Pushing the Limits of my Craft

This week I'm finishing, glazing and firing these stepped bowls you may have seen me throw and trim in a previous video. They're a new shape for me and it's a way of exploring forms that perhaps feel a bit more ornamental as opposed to being purely functional. I'll cover the throwing and trimming of these very briefly in this video, but if you'd like to watch a more thorough explanation I'll leave a link to that on screen now and in the description below. In short, I started this entire journey The thing is I threw them initially by making these bowls. with the lines roughly formed on the outside and as you might know if you've thrown pots on the wheel when you do this often the interior form begins to reflect the exterior. This meant the inside shapes weren't consistent from top to bottom and whilst I was content with the outside stepped shape I wasn't particularly happy with the insides of these. This means that there's a few ways to proceed in order to correct this. The first is to throw a much more consistent shape and then attach coils of clay around around the outside that I can then throw into these individual steps. The other option is to throw the walls much more thickly and then, come the leather hard stage, I can simply turn away the precise shape I'm after. I think I prefer the sound of that route. It may mean there's more trimming, but it also means there's some flexibility in terms of where the lines end up being positioned. As these bowls will be so intensely trimmed, I need there to be as little movement in the walls as possible as they dry out, and so to aid in that process I'm also going to be throwing them on a bat. This way I can leave them attached to the MDF, pry them away and then wire them off later after they've hardened up. This should help to preserve their circular form. The tricky thing about making shapes like this for the first time is that I don't know precisely how much clay to use. I envision throwing the base shapes of these with walls that are perhaps just over a centimetre thick, so I think for this first experiment I'm just going to make these from arbitrary lumps of clay, throwing them as best I can with enough clay in the foot and the walls for the forms I want to make. It always feels somewhat unusual throwing shapes like this that are purposefully thick, as after so many years I've sort of trained myself to pull up walls that are thin and even, and so throwing in such a way where the pot feels heavy and cumbersome just feels so alien, meaning that when it comes to shaping the form, I have to think so much more about the process itself, as I have to put a dampener on my efforts, so to speak. Once centred, the lump is opened up but I don't push down very far as I need to leave enough clay in the bottom to account for the tall foot rings these pieces will have. The walls themselves can then be gradually drawn up and I'm paying a lot of attention to keeping them even and thick. Essentially what I'm creating is the base shape, the rough, from which the more refined elegant shape will be trimmed. It's a process that's going to be a lot more subtractive than making pottery normally is. Typically, in most people's practices, trimming doesn't account for a huge amount of the work. In mine, it's significantly higher, but with these it's going to be another step beyond that, and I imagine it's going to feel somewhat like turning away a hunk of wood on the lathe. That is what pottery ultimately is, just with the lathe turned sideways. And we also work with a material that you can add to a lot easier, provided you do it at the right point. This makes it an additive process, particularly at this soft stage here. And then later, it becomes a subtractive one, which is sort of unusual in the grand scheme of making and craft. With the rough shape formed, the next step is removing as much slip as possible from this piece. My focus is on the inside shape, as if formed properly at this point, I shouldn't have to do much turning here later, as its shape is already very neat and crisp. I then very lightly trim the rim to make sure it's level and then I carefully scrape off as much slip from the outside as if I left this just covering the pot. It would take a lot longer to turn leather hard unless the form you're making specifically calls for being covered in sort of a slippy decorative layer. I think it's good practice to get rid of as much of it as you possibly can as it just leaves you with a neat clean canvas to work on later. The foot ring itself is then tidied up, and I scrape away as much mess off the bat as I can, and I even sponge it clean. This helps to prevent the spread of dust around the workshop, and it's also the only cleaning my bats ever undergo, so you don't really want to wash these with too much water, as that's a sure path to your bat's warping, which can make them troublesome to work with. I'm throwing a variety of these bulky shapes, but the principles for each remains the same. The bowls are made with stupendously thick feet, and the walls are So probably about 10 to 12 millimeters in cross-section. I know that this approach to making pottery for some people may seem really bizarre, but I think for me, in my particular practice, I'm a ceramicist that's a very confident trimmer. This makes the idea of removing all this excess material seem relatively trivial, whereas