Pottery foundations

Three Tries, One Change: Answer Your Own Pottery Questions

Most pottery questions can be answered by the person asking them, in three tries. Make the thing your usual way, make it again with one thing changed, then use what you saw to adjust or to repeat it. Here is how to set those tries up so the answer is real, with worked examples for a handle, a seam and a glaze, and a sheet to record them on.

Make it your usual way. Make it again with one thing changed and everything else the same. Compare them at the stage where the answer lives, then repeat the winner or adjust once more. Three tries, often on tiles or small pieces, and the question is yours to answer.

Three tries per question Handle, seam and glaze examples Four videos, none of them ours
The method in two minutes Three things that ruin a test A sheet to record it on
A potter in glasses and a clay-spattered apron studies three unfired mugs with different handles, calipers and a notebook of mug sketches beside them
Jump to a section
Practice and testing are different jobs Why clay needs a fair test Three tries, step by step What the third try is for What “the same” means Small tests, whole pots Worked example: a thinner handle Two more: a seam and a glaze Six ways a test stops telling you anything The whole idea The three tries Three things that ruin a test The recording sheet Questions we get asked Keep going

Why clay needs a fair test, the method, what the third try is for, three worked examples and the sheet.

The whole idea

One change, three tries, a real answer

Most pottery questions have an answer you can get yourself: whether a thinner handle would feel better, whether two coats would stop a glaze running, whether a beveled seam holds where a butted one cracks. The clay will tell you, if you ask it fairly.

Fairly means one change. Make the thing your usual way, then make it again exactly the same except for the one thing you are asking about. Change two things and you learn that something happened, never which thing did it.

Then comes the third try. If the change clearly won, make it again to see whether it wins twice. If it helped but not enough, move the same thing a little further. Practice makes you consistent at something you have already decided. This decides what that something should be.

What to do

The three tries

Six steps, and the sheet further down to record them on.

  1. Write the question so clay can answer it. “A thinner handle might feel better” becomes “with the mug full, which handle do I pick up first.” Decide now when you will judge it: wet, leather hard, bisqued or glaze fired.
  2. Write down your guess. A guess on paper is how you notice a surprise later.
  3. Try one: your usual way, made on purpose. Weigh the clay, measure what can be measured, and note what you did. It is the yardstick, not a warm-up.
  4. Try two: one change, everything else copied. Same clay from the same bag, same weight, same tools, same sitting if you can.
  5. Finish them together and compare side by side. Dry them the same way, glaze them from the same jar, put them out for firing at the same time, each glazed one on a kiln cookie, and mark each bottom with its number. Judge them the way you decided in step one.
  6. Try three: repeat or adjust. A clear winner gets made again, to see whether it wins twice. A change that helped but not enough gets moved a little further. No difference at all is an answer too: keep whichever is easier.

Three tries is not three pots

Test the smallest thing that can answer the question. A glaze question goes on tiles, a join goes on two small slabs, and only questions about the whole pot, how it feels or pours or balances, need whole pots.

What ruins a test

Three things that ruin a test

Two changes at once

A thinner handle attached higher up tells you nothing about thickness or position. Split it into two tests, one change each.

Judging at the wrong stage

Clay shrinks on the way to the shelf, and glaze color only exists after the firing. A handle that felt right wet is smaller fired. Judge where the answer lives.

Trusting one result

A crack, a run or a color can turn up once by chance, or because two pieces fired in different loads. The third try exists to see whether it happens again.

Some tests start with the studio team

A test that might blow up, run off a pot or use a material from outside the studio shares the kiln with everyone else's work. Talk to the studio team before it goes anywhere near a firing.

The whole idea

Practice and testing are different jobs

Practice makes you consistent at something you have already decided on. A test decides what that something should be.

Will this BLOW UP in the Kiln?? Do air pockets in clay matter? Jonthepotter Eight minutes of a potter taking a question people argue about, whether air pockets or moisture make clay blow up in the kiln, and testing it instead. Watch this one rather than repeat it: a test built to blow up does not belong in a shared kiln.

Every potter collects questions: whether a mug would feel better with a thinner handle, whether the crack in the slab boxes is the seam or the drying, whether a glaze would stop running with two coats instead of three. Most of them get answered by asking someone, by a video, or not at all, and the next pot gets made the same way as the last one.

