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

[@leelarao-il8zm]

Thank you for your Instruction. Have a question. What do you do for a narrower Base Bowl. Thank you so much.

[@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.

[@leelarao-il8zm]

Thank you for your Instruction. Have a question. What do you do for a narrower Base Bowl. Thank you so much.

[@merkelhess]

thanks for your question. It can be challenging to throw a narrower base bowl as you need to leave enough clay to support the walls that you are trying to make. My advice would be to focus on the inner profile of the bowl, leaving as much clay as needed to make and support your walls. Then plan to trim a lot to achieve the narrow base / foot. For any shape on the wheel, my advice is to start with extra clay and throw it on the thicker side, and then trim away. As you get more comfortable in a form, you may find that you need less clay as you become more comfortable with the form. But in any case, there is no shame in trimming! Do what you need to do to make the pots that excite you.