How To Use Pottery Carving Tools

Using small triangle-shaped trimming tools I patiently carve out the surface one line at a time tracing the lines that I drew.

How to use pottery carving tools. 4 Apply a dot of Grolleg porcelain slip made from the same clay body with a slip-trailing bottle. Dry the tool in an upright position for 12 hours. Use rubber shapers or wooden tools to clean fine lines from debris.

I use this lesson w. The wooden modeling tools shape and cut into the clay effectively. Never push hard or lean on a carving tool or put a poorly controled tool inside a hole 99 of breakages happen in these cases.

Note that Gorilla Glue expands while it dries. An office staple is easy to bend into a small clay loop tool. Avoid dropping these tools on hard surfaces as they may break.

Using a pair of needle-nose pliers bend the staples to shapes that will work best for your sgraffito work. Drill into the clay by hand with drill bits of various sizes 5 6 to create circles that are recessed into or pierced through the clay wall. The rubber shapers smooth out the surface of the clay plus shape and draw beautifully.

To apply raised dots of equal shape and size first stamp a circle into the clay 3 then apply a dot of porcelain slip made from your clay body with a slip-trailing bottle 4. The carving tips can be very sharp so it good to use caution when carving. Generally speaking the carvings are linear and their depth is no more than 1 16 of an inch.

Molds can be bought from ceramic supply stores or made from plaster if a special design is required. Some straight lines such as the window shapes are carved without lines by using the width of the tool as a guide figure 6. Even though it is very hard crystalline tungsten carbide is extremely brittle and tools made from it should be used carefully.