Most of these questions are answerable by you, in clay, in about three tries. Make the thing your usual way. Make it again with one thing changed and everything else held the same. Then use what you saw: repeat the winner to see whether it wins twice, or move the same thing a little further. That is the whole method, and the rest of this page is how to keep it fair, because clay is very good at changing more than one thing behind your back.

This is a different job from practice. A Practice Session Does Not Have to Produce a Pot is about repeating a target you have already chosen until your hands can hit it every time. A test is for the moment you do not know what the target should be. Practice gives you consistency. Testing gives you the decision. Most good potters run both, often in the same visit.

The other thing three tries gives you is confidence that does not depend on anyone else. An answer you got from your own clay, on your own clay body, with your own hands, is one you trust in a way no forum thread can match. And once you have run one fair test, every question after it looks smaller.

The sentence worth keeping

A test is fair when the only difference between the tries is the one you made on purpose.

The mechanism

Why clay needs a fair test

Six reasons two pots made “the same way” come out different. Every rule further down exists to answer one of them.

  1. Clay keeps a record of everything. How much water it holds, how long it sat out, how hard you pulled, how much it weighed. Two mugs are only made the same way when you made them the same way on purpose, with a scale and a ruler, not from memory.
  2. Clay changes size on the way to the shelf. It shrinks as it dries and again in the kiln, 10 to 14 percent from wet to fired depending on the clay, by the figures in our proportions lesson. A handle that fits two fingers wet can be a squeeze once fired, so the stage you judge at changes the answer.
  3. The kiln is a variable you do not control. Heat is not perfectly even inside a kiln, which is why the company that makes firing cones tells potters to place them throughout a kiln to check it. Where a piece sits, how full the load is and how fast it cools all change a glaze, and the studio team loads every kiln here. Two tries fired in two different loads can differ for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Why the Same Glaze Looks Different on Two Pots goes through each one.
  4. Some results come and go. A crack, a glaze run, a warped rim. One of them can turn up by chance, and the same piece made again might not do it. Science fair guides ask students to repeat an experiment at least three times for exactly this reason: so the answer is not just an accident.
  5. Your eyes are on the side of the new thing. You made try two because you hoped it would be better. People judging something they already have a stake in lean toward it without noticing, which is why careful tests decide how they will judge before they look, and sometimes ask someone who does not know which is which.
  6. Two changes cannot be pulled apart. Change the handle's thickness and where it attaches, and the mug that feels better tells you only that one of the two helped. You cannot know which, and the next mug gets both changes whether it needs them or not.

None of this makes testing hard

It makes it specific. A scale, a ruler, a needle tool to number the bottoms and a sheet to write on cover all six.

The method

Three tries, step by step

Eight steps, most of them decided before the clay comes out of the bag.

Slab, Carrot, or Pull? 3 Mug Handle Techniques Compared (Beginner to Advanced) MW Ceramics Twenty-three minutes. Three ways to make a mug handle, then all three finished handles compared side by side, which is step seven on a real table.
  1. Write the question so clay can answer it. “A thinner handle might feel better” is a hunch. “With the mug full of hot coffee, which handle do I pick up first” is a question a pair of mugs can settle. One question per test.
  2. Decide how you will judge it, and when. Pick the stage where the answer lives: wet, leather hard, bone dry, bisqued or glaze fired. Then pick what you will do at that stage: carry it full, cut across the join, look at it in daylight by a window, measure it.
  3. Write down your guess. One line. A guess on paper is how you notice a surprise, and a surprise is the clay telling you something you did not know yet.
  4. Make try one your usual way, on purpose. Weigh the clay. Measure what can be measured, height, width, wall, handle, with a ruler or calipers. Write down what you did. Try one is the yardstick everything else is measured against, so it gets the same care as the change.
  5. Make try two with one change. Everything else copies try one: the same clay from the same bag, the same weight, the same tools, the same stage of dryness for every join, in the same sitting if you can. The one change is the only thing you are allowed to do differently. Try three usually comes later, once you know what it is for, so it gets matched to the numbers you wrote down for try one.
  6. Take them to the judging stage together. Dry them side by side, covered or uncovered the same way. Glaze them from the same jar with the same coats. Put them out for firing at the same time, each glazed one on a kiln cookie like every glazed piece, and write the date on the sheet. Number each bottom before it goes anywhere.
  7. Judge them side by side, the way you decided. Not from memory, not a week apart: next to each other on the table. When the question is about feel, hand both to someone else and let them choose without telling them which is new.
  8. Choose what try three is for, and write it all down. Repeat the winner, adjust the change, or call it, by the four outcomes in the next section. Then fill in the sheet, because three weeks of drying and two firings later nobody remembers which mug had which handle.

