Next, I'd like to talk about counting and just like wedging, first we went over the Rams Head but then we moved over to the spiral technique for wedging larger pieces of clay. coning is a way to make it easier to center up larger pieces of clay or if you have that piece of clay that just doesn't want to quite center up on you, this can be a good technique to use. It starts off the same technique around the bottom. Check for wedging seams, clean all that up, lined up in the center of your wheel head. Search a wheel spinning nice and slow or rotation or to a second slap into position. Now compared to our control position that we're moving into, we first started talking about centering we went in and we attacked the entire mass of clay at once.

Now we're going to break it up into sections. So to do this technique, they are water filled up that layer of slip along the surface of the clay to maybe one pool down, make sure that clay is really secured into our wheel head. Now again, I'm going to try to teach you a very body friendly to this technique to this, I'll see some parts will come in there and they'll spread their elbows out here and squeeze the clay that will work but it's harder on your body, I'm going to try to teach you to use your natural body mass to control the clay. So again, I'm going to move into our sintering position, bearing that left elbow bending that wrist back so that I'm simply going to be catching the clay and using my natural body mass to control it. From here, I'm going to take the sponge up on top of my hand, squeeze the base of the clay and lift it up and as I squeeze at the base, the clay should naturally begin to rise.

Now the trick with this is to follow the clay and not lead it if you rush this process As you squeeze out this base, and you begin to try to lead that clay, often you'll end up with a little bowl up here on top, which isn't that big a deal that happens sometimes you can compress that rim back down and flatten it back out. But if you can try to allow yourself to simply follow the clay, you'll limit that very my elbow, Mr control position, lean for knows roughly over the center of the clay. And again, I'm simply going to roll my left hip using my natural body mass, my center of gravity, and I'm going to contend with this clay up into our nice cone like so. Now the idea here for considering that these larger masses of clay is that I'm not going to try and center up the entire piece at once.

I'm simply going to center the top handful so even at this bottom section is really out of whack. As long as I have control of this top section. I have control the clay. Now once I have this top section, little handful right here centered up, I'm simply going to compress down in a way can Touching the clay right in here in the soft part of my hand, a little extra support on top with my right hand, push that clay down in a way. And when I get close to that centering position where I want the end of the clay to be, I'm going to slide that left hand down and move into our normal control position, grabbing a hold of my right hand moving to our centering position, it should look something like that. Okay, and again, that's a good technique for centering larger pieces of clay.

And also, if you have that piece of clay that just doesn't want to center up for you go ahead and work that counting technique. And you can also do that Kony technique a couple different times. Let me show you. If you get a head of the clay. Often you can end up with this little bowl shaped like this. As mentioned before, if that happens to you simply make a fist with that right hand and compress that clay back down.

This technique is often It's also sometimes referred to as wheel wedging. And so if you have a clay that's a little bit dry you can do this toning or wheel wedging a couple times you can work some moisture into the surface of the clay or soften that clay up a little bit. It's also if you do a three or four times it's gonna start to work in the air bubbles out to the surface of the clay body. It should look something like that very nice and fluid just a little bit at a time compressing it down. And that's the counting technique.