Throwing techniques

How to collar in on the pottery wheel

Collaring in is how a cylinder becomes a bottle. It is how a jar gets a shoulder, how a bud vase gets a neck, and how a wide floppy rim finally settles down and behaves. One move, and it turns up everywhere.

It is also the move that kills more pots than any other. Not because it is difficult. Because it is backwards.

Almost everything your hands want to do here is wrong.

Illustration of a potter collaring in the neck of a clay pot, both hands wrapped in a ring around the spinning wall on a pottery wheel

So here is the whole thing. What is actually happening to the clay, where to put your hands, how much to take per pass, and why the wall is getting thicker while the pot is getting smaller. Five videos from five potters who teach it better than we could film it. And a checklist at the bottom built to sit on a phone screen, propped against a bat, while your hands are covered in slip.

The short version below carries the model, the move, the rhythm and the fixes. Switch to Comprehensive at any point for the physics, the full grip set and the other three videos.

  • Five videos, five potters
  • A drill you can repeat all night
  • Phone checklist at the end
Jump to a section
1Why words and video, not one or the other 2What collaring actually does to the clay 3Three facts behind every failure 4Five ways to hold it 5The move, in order 6Collar, pull, collar, pull 7Where on the pot you collar 8Five videos, none of them ours 9When it goes wrong 10The phone checklist 11Straight answers

Everything we know about collaring in, in order.

01 · Why this page is built this way

Read it, then watch it. Both, in that order.

We get asked fairly often why these pages are not just a video. Fair question. Somebody has already filmed this move beautifully, so why type out three thousand words about it?

Because the two do completely different jobs, and collaring is a move where you need both.

Video shows you the thing. Nothing on this page will ever tell you how fast a wheel should be turning as well as ten seconds of footage does. But video runs at its own speed, and it is rotten at explaining why. A camera pointed at somebody’s hands shows you the outside of the pot. It cannot show you that the wall is quietly getting thicker under those fingers, which is the single most important thing happening.

Words are slower, and slow is the point. You set the pace. You can read one sentence three times until it clicks. Try re-watching a two-second hand adjustment thirty times and see how long you last before you give up and just wing it.

What video is good at Speed. Pressure. Timing. The exact angle of a wrist. How long a pass actually takes, which is always longer than you imagined. And the enormous relief of watching a professional make the same lump you keep making.
What words are good at Cause and effect. Why a wall thickens. Why speed is the enemy here and your friend everywhere else. Numbers you can hold onto. And the short phrases that actually come back to you a week later at the wheel, because that is how memory works.

Here is the part that decided the format. Ask somebody who can collar what they are thinking while they do it, and you never get a video clip back. You get a sentence. Small bites. Let go slowly. Collar, then pull. Those are words, and words are what survive the week between watching something and standing at a wheel with wet hands.

So watch the videos. Genuinely, watch them, they are excellent and none of them are ours. Then keep the checklist at the bottom of this page open on your phone while you work, because you cannot scrub a video with clay on your thumbs.

Read the words for the model. Watch the video for the picture. Then go make four bad ones, which is the only part of this that has ever actually taught anybody anything.

02 · The one idea everything else hangs on

You are not making the pot smaller. You are making the wall thicker.

Collaring in. Necking in. Choking. Constricting. Four names, one move. You put a ring of hands around a spinning wall and persuade it to come inward.

Here is the thing nobody says out loud on the first day. Clay does not compress. When you squeeze a spinning wall inward, that clay has to go somewhere, and there are only two directions available. Into the wall, making it thicker. Or up the wall, making the pot taller. Usually both.

So the diameter goes down and the wall goes up in thickness at the same time. Every single pass. That is not a side effect you tolerate. That is the entire mechanism, and once you actually believe it, roughly nine tenths of the mistakes on this page stop happening.

A collar does not remove clay. It relocates it.

Clay does not compress. Squeeze a spinning wall inward and that clay has nowhere to go but into the wall as thickness and up the wall as height. You get both, every pass.