Some tests start with the studio team

A test that might blow up, run off a pot onto a shelf, or use a material from outside the studio shares the kiln with everyone else's work. Those start as a conversation with the studio team, before anything goes near a firing. Glazes and materials mixed at home get tiled on a catcher first, by the rules in our test tile lesson.

After the first two

What the third try is for

Look at what try two told you, then pick the one of these four that matches.

  1. Try two clearly won: repeat it. Make try two again, exactly. A result that turns up twice is an answer; a result that turns up once might have been the kiln, the clay or a good day. If it wins again, it becomes your new usual, and your next question starts from there.
  2. It helped, but not enough: adjust. Move the same thing again. A handle that improved when it got a little thinner gets a third that is thinner still. One that went too far gets one halfway between the two. Still one change, still compared against try one.
  3. No difference: that is an answer. If you cannot tell the two apart at the stage that matters, the thing you changed does not matter much for this piece. Keep whichever is easier or faster to make, and spend try three on a bigger change or a different question.
  4. Try two was worse: go the other way, or stop. Your usual was already on the right side. A thinner handle that felt worse says something about thickness, so a third try a little thicker than usual can be worth making. Knowing your usual way is right is worth having too.

When a result comes and goes, make more than one

Cracks, warps and glaze runs do not happen every time. For questions like those, make two or three of each version rather than one, so a single lucky or unlucky piece cannot decide it for you.

Keeping it fair

What “the same” means

Run down these before you start and again before you judge. Anything you cannot keep the same goes on the sheet, so you know it might be part of the answer.

While you make them

  • Same clay, from the same bag. Two bags of the same clay are not always equally soft.
  • Same weight, weighed. A scale, not a guess, for every ball and every handle carrot.
  • Same size, measured. Height and width with a ruler, walls and handles with calipers.
  • Same sitting for tries one and two. Clay from two different sessions dries and shrinks differently. Try three is matched to the numbers on the sheet.
  • Same stage for every join and trim. A handle onto soft leather hard and one onto firm leather hard is a second change.
  • Same tools. A different rib or a different brush is a change too.

While you finish them

  • Same drying. Side by side, covered or uncovered the same way, for the same time.
  • Same glaze. The same jar, the same number of coats, each coat dry before the next.
  • Out for firing together. So they have the best chance of sharing a load, each glazed one on a kiln cookie.
  • Numbered on the bottom. Scratched in with a needle tool at leather hard, or underglaze pencil at bone dry. Marker does not survive a kiln.
  • Judged at the same stage. Both fired, or both leather hard. Never one of each.
  • Judged the same way. The rule you wrote in step two, side by side, in the same light.
Scale

Small tests, whole pots

Three tries is not three pots. Test the smallest thing that can still answer the question.

  1. A question about a part goes on a small piece. A glaze goes on test tiles, and our test tile lesson has the shapes that tell the truth. A join goes on two small slabs stood in an L. A carving tool goes on a strip of slab. A wall or a floor goes on a short cylinder you cut in half.
  2. A question about the whole pot needs whole pots. How a mug feels full, how it balances, whether a spout pours clean, whether a lid seats: no tile can answer those. Our functional pottery lesson has the test: fill the mug and carry it.
  3. Plenty of answers arrive before a kiln. Whether a join welded, how even a wall is, how a carved line looks at each stage of dryness: cut it open or look at it at leather hard and you have the answer the same day. Unfired clay goes back to scrap like any trimmings, so those tries cost a little clay and some time.
  4. A small answer gets checked bigger before it is trusted. A tile is about three inches of wall and a vase can be twelve. When a tile wins, glaze a small pot exactly like it before a big one. When a small cylinder settles a wall question, the next real pot is your check.

A rule of thumb

If the question has the word “feel” in it, make whole pieces. If it has the word “look” or “hold” in it, a small piece usually answers it.

