Pottery wheel explainers

How to pull walls on the pottery wheel

This is the one that makes people quit.

Centering is hard, but it is obviously hard. You can feel yourself losing. Pulling is sneakier. Pulling goes fine, fine, fine, and then the whole thing folds over on itself in about a quarter of a second and you are looking at a wet ring of clay with no idea what you did.

It goes fine, fine, fine, and then folds over in about a quarter of a second.

You probably did one of four things. Almost everybody does the same four.

Dan Pearce, who owns The Clay Hole pottery studio in Draper, Utah Dan Pearce I own The Clay Hole. I have taught a lot of people this and gotten it wrong myself plenty.
An illustration of a red-haired potter leaning over her wheel, sponge in one hand, drawing the wall of a wet gray cylinder upward, with shelves of glaze jars behind her

The full version. Everything, including the parts that explain why.

Before you lift anything

A pull is only as good as the thing underneath it

Make a narrow gap between one hand inside the pot and one outside it, outside hand lower. Move that gap up. Three times, then stop.

You cannot pull an even wall off an uneven base. The clay will faithfully carry every flaw upward and make it bigger, which is the least helpful thing it does.

So: centered properly, checked with a fingertip rather than with your eyes. Opened to the floor width you actually want, because you do not get to change your mind later. Floor pressed flat and compressed with your fingers or a rib, which is your insurance against a crack appearing across the bottom weeks from now.

Centered and checked with a fingertip. Opened to the floor width you actually want. Floor pressed flat and compressed, which is your insurance against a crack across the bottom later.

Then squeeze the walls in slightly so you are starting from a chunky little stump rather than a wide bowl shape. Clay that is already leaning inward is much easier to lift than clay that is flopping outward.

The move

One squeeze point, moving up

That is the whole thing. You make a narrow gap between one hand inside the pot and one hand outside it, close enough that the clay passing through has to get thinner. Once it is thinner it has nowhere to go but taller.

Then you move that gap up. Slowly. Once.

The part people miss is the offset. Your outside hand sits slightly lower than your inside hand. Not level with it. Lower. Your inside fingers make a small ledge, and the outside hand pushes clay in underneath that ledge and lifts it up over. Level hands just pinch and thin the wall without gaining any height.

Pulling up pottery walls, cross-section sketch: offset fingertips pinch the clay, outside hand lower, rim thinner than the base.
  1. 1 The offset. Your outside hand rides lower than your inside hand. Level hands pinch. Offset hands lift. Outside hand lower than the inside one. Level hands pinch, offset hands lift.
  2. 2 The rim ends thinner than the base. A heavy top over a thin bottom is how a wall folds over. A heavy top over a thin bottom folds over.
  3. 3 A floor about as thick as the base of the wall, and compressed. Press it flat before you ever pull. That is your insurance against a crack down the middle later. If you will trim a foot ring into it, leave about a quarter inch more. Press it flat before you pull, or it cracks later.
  4. 4 One squeeze point, traveling up. That is the entire move. Everything else is just doing it slowly enough. That is the whole move. Slowly.
The settings nobody mentions

Four things to change before you touch it

  1. Slow the wheel down

    Centering wants speed. Pulling wants about half of it. Too fast and the wall goes whippy and starts to flare out on you before you are anywhere near the top.

    About half the speed of centering.

  2. Anchor your elbows again

    Same idea as centering. Elbows on your thighs or braced on the splash pan rim. Only your forearms travel upward. If your shoulders are doing the moving, the gap between your hands will change on the way up and so will the wall thickness.

    Elbows on your thighs or the splash pan rim. Forearms travel, shoulders do not.

  3. Keep a sponge in your outside hand

    It feeds water in as you go and smooths the outside at the same time. Dry clay under a moving hand grabs, and a grab halfway up a wall is how a cylinder becomes a spiral.

    It feeds water in as you go. Dry clay grabs, and a grab is how a cylinder becomes a spiral.

  4. Start at the very bottom

    Get under the clay at the base before you start climbing. Beginning the squeeze an inch up leaves a heavy ring of clay down there that never comes up, while the wall above it keeps thinning.

    Get under the clay at the base, or you leave a heavy ring that never comes up.
Watch someone do it

Three videos, including one entirely about doing it wrong

One video worth your time

None of these are ours. The first two are straightforward walkthroughs from two very different teachers, so if one does not land the other might. The third is just failures, back to back, and it is the most useful of the lot once you have tried a few times yourself.

Not ours. A straightforward walkthrough of the whole move.

Video thumbnail: PULLING WALLS: POTTERY 101, by Michelle Wen Search YouTube for: PULLING WALLS: POTTERY 101, by Michelle Wen PULLING WALLS: POTTERY 101 Michelle Wen
Video thumbnail: Throwing Pottery on the Wheel - Tips for Pulling up Walls, by Kara Leigh Ford Search YouTube for: Throwing Pottery on the Wheel - Tips for Pulling up Walls, by Kara Leigh Ford Throwing Pottery on the Wheel - Tips for Pulling up Walls Kara Leigh Ford
Video thumbnail: How NOT to pull a sidewall for Beginners. Common mistakes pulling a sidewall., by Dave Briskham Search YouTube for: How NOT to pull a sidewall for Beginners. Common mistakes pulling a sidewall., by Dave Briskham How NOT to pull a sidewall for Beginners. Common mistakes pulling a sidewall. Dave Briskham

Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

When it goes wrong

What happened to yours?

Six failures, and between them they cover almost every collapsed cylinder I have seen come off a wheel.

Too fast, or not wet enough

Your hands climbed faster than the clay could stretch, or there was not enough water between your fingers and the wall. Slow the climb right down and keep that sponge working. A tear will not close back up, so this one is about prevention.

Something is moving that should not be

Either the clay was not truly centered, or your arms are unanchored and the gap between your hands is changing on the way up. Anchor the elbows, and run the fingertip test before you open next time.

You held the same pressure all the way to the top

Pressure should taper off over the last inch or two so the rim stays a little heavier than the wall below it. A flimsy rim tends to take the rest of the pot with it.

You are thinning, not lifting

Almost always a lost offset. If your hands are level with each other you are just pinching the wall thinner in place. Drop the outside hand, get under the clay, and lift it over the ledge your inside fingers are making.

Wheel too fast, or your inside hand is pushing out

Slow the wheel. Then check your inside hand, because it should be resisting rather than steering. If you want the wall to come in, squeeze it in gently on a separate pass rather than fighting it during a pull.

The clay was already finished

It is almost never the last pull that causes this. Every pass adds water and takes strength out. By pull five the wall has no structure left and it goes over. Aim to get your height in three passes and then leave it alone.

How many pulls

Three pulls. Maybe four.

Every pass you take adds water and takes strength out of the clay. So the goal is not to pull gently forever, it is to get the height you want in as few trips as possible and then stop touching it.

Beginners almost always do the opposite. Lots of careful little pulls, chasing a wall that is already as thin as that lump was ever going to give them. Then it slumps, and it feels like pull number seven caused it, and really it was over somewhere around pull number four.

Learn a cylinder first.

A plain cylinder. No shape, no flare, nothing pretty. It is the shape underneath a mug, a vase, a tumbler and most bowls, and once you can make one on purpose you can make all the rest by changing your mind partway up.

No shape, no flare, nothing pretty. It is the shape underneath a mug, a vase and most bowls, and the rest is just changing your mind partway up.

That is a much better problem to have.

There is a longer version of this page at the top.

Start here How to center clay on the wheel You cannot pull an even wall off an uneven base. This is where it begins. Also useful Struggling to cone on the wheel? The particle alignment that decides whether your clay stretches or tears.