there are other makers who may definitely prefer the method of adding a coil on a shape that's been thrown more accurately at the start. I don't think one technique is objectively better than the other, and I think what's important is that you, as the craftsperson, figures out the technique they prefer. Anyway, the next step is to leave these out to dry very slowly and evenly. Consistency in this process is vital, as if these are hit by a draught from one side, that portion of the pot would dry more rapidly, and it would lean slightly in that direction, creating a distortion, which would simply make the trimming process more complicated. If I had a proper damp cupboard I'd leave the pots in that overnight, but this makeshift canopy works rather well, albeit a pain to put up and down constantly. I let these dry out on their bats overnight. The idea being that they'd stiffen up before a wire is dragged underneath them as this process of separating them from the MDF can warp the pot if they're too soft. With the bases pointing up and more air circulating around them they should dry faster. Throughout the day I also pick them up and turn them around occasionally to help them dry out more evenly. But they're still way too soft to trim. If you press on the foot lightly and you can feel the clay distorting and moving, this means that it's still too soft to work with. You could probably get away trimming it, but the trimmings that come off would just stick back to the pot itself, and you also run the risk of deforming the overall shape of the pot as you apply pressure on it from the outside, both of which are things you can avoid if the material is dried out properly. I covered the bowls again overnight, just so they didn't dry out too much and run away with me. And whilst this does delay the drying process, it's better than being caught out. After a couple of hours, the pots are now firm enough to be turned. And this, I think, is where the real work begins. I begin by roughly centering the pots, mainly to check how the rim spins. In this instance there was a tiny undulation in it, a wavering up and down, so I turn the pot upside down and I'll trim the base flat. This nullifies the unevenness found in the lip, which means the bottom can then be slipped, and then I tap center it quite firmly on the metal as this secures it very firmly in place. And that's important for a pot like this where a majority of the trimming is going to be done with the pot upright like so. Turning it this way up allows me to do a few things, but perhaps most importantly, it means I can feel the cross section of the form I'm working on as I trim it. This should help me avoid turning any part of it too thin. I begin by turning the rough angular shape I want these bowls to have. This means the wall sections are turned flat, and then the foot ring is carved back to be far narrower and slender. With that done, I can begin to carve away the excess material to reveal those ledges and steps in the surface. One thing I liked about the previous iteration is the step that was very close to the rim. Ultimately all of these sharp protrusions will be wonderful edges for the glazes that will eventually coat these pieces to break over. This means the sharper they are the more effective they should be, so I'm really trying my hardest to keep everything very crisp. I found that the tip of this tungsten carbide trimmer worked really well to create the initial incisions. I use it to hollow out the approximate area I want the hollow to be in, and then I can trim back over that to hollow it out further to neaten that section up. Throughout this entire process, my fingers on my left hand are feeling opposite of where I'm turning. This way I can feel if the walls are becoming too thin, and I can sense if there's any movement in them, which is an indicator that I've trimmed them too finely. With the walls roughly trimmed, I'll trim the foot to be narrower, but it's worth remembering that this is always a feature that I have to exaggerate. I do this as the glaze that will eventually coat this piece pads it out quite a bit, adding quite a bit of heft back to the foot, and so by turning it slightly narrower than needed, I know that I'll end up with a shape I'm happy with. I then use a sharp metal knife to cut the pot off the wheel head, whereupon it can be flipped upside down, revealing the base, the hollowing out of which is sort of the second part of this turning process. I think the foot is just a smidge too tall, so I will trim that back to make it shorter. By the way, by squidging in clay to secure this pot in place, I probably will mark that line that's close to the lip, so I'll probably have to go back over it and fix it. I know with foot rings this tall, many potters may prefer to throw the foot on instead. I've always preferred to leave it as one solid block though, that's formed at the throwing stage. As yes, whilst that may mean it takes longer to turn leather hard, meaning the entire piece can be trimmed, by making the pot from one solid block of clay, there's less that can go wrong in terms of things like cracks and splits from occurring from where two parts of clay have been joined together. By making it from a single piece that's far less likely to happen, unless of course, I trim the pot so that the cross section is uneven. If that happens, say the internal floor of the pot within the