Pottery Making: Useful Tools

Pottery Making: Essential Tools - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Some of the essential tools for use on the potter's wheel are here on the table but these, of course, are the most important tools, your hands, because clay is a material that responds to our touch but these tools will help you. The sponge can be used to keep the clay and your hands wet while you work. These ribs of different materials will help with shaping and smoothing and I have a wooden rib that is quite rigid. I have a flexible rubber rib and I also have a flexible metal rib that I use for shaping and at different stages in the process and I have two other tools. A wooden knife and a needle tool or pin tool and these are used for trimming away extra clay and sometimes for measuring. Now, when the clay reaches a leather hard stage, which is a little, maybe a day or two later, we can use these trimming tools for removing extra clay, carving in a foot ring, or doing some decorative carving into the walls for decorative effects.