So the next step now that we've thrown our cylinders and we've become comfortable handling the claim with nice thin walls even top is a talk about trimming. Now trimming is the other half of the forming process with trimming. What we are going to be able to do is remove the excess clay from the base of the piece. So aesthetically it's going to finish the forming process functionally it's going to remove that excess kill a lightening up our form and it's also going to allow us to create this foot which functionally is very important. Without this foot if our piece is flat what happens is, as these these pieces begin to dry and constrict the walls dry quicker than the floor, and if there is no trim foot here, what often will happen is this floor will bow allowed and create a little bubble so then when your pieces out of the kiln, it has a wobble and a rock to it, this can start to happen during the drying shrinking process and continues to happen during the fire and processes that bottom bubbles out.

So trimming is very important both aesthetically and functionally. The other step that this trimming does is increase the split and within that foot it allows us to create a shadow underneath of the piece here which may be a little bit hard to see but will accentuate and exaggerate during the forming process. And what that shadow does, what does a couple things. One, this put crease the pedestal and then that shadow. Below that pedestal other piece separates the form from the table top from the counter whatever it might be sitting on to help elevate it in space. It gives it a lighter feel because it's a more elegant fill in a more finished property to it.

Were a piece that is is straight down and the vessel that is untrimmed often has a very bottom heavy feel to it and very grounded fill. So first we're going to just trim a straightforward cylinder to kind of just show the basic principles then we'll move on to a cup, a bowl and a plate and trim some of these additional forms that we've been covering. So before we actually move into the trimming process, just take a moment to lift up your piece and fill the walls filled the floor to get an idea of how much clay you can remove. And as you continue to throw, you'll learn how much clay you leave on the bottom and start to get a feel of how much clay you can remove. But these early pieces, it can be hard to tell. So just kind of kind of fill in for a second Get to know your piece.

And then very gently, holding the hand the best of both both hands, flip it upside down and placed it on the wheel hit. Now it is important to be very careful with them because again, if you warp them, you squeeze them. If the piece is too soft when you flip it in the wharf distorts those warps and distortions and count back during the firing. You want your piece to be roughly a leather hard, so it's not sticky, tactile to the hand, but it's it's a little Hearts. So it's it's firm enough that you can flip it upside down without flattening the rim. But it's still soft enough that you can trim a nice clean ribbon away from the piece.

When we actually begin to start trimming this piece, you'll see if it's too wet, the trimmings will stick to the side of the vessel. If it's too dry, we're going to create a chattering effect. And we're going to kick up a lot of deaths and we won't be getting those clean ribbons. But we'll talk take a look at that when we actually start trimming. Now that we've felt the thickness of our walls and our bottom, the next step is to recenter this vessel onto our wheel head. Now this again is going to take some practice just like the initial centering did, but it is important that your piece is thinner before you start trimming or again, you're going to create a thin thick side your foot is going to be off centered on your piece, you're going to create some awkward effects within your basketball.

So to do this, we're going to move into what is very similar to our throwing position, left hand on the insider, gently pushing downward, laying that left thumb over on top of our right Hand, extending our index finger directly in front of us. Now moving this wheel nice and slow, you can see now move to the side where you see a little clearer how the vessel touches one side and not the other. Stop your wheel. When the vessel touches your finger and give it a slight scoot away, it doesn't take much of a scoot. Because if you move it an eighth inch away here against an eighth inch here, so as you're moving it about a quarter inch, so slight movements at a time until a slide smoothly through your fingers all the way around. Close.

And there we go. Pretty much there might be a slight undulation there. And this will be a little bit easier to hold this right in front of you so you can lean onto your shoulder or lean onto your arm against your leg, keeping everything braced and as you do this lock your finger. A common mistake I see our students will try Follow the vessel in and out, lock your finger into place and slowly move it into you make contact with the vessel. And once you feel touch, move it into the vessel slide smoothly through your finger all the way around. Now you're ready to trim.

Again, like I mentioned, this will take some practice, it's going to take a little back and forth, but stick with it, you'll get it. Another approach, you know, I should mention there is one more approach. I prefer the tactile approach by just using your finger. But let's say you are a little more of a visual person. You can go at this, say with your fingernail or your pin tool, and with this approach wherever it leaves a mark so you can see I left a mark right there and not on this side that tells you you need to scoot it a little bit farther away. This is not my preferred approach because it is going to mark up the surface of your vessel and pretty soon you could have marks all the way around your vessel.

Just going at it by touch a little bit of back and forth and eventually it will work itself and to position. Once you have your vessel centered up, we need to secure it down with four legs of click. Now another common mistake I see at this point is students will spend all this time recenter in their vessel. Then we'll take one look at clay, push it in the side of the vessel and knock themselves right out of center. So don't do that. That can be very frustrating.

Take two lumps of clay on opposite sides at the same time. Do not push the clay into the vessel. Because again, you don't want to distort your vessel. Simply push the clay down into the bat. And that'll create an edge of enough attention to secure your piece to the bat, or we'll head quarter turn. Grab two more legs of clay down to the bat Now you are ready to trim.

