Making a Mossy Green Container—How-to!

Fresh from the kiln, a wadded-up jar that still needs to be cracked apart and both parts ground together to be rid of nasty scratchiness that grogged clay bodies often take on after being fired. Despite being burnished smooth when leather hard to a glassy finish, as the stoneware fires the clay shrinks around the particles of grog, thus these become more noticeable again, causing the lid to grind as it spins in place, which isn’t ideal… To remedy this, I use Chemico valve lapping paste, this was what Lisa Hammond used on all her store jars and I must have spent dozens of hours repeating this process over the years when working there. Paste goes on, it’s ground in place, it’s wiped off, (you can actually save and reuse some of the paste to make it go further), then it’s all washed off with soapy water. Here’s some notes on that process as they always seem to come up, first of all, this paste is only ever used on BARE clay, never glaze, as it would scratch the glassy layer that coats pots severely. Secondly, yes, you could use the wheel to help this process, by securing the lid in place and pressing the body of it, the thing is, often the lid needs to be ground in more than just one orientation. If I were to just press the body against the lid as it spun on the wheel it would just create one prominent groove in the stoneware, which isn’t really what I want. So, by doing it by hand I have a bit more control. Thirdly, I know there are water soluble versions of this stuff, but what I like about this gel-based paste is that it clings in place, which means making grinding away a bit easier… unless of course you’ve got 30-40 pieces to get through, in which case even if it makes the grinding easier, the entire process itself is a loud, monotonous process. #qualitycontrol #asmr #satisfying #pottery #ceramics #handmade