Worked example: a design question

The thinner handle, tested

The question that started this page, run all the way through, then shown the way it would sit on the sheet.

What Makes A Mug Handle Comfortable? Old Forge Creations Thirty-five minutes, with chapters on handle shapes and sizes, drying and cracking, then a deep dive into center of gravity, torque, cross section and hand sizes. Useful for deciding what “feels better” will mean before you make anything.
  1. Make two mug bodies in one sitting. Same clay, same weight, same height and width, thrown or built the way you always make them. Write the numbers down: try three will be made to them later.
  2. Pull handles from one carrot. Your usual handle for try one. For try two, the same length and curve, just thinner, measured with calipers at the top and the tip so you know exactly how much thinner. Attach both at soft leather hard, at the same height, the same way. How to Pull Pottery Handles has the method.
  3. Dry them slowly, side by side. A thinner handle dries faster than the mug it is on, and anything drying at a different speed from its neighbor is looking for a way to crack. Put a little plastic over both handles, the fast part, and treat both mugs exactly alike, or the test turns into a drying test.
  4. Judge the fired mugs, full. Clay shrinks, and a mug is held full. Fill both with hot water, carry each across the room, tip each to drink. Then hand both to someone else and ask which they would reach for, without telling them which is new.
  5. Make try three from the answer. A fresh mug, made to the weight and measurements on the sheet. If the thinner handle clearly won, give it the same thinner handle again. If it was better but felt fragile, go halfway. If nobody could tell, keep whichever you find easier to pull. When it is fired, judge it beside the other two.

The same test on the sheet, filled in the way it might come out:

  1. My question. With the mug full of hot water, which handle do I pick up first, my usual one or one about a third thinner.
  2. How I will judge it, and at what stage. Glaze fired. Full, carried across the room, tipped to drink. Then a friend picks one without knowing which is new.
  3. What stays the same. Clay, weight of the body, length and curve of the handle, where it attaches, when it attaches, drying, glaze, the firing they went out for.
  4. My guess. The thinner one feels nicer but less secure.
  5. Try one, my usual way. Handle as thick as the wall where it joins. Felt solid, a little chunky.
  6. Try two, the one change. About a third thinner. Lighter and nicer to hold, a little flex in my fingers when full. My friend picked it.
  7. Try three, repeat or adjust. Halfway between the two. Kept the lighter feel and lost the flex.
  8. The answer, and what I will try next. Halfway is my new usual. Next question: attaching the top joint a little higher.

Notice what the sheet stopped

The next question, a higher top joint, is a new test with the halfway handle as its try one. Changing the height and the thickness in the same mug would have answered neither.

Worked examples: construction and glaze

Two more: a seam and a glaze

The same three tries on a question about how something is built, and one about how a glaze goes on.

Glazing with PC-20 Blue Rutile: Applications Thickness Testing AMACO Brent Fifteen minutes from the glaze's maker on applying one glaze and testing it at different thicknesses, the glaze half of this section done on camera.
The lineA construction questionA glaze question
The questionWhether a beveled seam cracks less than a butted one on my slab mugsWhether two coats instead of three stop this glaze running onto the foot
Try oneMy usual butted seam, scored, slipped and blendedThree coats on a standing test tile, my usual
Try twoBoth edges cut at a bevel and overlapped, scored, slipped and blended the same wayTwo coats on an identical tile
What stays the sameThe same slab, its thickness, the slip, the stage of dryness, the dryingThe jar, the brush, the clay, the tile shape, each coat dry before the next, the firing
How to judge, and whenWatch both seams through bone dry and the bisque. Cut across a spare join of each at leather hard to see whether it weldedGlaze fired, in daylight: where the glaze stopped on the upright and the foot, and how the color reads
Try threeTwo more of the winner, because cracks come and goThe winner on a small mug, glazed exactly like its tile, before anything bigger

On the seam. A crack is one of the results that comes and goes, so this is a question where two or three of each beats one. The spare joins are cut across with a sharp knife in one stroke, the same reading the join session in our practice lesson teaches: a line, a gap or an air pocket where the pieces met means they never welded. If both seams survive, you have learned the crack you were chasing was not the seam, which points the next test at the drying.