These are your two standard trimming tools that come in your your toolkit, the pear shaped and the smaller one. They are both handy for these early vessels, these small cups small bowls, generally I'm going to recommend sticking with the smaller trimming tool. As we move to larger forms, then it may be a good idea to move on to these larger pieces if we're talking, you know, taller bottles or platters things along this line. But for the most part right now, this smaller trimming tool is all you're going to need. Hold your trimming tool tight to the end of the blade leaning towards your right locking your arm that 10 on the inside thumb over on top of that right hand. Again this is very similar to our throwing position, but this is going to keep everything under control.

When you go into trim. Always trim the outside first slight downward pressure with your fingers, middle fingers right here and begin to trim the blade of the trimming tool should be slightly turned into the vessel. So again, the wheel itself is doing all of the work. And we begin to shape and form our outside. Now we're removing all this excess clay. And this is what I meant by those nice clean ribbons.

If they were wanting to stick to the side of my vessel, it would tell me that I'm too soft. If they're coming off in small little chattery pieces like this. That means the vessel is too dry. Timing is so important with ceramics. So it's important to keep an eye on your vessel, control your drying. Find that your pieces are getting a little too dry on you and you don't have time to trim them.

Simply cover them with plastic to keep that moisture inside. Okay, so now that I've begun to clean up this outside shape and remove that excess clay, I'm going to create my foot. I'm going to do that by simply Adding a detail line by rolling my trimming tool, the corner of my trimming tool into the vessel and then removing the excess clay above that. And this is going to create a little pedestal, little raised foot to help display our, our vessel in space. Excellent. There we go.

Now the next step is to move to the inside and trimming our foot. It can be helpful to take your pin tool and mark where you want the foot to be. Okay, so now you know this is where my foot is. This is the line that basically the point of no return and all of this we're going to be trimming away now When we start to trim these vessels, keep in mind as we are trimming them. Okay, we threw to the inside we had the inside just the way we want it. Now we're flipping it upside down, and we're trimming it.

We're to this point right here, we removed the excess clay here. Now we're ready to come in and create our foot as we're trimming this outside, that should echo the inside right here so that we have a consistent thickness all the way around. If you're to imagine that this foot was not here, this should be an even, you know, eighth inch all the way through consistent thickness all the way through and that will ensure even drying and proper weight. Because you will know as soon as you pick this up off the wheel head from trimming, you're going to know if it's too heavy. We all intrinsically know the proper way of our ceramic vessels just from using ceramic pieces, our entire life ceramic bowls, cups, things like this. If you pick up your And it feels heavy to you, then you need to trim or you just go ahead and reset to the wheel head and continue trimming.

But again, you're gonna know this is as soon as you're done trimming. So now we're gonna come in here, trim our bottom, can a nice firm grip with our hand, lean forward, elbows braced against my legs, began to trim a little bit around that, that point of no return. And I'm gonna move to the center here. digging in with the corner of the trimming tool, and slowly moving out to three o'clock or so that in the trimming tool, do the work. Now I know I don't have a lot of clay right there to trim. My bottom is fairly flat.

So I'm going to just trim along here. Take a little bit more off this outside edge. it up. Okay, now that's looking pretty good. So I can take a little bit more off this outside edge. Okay, so now that we finished the trimming process, the next thing we need to do is clean up all these trimming lines within here.

The trimming part process and the throwing process are very different techniques. The throwing process includes soft clay water fluid movements, it has a very soft, gentle touch to it, where the trimming process is a subtractive process, similar lathe work and it's going to create these hard lines is going to create it's going to pull out the grid from the surface and things like this. So if you have half of your vessel that's very soft and fluid and thrown in half of it that has these hard cuts into it. It's going to create a conflict within the vessel on break up the flow the vessel. So it is important to come back in here and clean up and soften up some of those lines. And you can do that simply by running a damp sponge along the surface and smoothing them out.

And this will help to create that unity within the vessel. Now, that's not to say that you are never gonna want those trimming lines within that vessel. And I'll show you some examples when we move to looking at bowls. But if you do choose to leave them there, they should be conceptually justifiable, conceptually justifiable or aesthetically justifiable, there should be an intent or reason behind that if they are just there because you didn't want to clean them up. Again, it's going to break up the Unity the flow, the VPS is going to look sloppy and your vessel is going to look unfinished. So do take a minute and just clean up those lines, clean up those those cuts and those marks remove some of that vessel or that grit that grog from the surface of the vessel and continue you're shaping and once You clean that up, you can come back in, sign your piece.

Pop it off and see how you did. Now again, as soon as you pick this up, you're gonna know if you took enough clay off of it or not, I'm kind of rushing Sorry, my hands are a little weird things are sticking with us all right, you're gonna know if you take enough clay off of this or not. Feels pretty good but really the only way to know is to take look. Okay, so there we go. Now remember the outside should be echoing echoing the shape of the inside so we have a nice consistent wall thickness all the way through. Okay, these look fairly even our floors nice straight across.

We have a deep enough but that will be able to come in and glaze this entire area to create a nice finish filter the piece. We've removed a lot of those trimming lines. We have a nice use And ice flow throughout the form should look something like that. Now those are the basic steps to trimming. Now as we move on to our cups and our bowls, we'll be gone to talk about more expressive feet and fine tuning some of these techniques