when you're beginning to throw in the will first thing you need to have or some little hand tools and I have five of them here you may want more than this but to get started this is what you need you need a needle tool this is for trimming things to make them smooth it's also good for checking the thickness of a piece of clay you need a soft sponge for creating water and for wiping out the interior of your pieces you need a chamois chamois is good for smoothing off the edges and making sure that there are no sharp edges that have a way of allowing glazes to chip off and breaking when you put them in the dishwasher wouldn't a wooden tool roughly this shape there are a lot of different shapes but if I could only have one this is the one that I would want and you need a cut off wire this is a piece of cable with a couple sticks at the end this is for taking the clay off of the potter's wheel when you're finished working with it this potter's wheel comes equipped with a couple of bat pins and they stick up a little bit from the surface and if you try to use this wheel without taking out the bat pins it will whack into your hand and it can be kind of painful one way to avoid that is to use a bat and that's what this is and you just place this over the top of the bat pins and it could leave the bat pins or recessed enough to know that they won't bother your hands and this is real handy because when you make a piece of pottery you can take it off of the wheel and you don't ever have to touch a hunk of wet clay this potter's wheel is operates in both directions this is going counterclockwise right now and I recommend that you learn to throw in a counterclockwise direction because most potter's wheels go in a counterclockwise clockwise direction in the United States however this wheel does reverse itself and it will go the other direction if you would want it to the potter's wheel makes the clay go in a circle and really does all the work for you all the you need to do is to learn to turn the potter's wheel on and to hold your hand still of course in the right places so that the clay will make the shapes that you want it to make sounds real simple but it does require a lot of practice the best way to begin is to have a ball of clay that fits into your hand that is neither too large nor too small this is a pretty good sized ball of clay and but it is going to be a little bit easier for you to see what I'm doing then if I had a smaller piece of clay if your claims too small your hands bump into with them each other if it's too big your hands are too far apart and it makes it difficult to work with clay also needs to be the right consistency if it's too dry it's too hard to push around and if it's too wet it doesn't hold its shape very well so it needs to be just right I'm going to take my well wedged ball of clay and I'm just going to place it in the center of the wheel and I'm going to press it down there's absolutely no need to drop it from a couple of feet away and smash it onto the surface this way gets it near the center where you want it in the first place and is a lot less messy step number one is to make sure that the clay is fastened down properly you need to wet your hands your hands need to be lubricated if your hands are not lubricated they stick to the clay and it doesn't go smoothly around inside them I keep my feet braced solidly on the floor and then I put my arm up against my leg and my hand up against the ball of clay always bracing one part of my body against another until I find something really solid then I could push against this hand becomes a plunger it's going to be up here I need to get nestled up close to the potter's wheel and I'm going to press down and stick the clay and my clay is stuck and it's ready to go the next step is to pull up a cone of the clay to do that once again my leg is all solidly placed wet my hands brace my arms on both legs and lift and make a cone now I'm adjusting this wheel with my foot making it go faster or slower but sometimes if you're just beginning you may want to take your foot off of the pottery off of the control and allow it to rotate on its own while so that you can concentrate on holding your hands it's much better to keep your foot on it so that you can adjust the speed as you're working but a lot of times there are some things one needs to do when you're getting started pull this cone up and I'm going to lock this hand in and put this hand up against the side of the clay and press down with my right hand which is like a plunger gonna push the clay down until I feel it filling up the spaces left by my hand once I feel it fill that hand I'm going to stop pressing and relax and take my hands away slowly and it should be centered let's do that again lift it up hold it up I'm gonna press it down press it with my right hand into my left hand but I feel it filled my hand I'm gonna stop and take my hands away if I take my hands away quickly though you see what happens it's gonna wiggle I need to press down and hold it and release slowly now - open this I like to put my thumb's right here my fingers down longest side and press and make a little depression here notice I've got my arms braced up against my body or my leg make a little depression in the clay stop and I'll put some water in there so that it stays lubricated when I open this I like to put my thumb's in and push down some people like to put their fingertips in and hold it against their hand like this and push down into the clay I prefer this way push down where I think it's a good point to stop I'd like to leave about a half an inch in the bottom want to hold my fingers here and take them away slowly once again so it doesn't knock it off Center at this point if I choose you can take this needle tool push my needle tool until it touches the where board or the bat and I can pull it out put my finger up next to the clay and I can see exactly how thick the bottom is if I think that I need to push a little more I can and then I'm gonna open this up to open the clay I like to put my hands in the center my left hand inside remember I'm neither right nor left-handed I'm inside and outside handed my left hand goes on the inside my right hand up on the outside palm against the clay squeeze out against my palm and hold it there relax and take my hands away from now on I'm going to work at 4 o'clock if you'll think of this wheel as a clock with 12 at the top and 6 at the bottom and four o'clock it's over here on the side on the right-hand side this clay moves in a counterclockwise direction I want my fingers to follow the direction of the clay if I divide this in half I want to work on the front half so I don't have to reach over at the top and I want to work to the right side because then my fingers can follow the flow of the clay they put my thumb's together my fingertips together gently squeeze between them squeeze and lift I want this to be about a quarter of an inch thick and so I'll need to take several passes for this to work throwing in a wheel something that requires practice and you shouldn't expect to make perfect pots the first time out using your needle tool again if you have not had this perfectly centered you're going to get a little high spot in the side and to take care of that we'll trim that off and to do that you put your fingers on the inside and your thumb on the outside slice like this so that you're slicing through the clay not stabbing like this because you end up poking your finger and that hurts I slice I pick up the clay with the needle and might pick up the clay with my fingers and use my chamois I lay it over the top support the clay wall with my fingers and press gently and I can round out and smooth out the top I can then shape this and using my wooden tool I like to hold it this way and I'll lay it up against the side and just draw with it like a pencil and just point it straight down and I can just cut that off and remove any excess clay that happens to be there and I can cut this away remember to remove it take my cutoff wire and slice underneath it and I can pick this up and I set this aside until it's ready for the next step which is done when this letter dry