Throwing Techniques
Folding the rim over.
A big bowl or a planter lives and dies at the rim. Fold the top inch of the wall back down against itself, press it flat, and the weakest ring on the pot becomes the strongest one at exactly double thickness, using clay that was already sitting there doing nothing. Here is what the fold buys you, five ways to get a fat rim, the move itself step by step, and the quiet mistake that takes a chip off the rim in the glaze firing three weeks later.
Fold the top inch of the wall back down against itself, press it flat, and the weakest ring on the pot becomes the strongest one. Here is the move in six steps, the three ways it goes wrong at the wheel, and a list short enough to keep open on your phone.
Written for members of The Clay Hole, and useful to anybody with a wheel. All six videos on this page belong to somebody else, all six are free, and nothing from YouTube loads until you press play.
Written for members of The Clay Hole, and useful to anybody with a wheel. Both videos belong to somebody else, both are free, and nothing from YouTube loads until you press play.
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The whole move in six sentences.
A rim is a ring, and a ring fails by going oval. How hard a ring is to squash out of round climbs with the cube of how thick it is, so doubling the section of the top ring makes it roughly eight times harder to pull out of shape. Folding the top inch of the wall back down against itself and pressing it flat doubles it in one move, using clay that was already up there.
That is why the fold is not decoration. It keeps a wide bowl round on the shelf, it gives a full planter something to be carried by, and it slows the rim down so it stops drying miles ahead of the base.
The one decision
Fold it if the rim will ever take a load, either a hand lifting the pot or its own width trying to pull it oval. Under about eight inches across, usually skip it. Ten inches and up, usually do it.
The one warning
Take the edge all the way down and press it into the wall until the two faces join, then squeeze the band between a finger inside and a finger outside. A fold left round, with the faces only touching, seals a hollow tube of wet air the whole way around your rim, and that pot can throw a chip off weeks later in the glaze firing.
How to use this page
Read the list. Then watch the hands.
Video is the only thing that shows you timing and pressure. How slowly the wheel is actually turning. How little force the fold takes. How long somebody waits before committing. No sentence carries that, and every potter who has ever written “gently” knows it.
Words are the only thing you can re-scan with a wet hand halfway through the move. A list holds still. A video does not, and scrubbing back thirty seconds with clay on your fingers while a pot goes soft is its own small disaster.
They also land differently. Reading forces the move into an order and puts a name on each part, and naming a step is most of what makes it repeatable next week. Watching gives your hands a picture to copy. People who get both hold on to more of it than people who get either one alone, which is why every method below comes with a numbered list and a demonstration, and why the lists are written short enough to read off a phone propped against a splash pan.
The shape itself
A rim you can hold.
A folded rim is the top inch or so of the wall bent back down against itself and pressed flat, so the pot finishes at exactly double thickness instead of finishing at an edge. Flat on top, straight on both faces, solid all the way through, and ending in a crisp step where the folded edge is welded shut. It has turned up on jars and bowls from more or less every clay-using culture on earth for two reasons that have not changed since: it makes the rim strong, and it gives a hand something to hold.
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Plain rim
The wall runs up and stops. One thickness of clay at the point where the ring is least supported, which is why a wide one goes oval somewhere between the wheel and the shelf.
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Thickened rim
Clay left behind on the last pull. A lump rather than a made shape: thicker than plain, never quite even around, and it still costs you the height.
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Folded outward
The top of the wall taken back down the outside and pressed flat. Exactly double thickness, flat on top, parallel faces, and a crisp step underneath that a finger hooks into. The inside of the pot stays dead straight.
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Folded inward
The same fold taken down the inside instead. The outside of the pot stays flush and the doubled band sits inside the mouth, which is why an inward fold narrows the opening and why the step it leaves is the one you cannot see while you glaze.
Not the same thing
A fold and a thick rim are not interchangeable. A rim that is thick because you never pulled the clay out of it is a lump, and it is only as even as your last pull was. A fold is made: two faces welded flat, one thickness doubled exactly, a shadow line underneath, and a line the eye can follow all the way around the pot. That is most of the difference between a bowl that stops and a bowl that finishes.
Why it works
Why a fold beats a thick rim.
Four things happen when you fold, and only one of them is about how it looks.