A collar does not remove clay. It relocates it.

  1. 1 Before. A plain cylinder. Wide opening, thin even wall, and about as much clay as you are ever going to have.
  2. 2 The opening closes. This is the part you were aiming at, and it is the least interesting thing happening.
  3. 3 The wall gets thicker. The clay that used to be spread around a wide circle is now packed into a smaller one. Same clay, less circumference, thicker wall.
  4. 4 The pot gets taller. Some of that clay goes up instead of in. A collared pot grows, which surprises people every time.
  5. 5 The base does not move. Collaring is a wall move. If your base is wrong, no amount of collaring is going to have an opinion about it.

03 · Three facts

Every collaring failure comes out of one of these three

Not five hundred separate problems. Three, wearing different hats.

Speed is working against you, and it scales badly Spinning clay wants to fly outward, and that outward force climbs with the square of the wheel speed. Double the speed and you have roughly four times the force fighting you. Everywhere else in throwing, speed is your friend. Here it is the opposition. Slow down, but not to a crawl, because a pot that is barely turning stops running true under your hands and you end up chasing a wobble instead of making a neck. Outward force climbs with the square of the wheel speed, so speed is the one thing working against you here. Slow down, but not to a crawl, or the pot stops running true.
Clay has a finite number of good passes in it Every trip your hands make adds water, removes structure and tires the clay out. Nobody is skilled enough to add passes back. This is why the answer to a struggling pot is almost never one more go. Get in, take what you came for, get off. Then look at it tomorrow, when the thing that felt like failure usually turns out to have been fine. Every pass adds water and removes structure, and nobody can add passes back. Get in, take what you came for, get off.
A thin wall does not collar. It wrings. This is the big one. Thick clay under pressure moves as one piece. Thin clay under the same pressure folds, twists and tears, because there is not enough material to carry the load around the circle. If your wall is already at finished thickness when you start collaring, you are not early, you are late. There is no technique that fixes it. Thick clay under pressure moves as one piece. Thin clay folds and tears, because there is not enough material to carry the load around the circle. No technique fixes it.

Which leads to the least popular sentence on this page. If you know you are going to collar, you have to plan for it before you have finished pulling the walls. Leave the top third deliberately heavy. Thicker than feels right. Thicker than the rest of the pot.

That heavy band is your collaring budget. Spend it and the neck appears. Skip it and you get to watch a very thin ring of clay wring itself off like a wet towel, usually about four seconds after you decide things are finally going well.

Which means you have to plan for the collar before you finish pulling the walls. Leave the top third deliberately heavy. That heavy band is your collaring budget.

04 · Where to put your hands

Five ways to hold it, and none of them is the right one

There is one rule underneath all five. Two fingertips pressing from opposite sides produce an oval, every time, because you are applying force at two points on a circle. Spread the contact around and you get a circle back. Everything below is a different way of buying more contact points.

The little diagrams show contact from above. The pot is the ring. The marks are your hands.

Start with the linked ring. Thumbs touching behind the pot, fingers touching in front, one closed loop that you shrink. The other four are here for when it stops fitting.