footring is much thicker than the walls that surround it, then there's a high chance that an S-crack will develop within the footring itself. This has nothing to do about compression, which in all honesty I think is a bit of a A bit of a misconception when it comes to the formation of S-cracks. Rather, these sorts of splits have much more to do with the consistency of the thickness of the wall throughout the piece, specifically within the foot and outside of it, together with how quickly the piece itself is dried out after it's been turned. The example being if the piece is more uneven and it's dried out rapidly, then there's an exceedingly high chance of a crack developing, whereas if the cross section is even, the chance is much lower. Of course you can't really see the cross-section of the pot unless you cut it in half, but with enough practice trimming pots you get rather good at gauging how thick or thin certain parts are. I think one really easy thing to help with this is getting comfortable with the fact that sometimes you might have to take the pot off the wheel mid-trimming in order to feel the pot's weight. If in that moment the piece feels bottom heavy then you know there's probably some excess you can turn away from somewhere. But if you're never taking that moment to stop and check then you may end up with pots that are heavier than they need be. And in the long run this could lead to more cracks developing but it also means that to some degree you're wasting material as you're producing pots that are excessively heavy. My advice therefore is to learn how to tap center or how to center pots really quickly as this makes the whole idea of taking the pot off the wheel after you've centered it much less daunting. The thing is, I think if you find the prospect of taking the pot off the wheel daunting as it means you're going to have to re-centre it, which is something you struggle with, then it's probably a sign that you should spend some more time focusing on how to get pots centred in the first place, as the only thing you're really hindering is yourself and your own practice and ability, as essentially you're just denying yourself very useful information. It's tricky ensuring the lines on these are really crisp and neat, I think that's probably one downside about using a clay body that is slightly grogged and textured. If this persists, or if I can't fix it properly by sponging over them like so. The way I'll smooth them will be by lightly sanding them after the pieces have been biscuit fired. The thing is in this moment the lines are incredibly delicate. They're thin, the clay is still quite soft and therefore it may simply be easier to smooth them properly after the clay has begun to fuse together and become much harder after being fired. These pots are sort of reminding me of chalices. They resemble some kind of ceremonial drinking vessel, although that's not really my intention. The trickiest thing about making these was ensuring that the plane stayed straight in between the ledges, as if those are wrong it can really throw off the overall shape of the pot Overall, I'd say these are some of the trickiest pots I've had to trim. off the overall There's sort of three stages to the trimming. There's the revealing of the rough shape, then the subtraction to reveal the lines, shape of the pot. and finally the underside has to be turned. And I suppose you could add a fourth step, which is double checking all the lines for any damage, movement, or particularly large specks of grog that may ruin the uniformity of these protrusions. They were a challenge and I think I've already learned an awful lot in regard to how I'll make them different the next time. For instance, I want to include a proper indentation around the top. So they link more closely to the rest of the bowls I produce. I also want to trim the lines so they appear more sporadically across the surface. As in this trimming session, and I don't know why, I turned them so they were all quite even in terms of their spacing. I reckon this will make them very comfortable to hold, as all of the grooves and lines will fit in between your fingers. But when I make these again, I want to spread them out really unevenly, as I think this will create more interesting and unique shapes. That's these lined pots finished for now. The next step will be drying these out really slowly, as despite all feeling very light and even, I really don't want to jeopardize them by drying them too rapidly, as that might create unwanted distortions in movement. But they're quite interesting I think, especially in this state, as ultimately they're going to be covered in thicker glazes that will get rid of the refined qualities they have. Which is another thing poking me in the direction of eventually moving on to thinner glazes. As sometimes, I do honestly feel as if the thick glazes hide all that careful clay work I've worked so assiduously to finish. Sometimes the right combination works fantastically, but there are other times where the glaze remains quite thick and globular, and it doesn't quite break over the sharper edges like I imagined. Anyhow, I think I prefer the shapes that are taller as opposed to wider. They feel slightly more sculptural and elevated, and I can't wait to see how these look once glazed and fired. But perhaps most importantly, I think I much prefer this shape, where the inside is