It turns the rim into a hoop
The top of a pot is a ring, and a ring does not fail by snapping. It fails by going oval. How hard a ring is to squash out of round climbs with the cube of how thick it is across, so doubling the section of that top ring makes it roughly eight times harder to pull out of shape. A fold doubles it in one move, in about ninety seconds, using clay that was already sitting up there.
It evens out the drying
A rim is the most exposed part of a pot and normally the first thing to go stiff, which is exactly what pulls a wide bowl oval on the shelf and tears the floor of a planter away from its wall. A fold puts the thickest clay on the pot at the most exposed point, so the rim and the base finish closer to together. It buys you days, and on a big planter days are the whole game.
It gives a heavy pot a handle
A fourteen inch planter with wet soil in it is a two-handed lift, and there is nothing on a plain rim to hold on to. Take the fold down the outside and you have built a step that fingers hook under without thinking. Nobody notices it until the first time they carry the pot, and then they never stop noticing it.
It gives the form a top
Wide shapes look unresolved when they taper away to nothing. A folded band reads as a decision: a flat top, a hard shadow line under the step, and a place where glaze goes thin over the edge and pools under it. It is the cheapest thing you can do to make a pot look like somebody meant it.
Worth knowing
None of this replaces compressing the rim. A fold makes the ring stiffer, but a rim that was never compressed still carries the loose particle structure that turns into a crack later. Do both. There is a whole page on compressing the floor and the rim if you want the reasoning.
The decision
Fold it, or leave it alone.
There is a table below, and the table is really only encoding one question. Ask the question first and you will almost never need the table.
Ask this
Will this rim ever take a load? Either a hand lifting the pot by it, or the pot’s own width trying to pull it oval. If the answer to either half is yes, fold it. If the answer is no, a fold is decoration, and decoration has to earn the weight it adds.
| What you are making | Fold it? | Which one, and why |
|---|---|---|
| Mug, cup, tumbler | No | A fold doubles the weight at the exact place your lip goes. Compress the rim, soften it with a chamois, and leave it alone. |
| Cereal or soup bowl, six to eight inches | Optional | A small inward roll if you want the softer lip. It will hold heat and it will hold glaze, so keep the glaze thin in the groove. |
| Serving bowl, ten to fourteen inches | Yes | Outward fold. This is the size where a plain rim starts going oval somewhere between the wheel and the shelf and you never catch it happening. |
| Planter under eight inches | Optional | Skip it unless you want the look. Small planters do not get carried by the rim, and the fold eats height you probably wanted for roots. |
| Planter ten inches and up | Yes | Outward fold, and be generous with it. This is the pot that gets picked up full, in a hurry, by somebody who is not thinking about your rim. |
| Wide shallow form, birdbath, low bowl | Yes | Outward fold plus a rib run down the outside to blend the step. On a shallow form the rim is doing nearly all the structural work on its own. |
| Vase, bottle, anything with a neck | Usually not | A neck is already a collar, and a collar is already a hoop. Folding here mostly just makes a small opening smaller. A shallow fold on a neck is a style choice, not a repair. |
| Anything thrown in sections | Yes | Fold the top section after the join, when the form is one piece. If the wall has already stiffened past bending, add a coil instead. |
7 Bowls, 7 Ways! How to Throw and Alter Seven Types of Bowls on the Pottery Wheel
Bill van Gilder
What to watch for
- He treats the rim as the last design decision rather than the last chore, which is the shift this whole page is asking you to make.
- Watch how differently the same bowl reads once the rim changes. Nothing else about the form moves.
- Note how much of the rim work happens with the wheel barely turning. That is the single most copyable habit here.
- He has fifty years in clay and still cuts the rim level before he does anything decorative to it.
Before anything else
Cut the rim level first.
A fold copies whatever is underneath it and then makes it twice as obvious. Feed a rim that sits an eighth of an inch high on one side into a fold and you get a band that is an eighth of an inch deeper on one side, which the eye finds instantly on a wide pot even though it never found the original wobble.
Trim your Rim like a Pro! 4 Easy to Master Ways
MW Ceramics
Four ways to take a clean ring off the top of a pot, including the two that do not need a needle tool. Watch it on YouTube.
The needle tool version, in four moves
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Finish the last pull and let it settle
Hands off, one or two turns, so the wall stops moving before you measure anything against it.