The default The linked ring
Both hands. Thumbs touching behind the pot, index fingers touching in front, so your hands form one closed loop around the wall. Then you shrink the loop. This is the one to learn first and the one you will use for the rest of your life. Reach for it when the pot is anywhere from a mug to a large vase and you can still get both hands around it comfortably.
Maximum contact Laced fingers
Interlock your fingers the way you would right before cracking your knuckles, then open that lattice around the pot. You get six or eight points of contact instead of four, and the wall has almost nowhere to bulge out between them. Reach for it when the pot is big, the wall is thick, or the linked ring keeps leaving you with a faint oval you cannot get rid of.
One hand free The claw
One hand spread wide, thumb on the near side and three fingers curled around the far side. Four points, one hand. The other hand is free to steady the pot, hold a rib, or keep water on the wall while you work. Reach for it when the pot is small, or when you need a spare hand more than you need a perfect circle.
Small and tight The single C
Thumb and forefinger, one hand, closing like a soft letter C. On a neck this narrow two points of contact is not the problem it would be on a wide pot, because there is barely any circle left to go oval. Reach for it when the neck is already down near an inch and your linked ring simply will not fit anymore.
Continuous Chamois or soft rib
A strip of damp chamois wrapped around the wall, held closed with both hands. Contact is genuinely continuous rather than pointy, it leaves no finger marks, and it drags far less than skin does. It is also the least intuitive thing on this list and worth ten minutes of your life. Reach for it when you want a clean, unmarked neck, or when your fingers keep leaving spiral drag lines you cannot rib out afterward.
Grip Points of contact Best on What it costs you
The linked ring Four, joined into a loop Almost everything Both hands are busy, so somebody else has to hold your water
Laced fingers Six to eight Big pots and thick walls Slow to get in and out of, and awkward on anything small
The claw Four, all on one hand Small pots, bud vases Uneven pressure, so ovals show up faster
The single C Two Necks under about an inch Useless on anything wide, where it will just make an oval
Chamois or soft rib Continuous Tall thin necks, unmarked surfaces Less feel through the material, and one more wet thing to lose

05 · The move

Twelve steps, in the order they actually happen

Four of these happen before your hands ever touch the wall, which is roughly the correct ratio. Collaring is mostly preparation and restraint. The squeezing part takes four seconds.

Before you touch it

1 Finish the cylinder first, and leave the top third heavy Get your height, get your shape, and deliberately stop pulling before the top third is as thin as the rest. That heavy band is the clay you are about to spend. A pot with an even wall all the way up is a pot you cannot collar. Stop pulling early and leave the top third heavy. That heavy band is the clay you are about to spend.
2 Compress the rim, and make it thicker than you think A rim heading into a collar takes more abuse than any other part of the pot. Press down and in with a wet finger for several full turns until it feels dense and dull rather than sharp. A cracked rim on a narrow neck cannot be fixed later, because you will not be able to get a hand in there to support it. Press down and in with a wet finger for several turns, until the rim feels dense rather than sharp.
3 Slow the wheel down, but do not stop it Slower than you threw the cylinder. Not off. You want the slowest speed at which the pot still looks like one solid object rather than a wobbling shape you are chasing. Most people land somewhere well under half of throwing speed and then creep slower as the neck closes. Slower than throwing speed, but not stopped. The slowest speed at which the pot still runs true.
4 Wet the wall properly Dry clay grabs, and a grab on a collaring pass becomes a twist instantly. You want the wall slick. Not soaking, because water in the wall is exactly what makes it collapse later, but slick enough that your hands slide rather than drag. Re-wet between passes, not during. Slick, not soaking. Dry clay grabs, and a grab becomes a twist before you can react.

The pass itself

5 Make a ring before you make any pressure Get your hands into position around the wall and let them ride there for a full rotation touching nothing. Then close. Arriving and squeezing in the same motion is how you punch a dent into one side of a pot. Let your hands ride in position for a full rotation touching nothing, then close. Never arrive and squeeze at once.
6 Start below where you want the narrowing to begin Set your ring an inch or so lower than the point where the taper should start. Collaring pulls the shape upward as it works, so starting exactly at your target line puts the finished curve too high every time. Set the ring about an inch below where the taper should start. Collaring pulls the shape upward as it works.
7 Squeeze while you travel upward, never while parked This is the difference between a neck and a wound. Pressure in one fixed spot cuts a groove and thins the wall exactly where it can least afford it. Pressure applied while your hands rise moves clay along the wall, which is the thing you actually want. Slow, steady, upward. Every pass. Pressure in one parked spot cuts a groove. Pressure while your hands rise moves clay. Slow, steady, upward.
8 Take about a quarter inch of diameter, then get out A quarter inch off the diameter per pass. Not an inch. Going from four inches across to one inch across is twelve small passes, and it is supposed to be, because every one of those passes is thickening the wall and you have to keep dealing with that thickness as you go. A quarter inch off the diameter, then out. Four inches across down to one inch is twelve passes.
9 Let go slowly. Every single time. Release your grip gradually over two or three full rotations. Pulling your hands off a narrow neck quickly drags the wall outward with them and leaves a dent that runs all the way around. On a thin neck that dent is usually the end of the pot. More collared pots die in the last half second of a pass than during it. Release over two or three full rotations. More necks die in the last half second of a pass than during it.