On the glaze. A standing tile shows a run where a flat one hides it, so stand both. If two coats stopped the run but the color went pale, that is the “helped, but not enough” outcome: a third tile with two coats and a third coat on the top half only keeps the color up high and less glaze down by the foot. Every tile and every mug goes on a kiln cookie, the same as any glazed piece, and our test tile lesson covers numbering and logging a whole row of them.

When a test goes quiet

Six ways a test stops telling you anything

Each one is a fair test that turned into two unfair ones, and each has a one-line fix.

Two things changed

Thinner and higher, or a new glaze on a new clay. Something happened and you cannot say what. Split it into two tests, each with its own try one.

No try one

The new mug got compared with your memory of your usual mug. Memory is not a measurement. Make the usual version fresh, in the same sitting, and judge the two side by side.

Judged at the wrong stage

The handle felt great wet, the color looked great raw. Clay shrinks and glaze transforms in the kiln. Judge at the stage where the answer actually lives, the one you wrote down in step two.

Different firings

One try came out a load later than the other, and the difference you see might be the kiln. Put tries out together, and when they come back apart, write it down and repeat before you believe it.

“Better” decided afterwards

You looked first and found reasons second, which nearly always favors the new one. Write the judging rule and your guess before you start, and let someone else choose when the question is about feel.

Nothing written down

Three weeks of drying and two firings later, the mugs are on the shelf and nobody knows which handle was which. Number every bottom and fill in the sheet as you go, not after.

Fill it in here, or print it

The recording sheet

Type your test into the boxes below. What you write is saved in this browser on this device, so you can come back and add each try as it comes out. When you want it on paper, print the sheet, filled in or blank, or copy it into a phone note.

Give each test a number and scratch the same number with a 1, 2 or 3 into the bottom of each try, so the clay and the sheet always match. A copy in a phone note works just as well as paper, as long as it is the only place you keep your tests.

Questions we get asked

The ones that come up at the tables

Do I really need three tries?

Two tries show you a difference. The third shows whether the difference holds up, or moves you closer to the answer. Two is enough when the difference is huge and obvious. For anything that comes and goes, cracks, runs, warps, three is the floor and two or three of each version is better.

Can try one be a pot I made last month?

Only if you know exactly how it was made: the clay, the weight, the measurements, the glaze and coats, the firing. Usually you do not, and making a fresh try one in the same sitting as try two is faster than reconstructing an old one from memory.

What if I want to test several things?

Run them one at a time, or side by side with one shared try one: a row of tiles where each changes a different single thing from the same starting tile still keeps every change readable. What you cannot do is put several changes on one piece. Keep the questions in a list and work down it.

What if two changes only work together?

It happens: factors often depend on each other. Changing one thing at a time still gets you there, it just takes a few more rounds. Once each change has been tested on its own, test the pair together as its own try two, against the best of the singles as try one.

Is this the same as practicing?

No. Practice repeats a target you have chosen until your hands hit it every time. A test chooses the target. They feed each other: a test tells you a handle about a third thinner is better, and practice is how you pull that handle every time. A Practice Session Does Not Have to Produce a Pot is the other half.

What if try one and try two come out the same?

Then you have learned that the thing you changed does not matter much for that piece, which is a real answer and saves you fussing over it again. Keep whichever is easier, and point the next test at something else.

How do I keep the tries from getting mixed up?

Number the bottoms before anything leaves your hands: scratched with a needle tool at leather hard, or written in underglaze pencil on bone dry clay where no glaze will go. A marker burns off in the kiln. Write the same numbers on the sheet the moment you scratch them.

Can I ask an instructor what to test?

Yes, and it is one of the best uses of a class. Show an instructor a finished piece and ask for the one thing they would change. That one thing is a ready-made try two, and your piece, made again your usual way, is try one.

One last thing

Ask the clay

Somewhere on your shelf is a question you have been carrying for months. A handle you are not sure about, a glaze that almost works, a seam that cracks one time in three. It does not need a better video or a braver guess. It needs your usual way, one change, and a third try that tells you whether the answer holds.

Write the question down, make try one on purpose, and keep the sheet. Then come make something, and let the clay settle it.

Make it your usual way, make it again with one change, judge them side by side at the stage where the answer lives, then repeat the winner or adjust once more. Write it all on the sheet.

The Comprehensive Version at the top of the page has why clay needs a fair test, what the third try is for, what “the same” means, and three worked examples.