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Push the needle through at low speed
Rest the needle against the outside of the wall an inch or so down, one finger inside as a backstop, and push straight in until you feel them meet.
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Hold dead still for one full turn
You are not cutting. The wheel is cutting. The only job your hand has is to not move.
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Lift the ring away and soften what is left
Take the ring off with the needle still through it so it cannot fall back into the pot, then one pass with a damp chamois or a fingertip to take the edge off the cut.
The options
Five ways to a fat rim.
Three of these are folds, one avoids the fold entirely, and one is the answer when the pot has already gone too stiff to bend. They are ordered by how often we reach for them, not by difficulty.
The outward fold
Flare the top inch out to about forty five degrees, take the edge all the way back down against the outside of the wall, and press the whole band flat. You end up with a straight doubled band, a flat top, and a step on the outside where fingers can find it.
Best for: planters, big serving bowls, anything that gets carried.
Hardest part: getting the flare even before you commit, and taking the fold all the way down instead of stopping when it looks round.
The inward fold
The same flare, taken down the inside instead. The outside of the pot stays flush, the doubled band sits inside the mouth, and the seam is hidden from anybody looking at the pot from across a room. The cost is a step on the inside face that collects glaze where you cannot easily see it.
Best for: ramen and noodle bowls, anything you want to feel solid in two hands, anything where the outside profile has to stay clean.
Hardest part: compressing a band you cannot get a rib behind easily.
Flatten, then fold
Instead of flaring, press the top half inch flat with a finger or a rib until it is a horizontal ledge, then take the outer edge straight down. A flat ledge shows you its own errors in a way a flare does not, so it is easier to keep even, and it starts flat so it finishes flat. This is the version most people land on the first try.
Best for: your first six attempts, and any pot where the rim has to be visibly true.
Hardest part: not pressing the ledge so thin that it tears when it bends.
The collared thick rim, with no fold at all
Leave the top inch heavy on every pull and never thin it, then true it with a wet finger and a rib. No seam, no trapped air, and no way to get it wrong late. The trade is that you have to plan it from the first pull, it will never be as even as a fold, and the clay parked up there is clay you are not using for height.
Best for: pots where a sealed void would worry you.
Hardest part: resisting the urge to pull that band thin on pulls two and three.
The added coil
Score and slip a soft coil onto a firm rim, weld it down properly, and true it on a slow wheel with wet hands. This is the answer for sectional work and for anything already too stiff to bend, and it is the only method here that lets you put a doubled rim on a pot you threw yesterday.
Best for: pots thrown in sections, and rescues.
Hardest part: welding it thoroughly enough. A coil that is only stuck on will come off in the bisque. Our score and slip page and the coil blending page both cover the join.
Which one should you actually use?
Method 3, until it is boring. Flatten and fold is the same physics as method 1 with a much smaller window for error, and once you can do it without thinking you will find yourself flaring instead, because a flare is faster and needs one pass fewer.
Methods 4 and 5 are specialist answers. Reach for them when the pot tells you to, not because they sound more advanced.
The rolled rim is a different thing
You will see potters stop the fold halfway and leave the edge curled into a round bead rather than pressing it down flat. That is a rolled rim, it is a real and old technique, and it looks lovely on a rose bowl. It is also the same move stopped early, which means the two faces are touching rather than welded and there is a hollow running around the inside of it. On a mug that is nobody’s problem. On a fourteen inch planter going into a glaze firing it is the thing that takes a chip off your rim. Everything on this page teaches the flat version for that reason.
Throwing a Pottery Bowl with a rolled rim on the wheel
Ingleton Pottery
He flattens the rim into a ledge and then takes it over, which is method 3, and he leaves his round rather than pressing it flat. Watch the hands anyway: this is the clearest close-up on the internet of where the finger actually sits. Watch it on YouTube.
How to Throw a Rolled Rim Ramen Bowl
Amy Palatnick
The inward direction on a form that has to feel right in two hands, which is a different brief from a planter. Another rolled one rather than a flat one, so watch the direction and the support hand rather than the finished profile. Watch it on YouTube.
The move
The outward fold, in ten steps.
The outward fold, in six steps.
This is method 1, written out in full. Everything here applies to the inward fold as well, with the direction of step seven reversed.
The whole move, start to finish. Reverse step four and you have the inward fold instead.