Between passes

10 Compress the rim again Every couple of passes, back to the rim with a wet finger or a scrap of chamois. Collaring drives clay up into that rim continuously, and left alone it will ripple, fold or split. This is thirty seconds of work that saves the pot. Back to the rim with a wet finger every couple of passes. Collaring drives clay up into it the whole time.
11 Pull the wall back up before you collar again Your wall is now thicker than it was. Turn that thickness back into height with a normal pull, then collar again. This alternation is the whole technique and it gets its own section below, because getting it wrong is the most common reason a neck ends up short, lumpy and funnel shaped. Turn the new thickness back into height with a normal pull, then collar again. This alternation is the technique.
12 Get your eye down to the profile, and stop early Look at the silhouette from the side at wheel height, not down from above. Then stop one pass before you want to. Clay has a finite number of good passes in it, and nearly every collapse we watch happen was a pot that was already finished two passes earlier. Look at the silhouette from the side at wheel height, then stop one pass before you want to.

06 · The rhythm

Collar, pull, collar, pull

If you take one thing off this page, take this. Nobody told me this clearly for an embarrassingly long time, and it is the difference between a neck and a funnel.

Every collar leaves the wall thicker. Every pull turns that thickness back into height. Collar three times in a row without pulling and you will end up with a short, lumpy, heavy funnel, and you will not understand why, because each individual pass felt fine.

Alternate them and the neck grows out of your hands like it was in there the whole time.

One collar. One pull. Repeat until you are done or the clay is.

Every collar leaves the wall thicker. Every pull turns that thickness back into height. Collar three times in a row without pulling and you get a short, lumpy funnel, and each individual pass will have felt fine.

One collar. One pull. Repeat until you are done or the clay is.

How many passes is this going to take?

Roughly. At a quarter inch of diameter per pass, which is the number we teach and the number the step list above uses. Move the sliders and see what you are signing up for.

Starting diameter 4.0 in
Finished neck 1.0 in

The sliders will not let the finished neck get wider than where you started, because that is not collaring, that is a different move entirely.

12 Collaring passes Twelve collars and twelve pulls, and you should expect to compress the rim about six times along the way. C is a collaring pass. P is a pull to turn that new thickness back into height.

Treat that number as a shape, not a promise. Softer clay wants smaller bites. A thick heavy wall will happily give you more per pass. And if the count comes out enormous, that is the page telling you something useful, which is that you should have thrown a narrower cylinder in the first place rather than trying to collar a bowl into a bottle.

07 · Placement

Collaring is not only for bottle necks

Most people meet this move while trying to make a bottle and then never use it again. That is a waste of a perfectly good technique. Where you put the ring changes what it does.

At the rim, one gentle pass The most useful collar most potters never do. One light pass at the very top of a cylinder before you shape it tightens the rim, trues up anything slightly oval, and gives you a stiffer edge to work against. Costs four seconds. Makes bowls behave.
At the shoulder, to close a form Collaring below the rim rather than at it is how a jar gets a shoulder and how a round pot stops being a cylinder. The trick here is that you are working on a wall you can no longer reach the inside of, so all the shape has to come from the outside hand and the air already in the pot.
Repeatedly up a neck, to make it long A long gooseneck is not one dramatic collar. It is a lot of small ones stacked up a rising wall, alternating with pulls, over and over, with the wheel getting slower as the neck gets narrower and more fragile.
Low down, to fix a base that flared A cylinder that has crept outward at the bottom can be walked back in with a careful low collar. It is fiddly, because there is a lot of clay down there and very little to push against, but it beats living with a pot that looks like it is melting.
All the way, to seal it shut Keep collaring past the point of a neck and the opening closes completely. That is a whole separate discipline with its own rules, most importantly that a sealed pot has to be given a hole before it goes anywhere near a kiln.
Where not to collar Directly over a join, a crack, or a spot you already thinned out with a bad pull. Collaring concentrates stress into the wall, so it will find the weakest ring on your pot and open it up. Fix the weak spot first, or plan the neck somewhere else.

