Throwing a Small, Flat-Bottom Bowl with (almost) No Trimming

This style of bowl is one of my favorite things to make on the pottery wheel. These bowls are perfect for ice cream, cereal, small servings bowls, or anything really. And the flat wall is great for surface decoration.
To make this style of bowl, wedge 1 pound of clay (about 450 grams), and center it on the wheel. Then, open it up while keeping a flat bottom. Aim to throw the bottom about 3/8 of an inch thick. After opening, pull your walls-aiming for a wide bowl with an angled, straight wall.
Next, use a flat rib to straighten the wall and remove any slip, then clean up the base with a wooden knife. You are ready to let the bowl dry or wire it off and transfer it to a ware board.
When the bowl is leather hard, simply clean up the wall and give the base a slight bevel, and you are then ready to decorate it or let it dry and fire it.
You can make larger versions of this bowl but definitely plan to throw them on a bat and let them dry on the bat before trimming!
Good luck and share any questions or your experience in the comments.
Timestamps
00:11 Centering the clay
00:56 Opening the clay
02:07 Pulling the walls
03:15 Shaping the walls with a rib
03:39 Cleaning the base of the bowl
04:17 Cutting / Wiring off the bowl and moving it to a ware board
04:54 Trimming introduction
05:13 Re-centering the bowl
05:54 Trimming with a loop tool
06:27 Cleaning up / smoothing trimming marks
07:29 Finished bowls after the glaze firing
08:05 Conclusion
Connect with me:
Instagram: / mattmerkelh. .
TikTok: / mattmerkelhess
Website: www.merkelhess.com/

[@davezad]

Matt, you should practice tap centering until it's natural as riding a bike. This skill is so useful. Work on it 10 mins every day for about a month. You will get it as surely as you learned how to center for throwing. Counterintuitively, tap centering is actually physically much easier to do. When it clicks in your brain you'll get what I mean. The key thing to remember is that it's all about rhythm and timing. That's what you're mastering, not really any physical technique behind this. It's *when* you tap that matters. You will begin to feel when to, based on visual cues from watching the wheel spin. The best lesson I saw was from Hsin-Chuen Lin, video #9. Good luck as this is definitely worth the effort.

[@merkelhess]

Thank you for this detailed comment and video suggestion. As I tell my students, there are always multiple ways to make a vessel on the wheel! Happy potting.