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Leave the clay up there
On your last pull, stop thinning about an inch and a half from the top. You want that band finishing at roughly twice the thickness of the wall below it. This is the step people skip, and there is no recovering from it: if you pull the rim thin and then decide to fold, there is nothing left to bend.
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Cut the rim level
Needle tool, low speed, one full turn, lift the ring away. Full method in the section above. Do this before the fold, never after.
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Slow the wheel right down
About a third of throwing speed. Everything from here is a shaping move rather than a lifting move, and speed only supplies force you did not ask for. On anything over ten inches, slower still.
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Wet the top band and nothing else
A wet rim bends. A wet wall goes soft under the load you are about to hang on it. One slick pass with a wet fingertip over the top inch is plenty, and if the rim is already slippery, skip this entirely.
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Flare it out
Two fingers inside the rim, one finger outside as a backstop, and open the top inch out to roughly forty five degrees over two or three turns. Go around more times with less pressure rather than fewer times with more. The flare is where the evenness of the finished band is decided.
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Check the flare before you commit
Drop your eye to rim level and sight across it. If the flare is wider on one side, even it out now. Once the edge is rolled you cannot fix it without unrolling it, and unrolling wet clay is how a rim tears.
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Take it down
Lay the pad of your index finger on the very outer edge of the flare and press down and inward, toward the wall, while the other hand supports the underside. Keep going until the edge is flat against the wall. Do not stop when it looks round: a fold left round is a fold with a gap in the middle of it. The bend at the top wants to be a smooth turn rather than a sharp crease, so if you see a hard line opening on the outside of it you are going too fast.
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Weld it, do not park it
Once the edge is against the wall, keep going and press it into the wall so the two faces join instead of resting on each other. Then squeeze the whole band between a finger outside and a finger inside for a turn or two, top to bottom, so there is nowhere left for air to sit. This one movement decides whether you built a solid doubled rim or a hollow tube. The next section is about why that matters.
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Compress the band flat
A straight wooden rib held steady against the outside of the band for two or three turns, with a finger inside behind it, and a flat finger or the rib laid across the top to true the rim. You are looking for parallel faces and a flat top, not a round profile. This is the step that turns a folded-over edge into a made shape.
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Blend the step underneath
Below the fold the wall goes from double thickness to single in about a quarter of an inch, and that step is where a drying crack likes to start. Run a rib down the outside from the band into the wall until the change is a slope rather than a shelf. Thirty seconds now, and you will not meet that crack in ten days.
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Leave the top inch and a half thick, then cut it level
Stop thinning about an inch and a half down on your last pull, so that band finishes at roughly twice the wall thickness. Then take a level ring off the top with a needle tool at low speed. There is no recovering from a rim you already pulled thin.
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Slow the wheel and wet only the top inch
About a third of throwing speed, and one slick pass with a wet fingertip over the band you are folding. A wet wall below it just goes soft under the load.
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Flare that band out to about forty five degrees
Two fingers inside, one outside as a backstop, over two or three turns. Then drop your eye to rim level and even it up before you commit, because once it is rolled you cannot fix it.
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Take the outer edge down flat against the wall
The pad of your index finger on the very outer edge, pressing down and toward the wall, with the other hand supporting the underside. All the way down. Do not stop when it looks round.
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Press the edge into the wall until it joins
Not until it touches. Until it joins. Then squeeze the whole band between a finger inside and a finger outside. An edge that only touches seals a hollow tube of wet air around the whole rim, and that pot can throw a chip off in the glaze firing weeks later.
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Compress the band flat, then blend the step underneath
A straight rib held still against the band for two or three turns, with a finger inside behind it. Then run the rib down the outside so the jump from double thickness to single becomes a slope instead of a shelf. That shelf is where drying cracks start.
How To Throw A Planter On The Pottery Wheel // with a folded rim
Calder van Andel
If you only watch one thing on this page, watch this one. Watch it on YouTube.
Where the steps above show up
- He keeps the top of the wall visibly heavier than the rest all the way through the pulls. That is step one, and it is the whole reason the fold works later.
- Watch the wheel speed drop before the rim work starts. Nobody announces it, and it is the difference between a clean band and an oval.
- His supporting hand never leaves the underside of the flare. Copy that before you copy anything else.
- He carries on into trimming, which is worth staying for. A folded rim changes how the pot sits when you flip it.