08 · Watch it happen

Five videos, five potters, none of them us

Five, doing five different jobs. One explains the move. One gives you a menu of hand positions. One is a drill you can repeat twenty times in an evening. One is a long, calm, start to finish build. And one is a master doing things you will not be ready for yet, which is exactly why it is worth watching.

Two here. One explains the move properly, one is a drill you can repeat twenty times in an evening. Three more are waiting in the Comprehensive version.

Nothing loads until you click it, so scrolling past this section costs you nothing.

Florian Gadsby “How to Collar in Clay — A Beginner’s Guide” The move itself, explained properly and slowly. What collaring is, why the wall thickens under your hands, and why it has to happen in small alternating steps. If you only watch one thing on this page, watch this one, and watch all of it rather than skipping to the part where his hands are on the pot. The move explained properly and slowly, including why the wall thickens under your hands. Watch all of it.
  • Start here
  • 17 minutes
Watch on YouTube instead
Earth Nation Ceramics “collaring and choking for beginners” Four separate hand positions, demonstrated back to back, by somebody who is very clear that he is showing you the four he knows rather than the only four that exist. This is the section four of this page with hands attached. He also names the thing beginners never get told, which is that everything up to now has been about pushing outward and this is the moment that reverses.
  • Hand positions
  • 23 minutes
Watch on YouTube instead
Amy Palatnick “Fun exercise to practice collaring bottle necks” The most useful nine minutes here, and almost nobody has seen it. Instead of throwing one whole bottle, failing at the neck and losing forty minutes, you make one tall lump and practice only the collar, over and over, cutting each attempt off and going again. Twenty reps in an evening instead of one. This is how the move actually gets learned. Practice only the collar, over and over, cutting each attempt off and going again. Twenty reps in an evening instead of one.
  • The drill
  • 9 minutes
Watch on YouTube instead
MW Ceramics “STOP Making WIDE Vases! This Technique Changes EVERYTHING!!” Ignore the title, which is doing a great deal of shouting. Underneath it is a calm, unhurried half hour of taking a cylinder all the way down to a narrow neck without skipping anything, including the boring bits that the short videos always cut. If you want to see the collar and pull rhythm run twelve times in a row, this is where you see it.
  • Full build
  • 29 minutes
Watch on YouTube instead
Hsin-Chuen Lin “509. Techniques on Throwing Thin-necked/Closed form Bottle with Hsin-Chuen Lin 林新春 細頸瓶各種手法示範” A master running through method after method on necks far thinner than anything you are about to attempt. Watch it for the hands, not for the instructions. The thing worth stealing is how little he does per pass and how long he takes to let go, which are exactly the two habits everybody on this page is short of.
  • Go deeper
  • 15 minutes
Watch on YouTube instead

Every one of these belongs to the potter who made it, and every card credits the channel it came from. If any of them helped, the useful thing you can do is go subscribe to them.

09 · Troubleshooting

Tell us what you are actually looking at

Seven ways this goes wrong, and every one of them traces back to the three facts in section 03. Tap whichever one matches the pot in front of you. All seven are written out below regardless, so nothing here needs a working tap to be readable.

The five you will actually meet. Tap whichever matches the pot in front of you, or read straight down. Two rarer ones are in the Comprehensive version.

