The Magic Ring Trick Exists and I'm Bad At It
Okay. Last lesson was opening the clay the plain way, thumbs down into the center, pulling the walls up from that hole. That's the method I trust and the one I want you doing at home.
But you're going to hear about the magic ring. Somebody at the studio, or some video at two in the morning, is going to show you a different way of opening clay that supposedly gets you a more even floor faster. I want to talk about it honestly, because pretending it doesn't exist doesn't help you.
What the magic ring actually is
The idea is you open the clay a little differently, using your fingers in a kind of hooked shape to pull a ring up from the bottom rather than pressing straight down and out. People who are good at it say it gives you a cleaner floor with less risk of leaving a fat lump of clay stuck to the bat in the middle. I've watched the videos. I understand the theory.
I have tried this maybe five times now, spread out over the last while, because every few months I get it in my head that this time it'll click. It has not clicked. I get an uneven ring, or I punch through the floor, or the clay just sort of shrugs at me and stays lopsided. I'm telling you this straight up front so you don't think I'm hiding some better technique from you. I'm not hiding it. I'm bad at it.
That's an actual gap, not false modesty. Somebody in this class might pick it up in twenty minutes and be better at it than me by next week. Genuinely possible. Hands are different. If that's you, great, come show me.
What I want you doing instead
Stick with the plain method. Thumbs in, straight down to about a half inch off the bat, then out to the walls with steady pressure. It's slower. It's less impressive to watch. It works almost every time if your centering is solid, and centering being solid is the whole point of the last eight lessons.
Here's my opinion on this, stated as an opinion: centering is the whole game, and once you're centered, the opening step should be boring. If your opening step is dramatic or fancy, something upstream probably isn't centered right. I'd rather you spend the extra ninety seconds doing the plain open than chase a trick that saves you ten seconds and costs you a wall.
Steps for today
- Center your clay again. Yes, again. You're not done centering just because you did it last lesson.
- Wet hands, not dry, same as always. Dry hands drag and tear at this stage more than people expect.
- Thumbs together, into the center, straight down, leaving about a half inch of clay above the bat as your floor. Don't go all the way through. I've done that. It's not a great feeling, and it's not fixable mid-throw.
- Widen the hole by pulling your thumbs outward in small steps, keeping the floor flat as you go. Check the floor with a rib or a fingertip. It should feel even all the way across, not thicker on one side.
- If it collapses, that's fine. Wedge it up and start over. This is a normal part of today, not a failure of today.
About that first pot of mine
I mentioned early on that my first thing off the wheel was rough. What I didn't say is what it actually was. I'd watched one video, felt very ready, and made what I can only describe as a wet gray ashtray that nobody asked for. No handle, no real shape, just a lumpy circle with a dent in it. I kept it anyway. It's sitting on Bryan's desk right now holding paperclips, which is more use than I expected to get out of it.
I bring that up here because the magic ring thing is the same lesson from a different angle. I wanted to skip ahead to something that looked more advanced before I'd actually built the plain skill underneath it. The ashtray happened because I skipped steps trying to make something good on the first try. The magic ring not working for me, five separate times, is basically the same story with better hindsight. Learn the boring version first. Get good enough that boring works reliably. Then go get fancy if you want to.
A caution while your hands are in there
Once your fingers are down inside the opening, you lose a lot of visibility on what your other hand's doing on the outside wall. Keep your outside hand steady and don't yank it away fast if something feels off. A sudden pull from either side is usually what tears a wall or throws clay off the wheel. Slow it down, stop the wheel if you need to look, and start that section again.
Before next time
Open and re-wedge the same lump of clay at least three times this week, just the plain way, until it stops feeling like a decision you're making and starts feeling like a thing your hands already know.