How To Throw A Planter On The Pottery Wheel // with a folded rim
Calder van Andel
The whole move on a real planter, including the trimming afterwards. Watch it on YouTube.
Throwing a Pottery Bowl with a rolled rim on the wheel
Ingleton Pottery
Shot close enough to see exactly where the finger sits during the roll. Watch it on YouTube.
The expensive one
The tube you did not mean to make.
Take a flare down until it touches the wall and stop there, and you have not made a fold. You have made a hollow ring running the whole way around your pot, sealed at both ends, full of damp air. A folded rim is meant to be solid clay, doubled: flat top, straight faces, nothing inside it.
Nothing happens for a while. It throws fine. It looks right. It goes on the shelf looking like the best pot of the night.
Then the pot dries everywhere except inside that tube, because the water in there has no route out except through a quarter inch of clay in every direction. It goes into the bisque still holding some. A bisque to cone 05 is slow and forgiving and it usually survives, so the pot comes out looking fine, gets glazed, and goes into a glaze firing to cone 5½. Somewhere on the way up, the last of that water leaves in a hurry and takes a piece of your rim with it.
The fix is not clever. It is step eight: press the leading edge into the wall so the two faces actually join, then squeeze the band between two fingers for a turn. Weld it, do not park it.
If you are ever not sure
Put one small hole through the underside of the band with a needle tool and leave it there. It vents the ring, it is invisible on a finished pot because it sits under the step, and it costs you nothing. A hole you can see beats a pocket you cannot.
Bisque firings here are free and run to cone 05. Glaze firings run to cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve minute hold, and they are charged by size. A rim that blows in the glaze firing takes the glaze fee with it, which is the part that stings.
At scale
Big bowls and big planters.
Everything above still applies. Five things change, and all five of them are about the fact that a big pot is softer, heavier and slower than it feels while you are looking at it.
Throwing and Trimming a Large Pottery Stoneware Bowl, Narrated
Florian Gadsby
Not a folded rim, and that is the point: watch how much care a large rim needs even when nothing is being done to it. Watch it on YouTube.
What changes at scale
- There is more clay up there than you think. On a fourteen inch bowl, the top inch and a half of wall is a surprising volume, and once you have thinned it you cannot get it back. Decide about the fold before the last pull, not after it.
- Every pass is a longer trip. A wide rim takes real time to get around once, and the clay is going soft the whole time. Four gentle passes, not one firm one.
- Support opposite every pressure. A wide ring is easy to push oval and almost impossible to push back. If one hand is pressing, the other hand is behind it.
- Above twelve to fourteen inches, consider two pieces. Most people get a better pot throwing in sections and joining. Fold the rim after the join, when the wall underneath can carry it.
- Throw it on a bat and move the bat. A fresh folded band is the heaviest, softest part of the pot and it is exactly where hands want to grab. See getting the pot off the wheel.
Worth saying out loud
Glaze firings here are priced by size, at five cents a cubic inch with a $4.80 minimum, so a big planter with a generous fold is a real line item before you have made six of them. Bisque is free. That is not a reason to make smaller work, it is a reason to know the number before you commit a shelf to it. Our jumping up in size page covers the rest of what changes when the pots get big.
After the wheel
Drying a pot with a fat rim.
The fold is now the thickest clay on the pot, which is the opposite of the usual problem and mostly good news. It only turns against you if you let the outside of the band go stiff while the clay inside the fold is still soft.
Cover it loosely, for longer than feels necessary
A dry cleaner bag draped over the whole pot for the first day or two, then over the rim only. Loose, not wrapped tight. You are slowing the rim down to let the base catch up.
Big planters want a week
Not a day. Not overnight because the kiln deadline is Thursday. A twelve inch planter with a folded rim is thick clay in two different thicknesses and it needs the time.
The step underneath is the crack line
If you blended it with a rib on the wheel you are mostly fine. If you did not, put a strip of plastic around just that band so it dries last, and expect to see a hairline there if you skip it.
Trim by the wall, not the rim
The band will still be soft when the wall feels ready, because it is twice as thick. Judge leather hard by the wall, then give the pot another day before it goes anywhere near the bisque shelf.
Flip it onto something soft
When you turn a folded pot over to trim it, the band is the only thing touching the wheel head and it carries the whole weight. Pad it, or chuck it. A dent in a folded rim is permanent and very visible.
