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How Many "hand Builders" Here?


Crusty

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I see a lot of folks on here that like to throw, nothing wrong with that what-so-ever.. I was wondering how many of you like to hand build whether it be by coils,slab or? are you a die hard or just do it from time to time?

 

My self, I love to hand build.. A wheel has limits and hand building isn't as limiting..

~Jim

 

Cindy wants to throw, been a while for her but she is thinking it is like riding a bike.. it will come rite back.. shes talented and I know she can do it...

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I do both, switching from one to the other as my inspirations change what I want to make, or as I get low on one item or another in my sales inventory. Which ever I am doing, I think it is my favorite until I switch, then the  other is my 'favorite'.

 

Adding, I switch when my hands or body tells me I need to change what I am doing.

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Guest JBaymore

My work is about 50% - 50%. Or maybe at most 60% wheel / 40% handbuilt.

 

Slab, coil, pinch, total subtractive (carving),press mold all get used.

 

BTW....... start thinking of the wheel as a just way to potentially handbuild. A wheel is just a way to make some forms with clay that have certain characteristics. You can then cut, stack, dis-assemble, re-assemble, re-orient those pieces into new objects at will. (On of our courses we teach at the college is "Sculpture on the Wheel".)

 

best,

 

......................john

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I use pinch, coil, slab, Extruder and wheel. I love them all and use whichever one will give me the form I need. That said I am newest at the wheel so if I really need something I tend to use one of the others but if I just want to play around and see what happens I use the wheel. This will change I know as I get better at the wheel but even then I think I will always consider myself a hand builder.

 

Terry

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Guest JBaymore

Oops... thanks for jogging my (old guy) memory..... forgot extruder...... I sometimes use that too (not for handles!).

 

best,

 

..............john

 

PS:  My largest pieces are constructed out of already fired clay ;) .

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There have been a lot of handbuilders over the years that have used the wheel to make parts of forms or just slabs on the wheel to assemble into handbuilt pieces. I like to combine both in unique forms for jar and bottle forms. I remember a potter in the 70's that used to use concentric rings on slabs that he would fold over taco style and then add thrown spouts to the piece. Can't remember the name for the life of my, but he was quite prolific and pretty famous.

 

When I had access to an extruder, I liked to make mechanical pieces, and also cut my own dies for my own and classroom use.

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I can't see just doing wheel or just doing handbuilding. The wheel was love at first sight but handbuilding grew on me slowly. In college we had to learn the handbuilding techniques first and all that time while handbuild we got to see the more advanced students throw on the other side of the room. I so wanted to try my hand at that magic too so handbuilding was just something i had to get thru so to get to the good stuff ;) my last couple of semesters i wandered back to slabs and started using the wheel and slabs together, then feeling the need to stand out i started making slab furniture and fountains. Then i graduated...no wheel...i had a small lowfire kiln someone gave me cause it was broken and i fixed...started making slab tiles and other nonfunctional forms enjoying textures and iron oxide. So my answer is i do both now, i crave throwing cause its centering abilities centers more than the clay if ya know what i mean and then i switch to handbuilding cause i think up a new idea or have something new to press into clay. The only handbuilding technique i am not overly fond of is coils, likely i would like them more if i had an extruder.

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I made some coils using the hand gravity technique. Then I laid them down on the table and used the area below my pinky finger and hammered them out and made them a little taller.. I used them to make a pretty neat looking abstract style pot. I think my father has it now. that was in 1985.. our middle school art shop rocked!!  we had a gas fired walk in kiln that was huge.. Our teacher was great and showed us many ways to work with clay as it was his specialty..

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At the moment I'm only handbuilding, mostly pinch-pots and some coil pots. I've gone through stages where I've tried to improve my throwing, but never got beyond advanced beginner. When I run out of ideas involving handbuilt forms I may take throwing more seriously, but that probably won't happen any time soon.

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The studio I ammunitio a member at does not have an extruder and when I got one they couldn't understand why. They could only think of handles and such so it's easy to see why it gets overlooked so much. I use it for all kinds of things. My little boxes are the main reason I got it. I can pull a lot of those in square, round, and triangle in no time flat then add tops and bottoms and have more time to spend on the decorating aspects. I also made my own plat for doing coils in the size I prefer and wow did it speed up coul pot building there was never an issue of out building my coil supply which is great and makes the whole process much quicker and I find fun since I experiment more not having to worry about wasting hand rolled coils if it fails. I just recently got a handle plate and am very pleased it has made handles so much easier for me and I think they are prettier too. I have used smaller tubes for napkin rings as well. In my opinion an extruder is a valuable piece of equipment for a studio to have.

 

Terry

PS. Still working on saving enough to get the expansion box so I can easily add bigger hexagon boxes to my repetroi.

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Hello pottery people,

 

I am strictly a hand builder myself.  I have been building with slabs for 20 years adding extruding about 10 years ago.  I tried throwing about a year ago and I just could not get the hang of it. 

Hand building allows unlimited possibilities.   I will never live long enough to create all of the things I want to. 

 

Penny Burke

Pennypottery.com

 

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I started out throwing, but have switched to handbuilding.  I have an extruder (which I need to utilize more), a slab roller, and a wheel.  Occasionally I'll think I want to throw again, but after one or two pieces, I'm back to handbuilding.  For me it's more relaxing; I have more control and the possibilities are endless.  

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  I only slab build as arthritis in my hands prevents me from pinching and wheel work. I don't find it at all limiting especially with all the great ideas on this site,thanks to everyone who shares their knowledge. Sadly I only have a half day a week no where near enough time to run out of ideas.

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