The next one we're going to take a look at is plates. Now within the text of these sections I have different suggested amounts of clay for you know a small cup large cup. on four plates, you know a small plate serving plate, we're talking two to three pounds for large dinnerware plate around four pounds and then you know, if you're looking serving plates six, seven or on up from there depends on the size you're looking at. So I have, you know, a nice sized chunk clay here, probably about three and a half, four pounds, which should give us a nice dinner where plate, can we want to check the bottom make sure we don't have any wedging seams. Because that can be the beginning of an ass crack, which we're going to talk about in a minute. line that clay up within the center of the wheel head, moving again at that slow rotation, rotation or to a second and then on that slapping motion.

Thank you To secure that clay down to the wheel head because we are starting to work with larger amounts of clay. Now this is important because this is going to make that process a lot easier on you moving my fingers along the clay and the bat, securing that clay there. And again, make sure you're throwing on a bat that is important. Tie some water to the surface of the vessel. We're ready to center it up. Okay, now normally, at this point for doing a cylinder a bowl, we would begin to pull up our walls.

But since we're doing a plate, we want to continue to flatten this clay out. So at this point, I'm going to allow my right hand to take more of the control position, compressing that clay down, while my left hand is in more of the supporting role. I'm going to push down with the right support with the left while moving my left hand out, pushing that clay out towards seven, eight o'clock pressing down something like that. Now I'm going to simply roll that out to the side compressing that rim and I can tell I'm still a little thick in the center. Ideally what we're looking at is about a quarter inch thick and the center becomes slightly thicker as we move out to the sides so it has a slight concave look to it and make a fist with my right hand using this blade here to continue the shaping.

So we have that slight concave look here, slightly thicker on the rim here. This is gonna be a pretty good sized dinner plate right Okay, so let's check the depth. All right, we're looking pretty good about that quarter inch. So that'll give us enough clay to trim the base of our piece and create a nice foot. Now, let's take a minute and talk about s cracks as cracks are created because clay has what we call that molecular memory. And again What this means is you know the clay is going to remember and as it dries and shrinks and during the firing is going to shift and warp depend on how the clay was treated.

Well everything on the wheel is formed within this rotating motion. So as we fire these pieces that clay is actually going to untwist during the firing. All pieces are going to untwist, whether they're vertical. Whether they're bowls they are going to slightly on twist. Now with flatware plates like this, as that clay begins to unfold All that pressure begins to collect in at the center of the form. So if you get this piece out of the kiln and you have something that looks like that, that is what we call an S crack, and you can see how that clay was an twisting.

And these this motion and all that tension collected in the center of the piece and causes a little crack. Now this is much more relevant in larger base pieces, pieces that have a greater diameter along the base of them, like plate, you can see this a lot more a small bowl or a cup, it's not that much of an issue. But next when we start looking at bottles, some of your bottles may have a larger bottom and it can become an issue there. So what we need to do is counter this s crack. And what we can do to counter this is counter compress it or compress our bass back in. One reason that these s cracks are created is because as we stretch this clay out, we loosen up all those clay platelets because we're stretching that flavor and moving them outward.

The looser those clay platelets are, the more they're going to shrink, twist and walk So by compressing them back in and tightening up those clay platelets, we're going to limit the risk of this s crack. And s cracks can be amazingly frustrating because often you won't even see them till after the glaze card, which means you've thrown the piece, you've trimmed it, you've missed it, you glazed it and you high fired and all sudden you get out of that the high fire count and you have a big crack down the center after you've already committed a great amount of time within the piece. So, compressing this bottom is extremely important. Now to do this, take your damn sponge, compressed down from the outside and move into the center. And essentially what we're doing is the opposite of the motion as what we did when we open it up.

This is going to clean up our shape and also counter that from that looseness of those clay platelets from stretching it out. I recommend compressing it and twice the number of times that you stretch to clay out. So if you pull the clay out once here and you pull it out twice here, come pray it compress that clay back in six times. Now this may sound a little bit like overkill but is extremely important because again, this can save your peace in the long run. Okay, so now that we have that firmly compressed in, we are ready to continue shaping our plate. Once we go over ribs and you feel comfortable using your ribs, this is a good time to where you can come back in with that metal rib and clean up that shape.

But for right now let's just still focus on our hands. And in the next section, intermediate section we'll start focusing on those ribs and techniques that we can use them. Okay, so now we've established the base of our plate. Now we're ready to open up our rim. Now the next step I'm going to use my finger but you can also use your wooden knife to create an initial cut underneath if you choose if you have, you know some more somewhat sensitive fingers along those lines, but I thought the index finger works best. I'm going to be bracing the top with my left hand, my right hand on top of my left side of my index finger underneath the clay under cutting it to about that first knuckle joint on my finger and that's going to create a nice ring of clay then for me to pull up my my rim of my plate Okay, I've inserted in I'm just going to lock and hold my position for rotation or to float away.

Now again with any open form is critically important that you pay attention to that transition zone between the floor and your wall. And as we continue to shape it, you will see what I am talking about. It's now going to pinch and flare up just like are flared out bold your danger area is going to be this lower shoulder says we're throwing the rim of our plate blurred out fairly straight up at the Beginning and then you can come back in and shape that lower shoulder towards the end to limit that amount of stress on that area. Pinch and pull it up. Alright, now I'm going to come back in here and shape this play. We'll give it a nice flared out lip.

That'll give us a nice little undercut to pick this up. Enough, Matt, nice transition. Let's look at the detail work. making this transition right here. So I'm talking about that is so important. And maybe we'll give it a little bit of a detail line to separate the rim from the base of the piece All right.

Okay, there's a nice straightforward plague. And this leaves you a nice little ramp or nice some decorating techniques, whether you want to add some flutes to add, you want to scale at the edge a little bit or perhaps do a little slip work on there. And let's go ahead and scale up the edge just a little bit to get this plate a little bit of a detail work. Now just count the edge, I'm going to take my wire tool and I'm simply going to cut a little bit out of it, it's going to create a nice point of interest. Now the angle that you hold your wire tool is very important. The more vertical you hold it, the sharper the line is going to look.

The more flesh you hold it, the more wider the line is going to look. It's going to create a little more little more depth to the piece. And I'm just going to cut a little bit out of one side it's going to maybe imply a handle or imply a little bit of movement within the form. And then I'll allow the glaze to do the rest of the work. Just a slight little detail there we go implies a little bit of a handle or a finger mark there. Once the stiffens up a little bit, I can come back in there with a sponge and clean up that edge.

So next we should talk about trimming flakes.