a smooth consistent curve, as compared to the first iteration I showed you at the beginning, where the inside shape sort of mirrored the profile found on the outside. It's only a subtle change I suppose, but I think it makes them feel more intentional. It's now a few weeks later and it's time to begin a round of biscuit firing, glazing and reduction firing. I use my electric kiln mainly for biscuit firings. This takes the pots up to a thousand degrees celsius overnight, driving away chemically bound water and other volatile compounds. These decompose and leave the kiln as a gas, and it also converts clay into ceramic, a much stronger porous material. The particles that make up the body begin to fuse together as it's heated, and in this firing, whilst they won't all completely fuse, about five to ten percent does. And that's enough to bind the body together, and to create a material that's essentially full of tiny tunnels. And it's into these, when the pots are dipped into the glaze, where the water is absorbed into. Like a sponge. I always try to pack this kiln as densely as possible, as it makes the firings more cost effective, albeit all quite a dangerous game of Jenga. Loading the kiln like this is called a jumble pack. With how thin and fine many of my pots are, it's an extremely delicate process. The kiln fires itself overnight and about 36 hours later it can be unpacked. And here are the bowls with the tall feet and the ledges around the outside. They've hardened up enough that I can now hold them in ways that I previously couldn't have before in their raw state. If I picked the pots up like this they would snap like chocolate. And whilst the clay is definitely more resilient at this point, it's still fragile. If I were to If I were to drop this, it would crack. If I were to squeeze it too hard, it would crack, and so biscuit-fired wares still need to be handled extremely carefully, especially these with all their very thin, fine edges that are susceptible to being chipped. Some of the lines on these still felt a bit gritty, so before waxing and glazing them, I spent about 20 minutes carefully sanding their fine edges. Not so much to dull them and to round them, as I still want them to be very crisp and sharp, but just to take away the slightly gritty texture some of them had. You can still wax pots when they're damp like this, as long as you don't try and brush on too much at once. But I won't be able to glaze these today. This is because the porous walls have become saturated with water during the sanding process. I polish them underwater, by the way, as the dust that process creates is terrible to breathe in. All of that dust also has to be washed off the pots, as otherwise it can create issues during the glazing. And as the walls are now partly saturated, if I were to dip them in glaze... They couldn't absorb that much water, which means only a thin layer of glaze would actually adhere to the pots. And I would end up with a thin, watery layer of glaze, as opposed to the much thicker veneer I'm after. I always receive tons of questions about the wax I use. I think because people assume that it brushes on really smoothly, or looks like it does at least. It's really nothing special, it's just wax emulsion that I occasionally water down with boiling water to thin it out a touch. In order to help it brush on more smoothly, I rotate the brush as I'm making contact. This way the wax is pulled from every single side of the bristles, as opposed to just from one side of it. Which, when that does happen, the brush dries, sticks to the pot and it will drag the piece off center Essentially when waxing you want to work rapidly and you never want to keep the brush in one position for too long. If you've got time too you could also try dampening the pots as this makes the clay pull in less moisture and therefore the emulsion itself doesn't stick so badly to the clay. Next up is the glazing. For a few of these I'm going to dip them in one go but for a majority of the others I begin by filling up the foot ring with glaze and swirling it around. I then dump this out and I dip the pot right up to the rim. The reason I glaze the exterior like this is that by dipping it in and drawing it out very gradually like so, I'm left with a really clean, even layer of glaze on the outside. If I dip the pot using a pair of tongs and then remove it, as this glaze goes on thickly and is quite heavy, when the glaze moves around the form it can create uneven patches as it dries. And that's only really exaggerated by surface texture, such as the lines these have. This type of felspathic crackle glaze that has to be applied very thickly acts differently from many other types of glaze and over the years I've found that this method, where you apply the glaze over a couple of days both outside and then inside or vice versa, is the easiest way of achieving really clean, neat and even layers of glaze. Yes, it does increase the time it takes to glaze the pots, but if it means I have to spend less time tidying them up then that's a good thing. By the way, the reason I can't glaze the inside on the same day is the exact same reason I couldn't glaze these on the day that I sanded them. By dipping the exterior like this, the entirety of the wall becomes saturated with water. Not just the outside. Which means if I immediately filled up the inside, swirled the glaze around and then