No fans, no sun, no vents
Directed airflow dries the outside of the band and does nothing for the clay inside the fold, which is the exact gradient you spent all this effort avoiding. Still air, covered, patient.
Glazing
The step under the fold.
An outward fold leaves an overhanging step on the underside of the band, and whichever way up you dip the pot, that step catches. It is the single most common reason a clean folded rim comes out of the kiln with a run down one side.
Dipping
The step holds two or three times the glaze of the wall next to it. After you dip, run a clean fingertip or a barely damp sponge once around the underside of the band while the glaze is still soft. It takes four seconds and it is the whole fix. Our dipping glazes page has the rest of the technique.
Brushing
Give the band the same number of coats as everything else and resist the urge to load it up. The flat top of a fold is the most exposed surface on the pot, so it will read richer than the wall for the same coats, not thinner. Adding a fifth coat there is how you get a curtain.
Anything that moves
The flat top of a fold is a shelf of glaze sitting at the top of a vertical wall, which is the best possible starting position for a run. If you are reaching for a flux or a glaze that is known to move, either keep it off the fold or put the pot on a glaze catcher and a kiln cookie and mean it.
Inward folds hide their own problem
The step is on the inside face where you cannot see it from above. Check it by feel before the pot goes on the cart, because a pooled ring of glaze on the inside of a bowl is not something you find out about until it comes back fused to a shelf.
A better use for the same step
That step is also the best glaze break on the pot. A darker glaze over a lighter one goes thin over the hard edge at the top of the band and pools in the step underneath, which draws the line around the rim for you. Worth playing with deliberately rather than fighting. The glaze finder will show you which of ours break hardest.
Troubleshooting
Eight ways this goes wrong.
Three ways this goes wrong.
All eight are fixable, and six of them are fixable before you finish the pot. The order below is roughly how often we see them.
These are the three that will happen tonight. All three are fixed before the pot leaves the wheel.
The outside of the fold cracked open
The clay was too stiff to bend that far, or you creased it instead of turning it. Fold sooner, keep the bend at the top a generous curve rather than a sharp corner, and slick the outside of it with a wet finger before you take the edge down. A crack that opens during the fold will not close again by smoothing it over.
The rim went oval
Pressure on one side with nothing supporting the other, almost always. Slow the wheel further, and never push on a flare without a finger or thumb behind it. Once a wide rim is oval you are not getting it round again without losing the fold.
The band is deeper on one side
The rim was not level, or the flare was not even. Both of those happen before the fold goes down and neither can be fixed after it. Sight across the rim at eye level after you flare, every time, on every pot.
The wall collapsed under the fold
The wall below was too thin to carry a doubled rim, or too wet, or both. The band immediately under a fold wants to be at least as thick as the rest of the wall and often a touch more. See our page on throwing proportions and wall thickness.
The band sags outward
Too much water, or too much time. A flare that has been sitting wet goes soft from the outside in and then droops under its own weight. Work faster or work drier. If it has already started, stop, let the pot firm up for twenty minutes, and compress it flat then.
The pot came out shorter than you wanted
Folding takes about an inch and a half off the height, always, no exceptions. Throw it that much taller than the finished pot you have in your head. Everybody learns this once and then never forgets it.
A crack appeared right under the fold while drying
That is the thickness step you did not blend. Rib it out on the wheel next time. On this pot, clay mender and a slower dry may carry it through the bisque, but a crack that reaches the inside face is usually telling you the truth.
A chip blew off the rim in the glaze firing
Sealed air and trapped water. Nothing you can do to that pot now, and nothing wrong with your glaze. Read the section on the tube again and weld the seam on the next one, or vent the band with a needle.
At the wheel
The list, for propping against a splash pan.
No reasoning, no reading. Just the order. Print it or leave the page open on your phone.
Before you fold
- Top inch and a half stays thick on the last pull
- Rim cut level with a needle tool
- Wheel down to about a third speed
- Wet the top inch only
The fold
- Flare that band to about forty five degrees
- Two or three passes, light pressure
- Sight across the rim and even it up
- Take the outer edge down flat against the wall
- Support the underside with the other hand
- Press the edge into the wall until it joins
- Squeeze the band between two fingers, one turn
Before you walk away
- Compress the band flat with a straight rib
- Blend the step underneath into a slope
- Cover the pot loosely for a day or two
The one that matters most
Press the edge into the wall, not just against it. Everything else on this list costs you a pot that looks slightly wrong. That one costs you a pot that looks perfect for three weeks and then chips in the kiln.