Symptom one The neck came out oval instead of round You applied force at two points on a circle, so you got an oval back. Almost always the claw grip used on a pot too wide for it, or a linked ring where the thumbs never actually met behind the pot.
  • Close the loop properly. Thumbs touching behind, fingers touching in front.
  • Move up to laced fingers for six to eight points of contact.
  • Fixable while wet. One or two very light passes with even contact will usually round it back out.
Symptom two The neck twisted, wrung, or tore right around The wall was too thin to carry the load, or the wheel was too fast, or both. Thin clay under collaring pressure does not move as one piece. It shears. This is fact three, and there is no grip that gets around it.
  • Not fixable on this pot. Cut it off and change the plan for the next one.
  • Next time, stop pulling sooner and leave the top third genuinely heavy.
  • Slow the wheel further. Outward force climbs with the square of the speed.
  • Check your hands are not dragging. Dry clay grabs, and a grab becomes a twist instantly.
Symptom three The rim rippled, folded, or split Collaring drives clay upward into the rim continuously. Left uncompressed, that rim gets thin, wavy and dry, and then it splits. On a narrow neck you cannot get a hand inside to support it, which is what makes this one final.
  • Compress the rim before you start, and again every couple of passes.
  • Use a scrap of chamois rather than a bare finger. Less drag, more even pressure.
  • A small split can sometimes be cut away with a needle tool and the new rim compressed. A long one cannot.
Symptom four There is a groove or a dent running around the pot A groove means you squeezed while parked instead of squeezing while travelling upward. A single dent that runs all the way around usually means you let go too fast at the end of a pass and dragged the wall out with your hands.
  • Every pass moves upward while it squeezes. Pressure in one spot cuts, it does not shape.
  • Release over two or three full rotations, not in one motion.
  • A shallow groove can often be pulled out. A deep one has thinned the wall there and will be the spot that fails next.
Symptom five It got short, heavy and lumpy, like a funnel You collared several times in a row without pulling in between. All that relocated clay is still sitting in the wall as thickness instead of being turned back into height. This is the single most common mistake on the page and it is entirely fixable.
  • Pull the wall up now. The clay is still there, it is just in the wrong shape.
  • Then go back to alternating. One collar, one pull, repeat.
  • If the pot has already had too many passes, stop, and take the lesson to the next one.
Symptom six The whole thing folded over and collapsed Too much water in the wall, too many passes, or both. Every trip your hands make adds water and removes structure, and clay has a finite number of good passes in it. Collapse is almost never the last pass being wrong. It is the fifth pass ago being one too many.
  • Sponge water out of the inside as you go, and do not leave any standing in the base.
  • Work faster in real time. A collar that takes ten minutes is a collar on soaked clay.
  • Stop one pass earlier than you want to. Every time.
  • If the form is tall, let it firm up and collar the rest of the way after a rest.
Symptom seven Nothing is happening. It just will not get narrower. Usually the wheel is too fast and is throwing the wall back out as quickly as you bring it in. Occasionally the opposite problem, where the wall is now so thick that gentle pressure is not enough to move it and you are being too polite with it.
  • Slow the wheel down further before you press any harder.
  • Check you are travelling upward through the squeeze rather than holding still.
  • If the wall has gone very thick, pull it up first. Thick short walls resist collaring.

10 · The short version

The whole page, short enough to read at the wheel

This is the bit to leave open on your phone. No scrolling back up required, nothing here needs a tap, and it fits on a screen propped against a bat.

Twelve moves in order. Leave this open on your phone, propped against a bat, and work down it.

  1. 1 Leave the top third heavy Stop pulling early. A wall already at finished thickness cannot be collared, it can only wring.
  2. 2 Compress the rim first Wet finger, press down and in, several full turns, until it feels dense rather than sharp.
  3. 3 Slow the wheel. Do not stop it. The slowest speed at which the pot still runs true. Slower again as the neck narrows.
  4. 4 Wet the wall, so your hands slide Dry clay grabs. A grab becomes a twist before you can react to it.
  5. 5 Ring, not two points Thumbs touching behind, fingers touching in front. Two points of contact gives you an oval.
  6. 6 Start lower than the taper should start The shape travels up as you work. Starting on your target line lands the curve too high.
  7. 7 Squeeze while rising, never while parked Pressure in one spot cuts a groove. Pressure while moving relocates clay.
  8. 8 A quarter inch of diameter, then out Four inches down to one inch is twelve passes. That is correct, not slow.
  9. 9 Let go over two or three rotations More necks die in the last half second of a pass than during it.
  10. 10 Collar, pull, collar, pull Every collar thickens the wall. Every pull turns that thickness back into height.
  11. 11 Rim again, every couple of passes Clay is being driven up into it the whole time. Ignore it and it ripples, then splits.
  12. 12 Stop one pass before you want to Eye down to the profile, one careful pass, then off. Look at it again tomorrow.