poured it out, there's a good chance it wouldn't adhere in as thick a layer as I'd like. The last question that always comes up is why do I dip the outside first before doing the inside? The answer to this is very glaze specific. These thicker crackle glazes dry into an extremely powdery and soft and fragile layer. If you press on it too firmly it can fracture and you can create thin patches and so If I glazed the inside first, waited for that to dry, and then gripped it from the inside as I dunked the outside, there's a very good chance I would damage the interior glaze, as the amount of force needed pressing outward on the inside shape in order to hold the pot whilst dipping the outside is surprisingly significant. If that makes sense. It's really glaze specific. But it works for me. But if your glaze is hard enough to a stiffer layer, well, then you can do it the other way around. For instance, the moss green glaze I use, which is this one, coloured by titanium dioxide and red iron oxide, can be dipped in a completely different way. I dip the piece as a whole, and after keeping it submerged for 5 or 6 seconds, it's drawn out. I let about 90% of the glaze run out from the inside and then I turn it the right way up and collect that last bit of excess inside before swirling it around as it slowly dries and creates a thicker layer on the inside. I scrape the bottom against the tabletop to get rid of the glaze that clings to the wax. This way I'm not transferring tons of glaze to the ware board itself where these pots will be stored for a short while. If I'm careful about that too, and I make sure the tabletop is clean before I begin scraping, once the glazing session is over I can scrape off the glaze waste and save it. It's dumped into the glaze reclaim bucket I have for each one of the glazes I use, and eventually this can be sieved back into the bucket you see here. If you look carefully you can see how the glaze is building up on the lines around the outside, which is precisely what I wanted to happen. The moss green versions are far easier to glaze as compared to the others, as well as pouring a jugs worth of glaze inside one of these is straightforward. Tipping it out without too much rolling over the rim is really difficult. The key, as I'm still learning, is to tip it out with a lot of velocity. You almost want to throw the bowl upward in the same instance that you begin tipping it out. Then you swiftly twist your hand, letting the glaze peel out all the way around. I still make mistakes though, or I don't quite catch the rim in its entirety. And in that instance, I simply patch up the rim with a brush laden with glaze. I'm letting it pile on instead of brushing it, as what I'm concerned with most is making sure where I'm patching up is as thick as the surrounding area, if not thicker. It doesn't have to be neat, provided I can fettle it back into a flush layer. Some of these are going to be a pain to tidy up and I don't think having that ledge so close to the lip really helps. As I've glazed the outside first instead of being a very sharp right angle it's slightly smoothed over instead which means when I pour the glaze out from the inside if it does catch on that curved surface it's more likely to peel over and dribble onto the exterior form. If the glaze wasn't as powdery, I could wax just beneath the rim on the outside. This way the glaze wouldn't roll over quite so much, but the fact that this glaze settles into a relatively delicate layer means applying any sort of addition on top of it could lead to some difficulties further down the line. Anyway, it's now the following day and the glaze is fully dried out over the entire piece, which means I can finally tidy up the glaze that coats them. My aim is really simple here. Anywhere the surface looks uneven needs to be corrected and fettled back to a smooth and flush layer. I think fixing the rim is the most crucial part, with a glaze rolled over the edge. I use an incredibly sharp metal rib to do this that's worn to a razor's edge over the years, and I'm careful to not try and scrape away too much in one go, as by doing so you increase the chance that you accidentally tear away a much larger fragment. This means that I fettle it back slowly, and then I use the tip of my thumb and finger to make sure the glaze around that top edge is really consistent all the way around. Because this glaze is so weak, I can't just rest its rim on the metal of the banding wheel, so in order to tidy up the underside, I raise it up and then gently place it on a pad of foam, exposing the base so that I can tidy up the foot more easily. The foot is equally important to tidy up. As if there's any glaze left over on that waxed portion, it could very easily stick the pot down to the kiln shelf it's placed on. I also want to make sure the line where glaze and clay meet is really consistent all the way around. If it wavers up and down, or is thicker or thinner in some places more than others, then these sort of inconsistencies will be apparent in the finished piece. On those where the glaze had dramatically rolled over the rim, I used a turning tool that had a much more appropriate shape to carve away the excess. Whilst I'm doing all of this, I'm being extremely careful to not carve away too much. In theory, I'd much rather the glaze is slightly too thick as opposed to too thin. As if there is a thin patch, it