Questions
Questions we actually get.
How much height does a folded rim cost me?
About an inch and a half, and it is not negotiable, because that is the clay you are folding. Throw the pot that much taller than the one you want. On a form where the height really matters, use the collared thick rim instead: it costs you evenness rather than height.
Can I fold the rim on a pot I threw yesterday?
Not by bending it. Leather hard clay creases and tears rather than curling, and once it has cracked at the bend there is no fixing it. What you can do is add a coil: score the rim, slip it, weld a soft coil on, and compress it true on a slow wheel with plenty of water. It will not look identical to a fold, and honestly it often looks better.
Which of our clay bodies folds best?
Anything with grog or specks in it takes a fold more forgivingly than a smooth body, because the coarser particles hold the outside of the bend together while it stretches. B-Mix w/Grog is the easiest of our eight and the obvious pick for a big planter. #16 Porcelain is the hardest: it is the least forgiving body in the building and a fold records every hesitation you had. It is worth doing eventually. It is not worth doing first.
Do I have to vent the fold with a needle?
Not if you welded the seam properly, because then there is no void to vent. If you are not sure, one hole under the overhang is free insurance and nobody will ever see it. Plenty of potters vent every folded rim as a habit and never think about it again.
Does a folded rim survive trimming?
Yes, and it makes trimming easier, because the pot has a stiff true ring to sit on when you flip it. The catch is that the band is then the only thing touching the wheel head and it takes the whole weight of the pot plus whatever pressure you apply. Chuck it or pad it. Our page on trimming and turning covers holding awkward forms.
Does the fold have to be at the top?
No. The same move partway up a form gives you a raised band, which is a nice thing to carve into or to run a glaze break along. On a lidded form a fold near the top can become a gallery for the lid to sit in, which we cover on the lidded jar with a gallery page. Everything about trapped air applies just as much halfway up.
Is a folded rim food safe?
The clay is, once it is fired to cone 5½ with a food safe glaze. The thing worth watching is not the fold, it is the pool of glaze the step can collect, which is a thickness problem rather than anything sinister and shows up as crazing or pinholes. Keep the glaze even in the step and it is a non-issue.
Can I fold a rim on a handbuilt pot?
You can, and coil builders have been doing it for thousands of years, but you are doing it by hand all the way around instead of letting the wheel do the repeating for you. Roll a coil, weld it to the top edge inside and out, and shape it with a damp sponge and a rib. Expect it to take a good deal longer and to need more attention to the join.
Go and do it
Fold something you do not care about.
The move takes about ninety seconds once you know it, and about six pots to know it. Throw a wide cylinder you have no plans for, cut the rim level, and fold it. Then throw another one and do it with the wheel slower. Then a third, and take it down the inside instead.
The clay goes back in the reclaim either way, which makes this the cheapest lesson in the building. The pots that matter can wait until your hands already know where to go.
The clay goes back in the reclaim either way, which makes this the cheapest lesson in the building. If you want the reasoning behind any of it, the five methods, the physics and the eight failure modes, switch to the Comprehensive Version at the top of the page.
Compressing the floor and the rim
The other half of a rim that survives. A fold makes the ring stiff; compression makes the clay itself sound.
Planters with an attached drip tray
The most common home for a folded rim in this building, and a whole build of its own.
Jumping up in size
What actually changes between a three pound pot and a twelve pound one, other than your forearms.
Collaring in
The other way to build a hoop into a pot, and the move the collared thick rim borrows from.
Using ribs while you throw
Compressing a folded band flat and blending the step underneath are both rib jobs. Here is which rib and why.
Clay Hole University
Every technique page we have, in one place, with the lessons in an order that makes sense.
Compressing the floor and the rim
The other half of a rim that survives. A fold makes the ring stiff; compression makes the clay itself sound.
Planters with an attached drip tray
The most common home for a folded rim in this building, and a whole build of its own.
Clay Hole University
Every technique page we have, in one place, with the lessons in an order that makes sense.
Which version would you like to print?
Videos come out as a labelled box with the title and channel to search for, since paper does not play them.