11 · Straight answers

Eight things people ask at the wheel

Is collaring the same thing as necking or choking?
Yes. Collaring in, necking in, choking and constricting all describe the same move. Which word somebody uses mostly tells you who taught them. You will hear all four in this studio and none of them is more correct than the others.
How thick should the wall be before I start?
Thicker than the rest of the pot, and thicker than feels comfortable. There is no single number that works across every clay body and every size, which is why the instruction here is relative rather than absolute. A useful test is that the top third should still feel heavy and slightly clumsy when you run a finger up it. If it feels finished, it is too late.
How slow is slow?
Slower than throwing speed, and it keeps dropping as the neck narrows. Rather than chase a number, use the test in section 05. Slow it down until the pot stops looking like a solid object, then bring it back up slightly. That is your speed, and it is different for every pot, every clay body and every day.
Can I collar a pot that has gone leather hard?
No. Collaring relocates clay, and leather hard clay has stopped being willing to move. Pressure at that stage cracks the wall rather than shaping it. If a form needs to be narrowed after it has stiffened, that is a carving and joining problem rather than a throwing one.
My hands are small. Am I stuck?
Not at all, and it is worth saying that hand size matters much less here than contact does. Laced fingers give small hands more coverage than a linked ring does, and a chamois wrapped around the wall removes the question completely because the chamois is doing the reaching. Plenty of very good potters with small hands collar large pots.
Should I use a tool instead of my hands?
Learn it with hands first. Feel is most of this move, and a tool puts a layer between you and the wall at exactly the moment you most need to know what the wall is doing. Once the move is in your hands, a chamois or a soft rib is genuinely useful for clean unmarked necks.
Why does my pot get taller when I collar it?
Because clay does not compress. When the circumference shrinks, that clay has to go somewhere, and the two available directions are into the wall as thickness and up the wall as height. You get both. It surprises everybody the first time and then becomes the thing you rely on.
How long should it take to get decent at this?
Longer than centering, faster than trimming, and it depends almost entirely on how many repetitions you get rather than how many hours you spend. This is why the practice drill in section 08 matters so much. Throwing one whole bottle gives you one attempt at the neck. The drill gives you twenty in the same evening, and twenty attempts teaches roughly twenty times as much.

Where to go next

Now go make four bad ones

Reading about collaring is the cheap part, and you have just done it. The expensive part is the wheel time, and there is no version of this where somebody skips that. Your first neck is going to go oval. Your second is probably going to wring itself off. That is not a sign you misunderstood the page. That is the process working normally.

Your first neck will go oval and your second will probably wring itself off. That is the process working normally, not a sign you misread the page.

Take the checklist, take the drill, and go be bad at it for an evening.

Put it to work Gooseneck and skinny neck pots Three different routes to a dramatic neck, including throwing sticks and necks joined on afterward. Keep collaring Fully enclosed forms What happens when you do not stop, plus the one kiln rule a sealed pot cannot break. If it wrung off Why pots twist, and five fixes The failure mode collaring causes most often, taken apart properly on its own page. Round things Open and closed spheres Collaring a shoulder rather than a neck, and shaping against the air trapped inside. Before you collar Proportions and wall thickness How thick to leave things and why, which is most of whether a collar is going to work. Start over How to throw on the wheel Centering, opening and pulling walls, which all have to be solid before collaring is worth attempting.