fires into a sort of brown blemish amongst an otherwise very uniform layer of glaze. Whereas if it's slightly too thick, the colour remains the same, but it just creates a slight bump in the glass. Although if you're really unlucky and the glaze is very thick, there's a chance it can do something called crawling. This is when the glaze begins to separate from itself. When this happens, a small patch of bare clay is formed that's surrounded by glaze that's moved away from it. It's one of the most irritating defects that can occur if you're attempting to achieve thick, uniform glazes. And it's also one of those things that just seems to happen randomly, sometimes. Just like when I was scraping the glaze off from the tabletop before, before I begin this process, I make sure my workbench and tools have been cleaned thoroughly. This way, I'm able to save practically 100% of the glaze that's removed. And I should also note that throughout this process, I wear a mask, so I'm not huffing in all the dust that's created. I think that's almost the hardest thing about glazing, as sometimes this is a process I'll be doing for eight or nine hours a day. And when I have a mask strapped on for the entirety of that, it can begin to feel very overwhelming. There isn't much to tidy up on the exterior, although I do always rub over any of the larger craters I see, and if there are any tong marks left prominent on the surface of glaze, I'll always scrape those back too. It's a good job to do on a day the kiln is firing, as there's very few distractions. That's what you can hear in the background by the way, not that I can really hear it in the moment. I wear noise cancelling headphones during the day as I fire, as otherwise the noise from the air compressor and the rushing gas quickly becomes very overwhelming. By the way, this is the moss green, which means I can place it on its rim. As this dries it stiffens up into a much harder layer. In some regards this is great, as it means it's harder to accidentally damage these vessels if I knock them or scratch them, but it also makes the tidying up process itself slightly more convoluted, as the glaze isn't that easy to scrape away or fettle back. Anyway, I think that's enough about glazing. Essentially, it's a long monotonous process where care and attention are vital. It makes all the difference in the finished pieces, although when you're working your way through several hundred pots it can feel like a real slog. I wad the feet of the moss green bowls, as this glaze can run and move a bit at cone 10. This wadding is essentially a clay-like mixture I make from kaolin and coarse alumina hydrate. It's sticky stuff and I tack it onto the bottoms of the pots just to raise them up ever so slightly as this way if the glass does begin to melt and flow it sort of envelopes the foot without actually sticking it down into the kiln shelf. It's not foolproof but it works most of the time. The thicker feldspathic glazes don't really need it as they're so stable and generally stay precisely where put. If they do move it's normally a sign that I've applied the glaze too thickly or that I've over-fired the kiln to a temperature that's too hot. This is my gas-fueled Rota KG340 gas kiln. It has an internal capacity of about 12 cubic foot, and I can normally squeeze in anywhere between 110 to 150 pots, depending on their size, of course. And unlike the biscuit firing in my electric kiln, for this one the pots absolutely cannot touch. If they do, that glassy layer that surrounds each will melt and fuse the pieces together. That does happen from time to time. Normally my mistake, but there are other times, with the bowls especially, where they might fire and slump on one side, colliding with the pot next to it. Once fully packed, I won't begin the firing until very early the following morning. This is because it takes about eight or nine hours to fire from beginning to end. It's operated entirely by hand by adjusting the gas pressure, the air pressure, and the dampers that cover the flues, which you can see here. At 860 degrees precisely, I slide them so they're half closed. This causes too much gas to accumulate within the chamber, with not enough oxygen present for the gas to burn properly. As a result, the atmosphere ends up stripping away oxygen from the clay and glazes themselves, and it's this that creates the bluish-green colours that tend to be quite characteristic of reduction gas firings. And at about 1290 degrees Celsius, or when cone 10 is touching toes, the firing can be concluded. It takes roughly 42 hours for it to cool down enough before it can be unpacked. And with all these new shapes I've been firing in test tiles, it's made the weight that much harder. Here's the white-grey bowl, which is probably the most minimal of the lot, and sadly the only one I coated with this white to begin with. Which is a shame as I think it might be my favourite from the batch. It's simple and minimal in the way that others aren't, and instead of the bands themselves becoming the focus, it's the shadow they cast that becomes quite interesting. The dark green feldspathic glazes worked really well. They've pulled quite excessively on the lines, and they've broken over them, creating a bit more variance in terms of colour. Thankfully, none of the moss green pots stuck down really badly, but there's a wadding on one of them that had fused