Okay, today we are going to do trim a bowl and I am using a tool here called the Giffin grip and this not—I told that sometime use by professionals but general not. It is kind of a tool that is good hobbies like me or beginners. Sometimes, it is hard to get the pot center especially if the pot is one that is pron real well. And what I am going to do is I am taking my pointer tool. I am drawing a circle on the top of the pot and take a look kind of there at the center. This side here is a little wider than this side. So that means that the pot itself is off center.

Moving it slightly and then just kind of repositioning this and then a Giffin grip here using my finger to clean off that circle and turning the wheel again, pointer tool, same process. If you look at this again, you can see that the circle is much more centered. Now that we have done that, we know that are pot is centered. Start with this trim tool. We are going at a fairly slowly speed, slow speed. I am putting my fingers on the top to raise the pot down and holding into place. This finger, this finger holding the trim tool steady, my elbow has raised up my knee. Holding that there and just gently letting that straight pot, all that excess clay there.

And now, when I have done that, I am going to start my wheel and I am going to check again to make sure that this is centered. You can see that now that I trimmed out that excess clay that there is—that this part is a little bit more narrow that this part, just a smudge. So once again, I am going to move the pot and I am going to move it over towards the part that was off centered and using my pointer tool, one more time and taking and look at it and that looks fairly centered. We will just have to take my word for it. Sometimes pots will have various part of center especially if the pot was off centered when it was thrown.

Okay, so I trimmed off with the larger tool. I trimmed off and majority of the excess on the top shoulder of the piece. And some people ask how do you not to go too far down and everybody will trim pots and go through the bottom. I think it is part of the process. It is part of the initiation process of learning to work with clay and pottery. So what I can do is create with—I am using this tool now, just a standard trim tool. I would like this to start with. I am just putting it down on the piece to create an inside circle and an outside circle. And that is actually is going to serve as the foot, we called the foot to the pot. I am going to trim down from the outside circle with this tool and that is usually where the majority of the extra clay wise especially, we are beginner is the wall is about the right thickness here, the bottom should be the correct thickness, but sometimes clay gathers right here. So if you trim too much on the bottom you go through, if you trimmed too much on the side, you will go through the shoulder and sometimes to place where you can be pretty aggressive and take a pretty descent amount of clay which is a lot of the times the majority is where the weight is in the piece is in that shoulder.

So shaving all that off obviously I kind of went back to larger tools. I am going to do this again. I am putting the inside circle. The outside circle, now I will use this tool shape down on the outside circle to give it nice kind of an undercut, nice round shape which where a bowl should be and the trimming should look the same on the inside like it does on the outside. But does not, then we have uneven thickness in the walls.

So the trimming process is not the time where you should be shaping the pot. The shaping should be coming from the throwing, not from the trimming. When you are trimming, you basically just getting rid of that extra clay that you obviously cannot get rid off during the throwing process, but you should not be trying to make a shape out of your pot. You do not get me wrong, you can still put in lines and decorative things when you trimmed, that is not what I mean. I just mean if the pot—on the inside and it should be on the outside also.

Okay, now I am doing is I am taking this tool here using it to trim the inside or the foot. Using the loop tool to trim and using this tool to flatten that out, being careful not to go too far because you remember I do not have as much clay here on the bottom as I did in the size. So I have to make sure that I do not go through, but at the same time I do not want to leave it really thick either.

And now that I have done that, kind of clean that up. This is just a preference assuming out a rule. I like to take the corner of the standard trim tool and just kind of dig a little groove there. Just too almost kind of separate the foot from the piece and see how that work. So this tool, the standard trim tool, or whatever is using, well I guess I was using the loop. Pulling that out like that then I used this tool to flatten that, make it nice and smooth.

My last and final step is to put a signature in the bottom and I like to put signature in the date, but take off the Giffin grip and now I have my nice trimmed bowl.