kiln for the final fire. Okay, be good. It is time to open the kiln. I'm a little nervous about the glaze itself because I don't usually paint this glaze on. So I hope I applied it thickly enough. This glaze can look not so nice when you don't apply it thickly enough. Ooh, pretty good fit, I feel. Okay, the weird thing is that, I don't know how to describe, but I think that the hole that the pokey thing is in, the wire is in, I think the wire is touching the end of the hole so that it's kind of like getting caught. So it's not wiggling like I would hope it to. But let's see if it opens. Once again, it's not the best sound. Okay, the wire has bent a little bit. And I think this is because it got stuck on the kiln shelf. Like it wanted to shrink while it was firing and it couldn't shrink while it was firing. So it actually bent the wire a little bit. So this side is actually okay. He's pretty straight on. But this side, you can see it's kind of bent like this. I think that's kind of a problem. And this side's better. This side wiggles a bit more. I would hope for more looseness. This is just kind of getting stuck, which means that it's getting stuck when I'm lifting it. Do you see how? I don't know if you can see it. I'm sounding like I'm unhappy with it. I'm mostly just like curious how it's working. Like, look at this. I was hoping I could open it all the way. I fear I cannot open it all the way. It's because this one hinge is not straight anymore. It's bumping against the bottom of the hinge well, we'll call it, the hinge channel. So he opens this much. But hey, that's a hinged lid. This is a hinged box successfully made. Certainly not as good as the original designer. I'm going to have her information linked down below. It's Tuff Studios. She's awesome. She makes all sorts of crazy projects like this. And yeah, this was a really fun project. I'm really thankful to her for coming up with it. I'm wondering now what I'm going to store in here. Maybe we can put some cookies in here or something. All right, friends, that's it for me. I hope that this was an interesting project for you and I'll see you in the next one. Bye friends.