in place as the glaze had collided with it. Typically, they do just pop off with a bit of pressure, but sometimes the stoneware itself will sort of sink into the waddings, and a portion of them can end up lodged within the stoneware, leaving tiny patches of inlay, essentially. These three fired successfully, and with that the pots can almost be called finished, although as clay fires it shrinks, and it does so around the coarse particles, the grog, the clay body contains. This means that even though I spent all that time burnishing it at the leather hard stage, once reduction fired it does become slightly rough again. It's sharp enough that if I were to hold one of these on a wooden surface and drag it, it would leave terrible scratches in the wood, and so just by sanding it a touch I get rid of those pokey sharp specks. Here's what happens if the wadding sticks by the way, the glaze here melted and moved down around the wadding, fusing to it, and in this instance the only way to really get rid of it is to grind it away using a Dremel. I use these diamond tipped bits and I make sure the surface is wet where I'm grinding, as it minimises dust and generally leaves a smoother finish. I try to never grind away too much, as I think I'd rather have the blemish somewhat left in the piece, rather than it being ground away too far and tarnishing the clay body underneath it. With all the bases now ground smooth, we can have a proper look at these pots. And throughout this end segment, you'll have to let me know which shapes you like best and which colours. I think with my next batch, I need to be a bit more careful with the line placement. Take this form for instance. I feel like the line close to the rim should have just been slightly higher as it feels like it's somewhat underwhelming in comparison to the lined form beneath it. With that said, the piece is very comfortable to hold. My fingers sort of wrap around it and nestle into those grooves. But what works really well is the contrast between the angular stepped exterior and the curved form on the inside. The feldspathic crackle glazed pieces feel a bit smoother on the whole and if anything I think I could have trimmed the lines to be thinner. I do like how far they project outward, but I think in terms of heft they're perhaps slightly too thick. I much prefer how close the top line is here, but maybe that has more to do with how the glaze has filled it up and created a more substantial rim. Next up is the white piece, which may very well be my favourite. It has a sense of lightness and elegance that the other pieces lack. Perhaps it's because the lines are slightly thinner too, or maybe it's the fact that it's the shadows that really come into play, as the colour doesn't really change where the where the glaze thins on the lines. The dark green glaze is obviously the most dramatic, as I think it breaks to the brightest colour on the bands. But truth be told, it didn't turn as orange as I expected, like the rim is, and I think this is simply because I didn't trim them to be thin enough. So, in my next batch, these lines definitely need to be sharper and more pronounced, as I was really looking for this brown lustrous effect on them. Next up is one of the moss green glazes. Again, I think the line on the top of this piece works due to its close proximity, otherwise I think I applied the glaze a bit too thinly on these, as the intensity of the green is usually a bit more vibrant, with less of the yellow tone coming through. But maybe in some ways this is a good thing, as due to how thin the glaze is, it really allows the lines to show. And lastly is a pale green bowl that's fired with more of a blue tone than normal. I rather like this one, it has the minimal quality the white piece has and the thick glaze feels lovely and tactile when the piece is held. I thought it might be interesting to show you the pots that were thrown in such a way where the interior shape was altered. Now, you'll have to be the judge here, but in some ways I actually quite like these marks. They add some interest to the interior form and some bands of shadow, but I think it's where they're placed that plays the biggest role. As with some of them, when there are grooves right towards the bottom of the apex, it begins to visually look a bit strange in my opinion. Almost as if the inside surface hasn't really been considered in the making. But when you put the two together, one with a curved interior and one with the indents, it's hard to tell in all honesty. One will obviously be a bit more functional than the other, but I'm not really making these as functional pots to begin with. With the next batch I make, I want to keep them more true to the original sketches I made, and I definitely want to create some that have a more indented rim section, just like many more of the bowl forms I make. I don't know how the sharp edges will interact with that section, but that could be an interesting thing to explore in itself. And with that, I think it's time to end this video. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch, especially if you've made it all the way to the end. Do let me know which of these forms you have a preference for, and whether or not you prefer the smooth interior versus that with lumps and bumps and marks in the bowl. Thank you for taking your precious time to watch, and as always, I'll see you next time.