Ceramic chains: links that still move after the kiln.

Watching teaches your hands. Reading teaches your memory.

Video is unbeatable for anything with a rhythm to it. You see how fast a coil gets rolled, how hard a thumb presses, what the clay looks like at the moment it is ready. None of that survives being written down.

What video is bad at is the thing you need three days later, with wet hands, at ten at night, trying to remember whether the joint gets scored before or after it goes around its neighbor. Nobody scrubs back through forty minutes of footage for one sentence. A numbered list you can hold up on a phone answers it in four seconds.

So both live here, side by side. Watch a maker do it once so your hands know what they are aiming at. Then work off the lists, because the lists are the part that comes back to you at the table. The videos are all from outside makers, credited by name, and none of them are ours.

Ten moves, and the two that actually decide it.

Two things break ceramic chains, and neither one is your sculpting. The joints crack, or the links fuse. Every move below exists to stop one of those.

1. Roll one test coil and measure it.

   Whatever thickness it lands at, that is your coil thickness. Everything else sizes off it.

2. Make the inside hole at least three times that thickness.

   Half inch coil, inch and a half hole, minimum. Any tighter and the chain will not swing.

3. Cut every coil to the same length.

   Mark the length on a strip of paper and cut against it. Same length in, same size link out.

4. Build it 12 percent bigger than you want it.

   Stoneware loses roughly a tenth of itself between wet and fired. A 24 inch chain gets built at about 27.

5. Cut both ends at a matching slant, not square.

   A slanted overlap has about twice the glued area of two flat ends pushed together at a shallow angle.

6. Score both faces, slip them, press, twist, then blend across the seam.

   Blend clay from each side over onto the other. A butted joint that was never bridged is a crack waiting.

7. Add a collar over every joint.

   A thin band of clay wrapped around the seam and blended in. It hides the join and doubles the clay there.

8. Thread the next coil through before you close it.

   This is the whole trick, and the one people forget on link four. Through first. Close second.

9. Dry it flat and slow, on sand, under plastic.

   A week minimum. Links shrink and drag on each other, and sand lets them slide instead of tearing.

10. Keep bare clay wherever links touch.

    Color or glaze only the outer faces and leave every inner face bare, or the glaze welds your chain into one solid object.

Search YouTube for: Making chain out of clay! OMG! step by step realistic chain tutorial!, by Ceramics by Julia Making chain out of clay! OMG! step by step realistic chain tutorial! Ceramics by Julia · 40:37 Watch on YouTube →

Forty minutes, one whole chain, start to finish

A 40 minute video from a home pottery studio. Its chapters cover rolling the coils, cutting and shaping links, joining them and final assembly. If you are short on time, the joining chapter starts at 16:05.

Rolled coil links. Start here.

This is the method almost everyone uses, and the one worth learning properly before you try anything cleverer. Ten steps, and only two of them are really about the chain; the rest is coil craft.

1. Wedge, then roll one test coil and measure it.

   You are setting the thickness that every other number keys off. Roll on canvas or a bare table, not on plastic, and keep your fingers spread so it thins evenly instead of growing a waist.

2. Roll every coil you need in one sitting, then cover them.

   Consistency comes from doing them all in a row while your hands are in the same rhythm. Slide them onto a board and wrap the lot in plastic so nothing stiffens while you work.

3. Cut them all to one length against a paper strip.

   Cut a strip of paper to your coil length and lay it beside each coil. Not a ruler. A strip you can lay flat and cut against is faster and more accurate than reading numbers thirty times.

4. Cut both ends at a slant, in opposite directions.

   Hold the knife at a low angle, about 30 degrees to the length of the coil. The two ends have to mate face to face when the coil bends round, so the slants go opposite ways. At 30 degrees that doubles the joint area of square ends, and a steeper 45 degree cut still adds about half again.

5. Score both slanted faces and slip them.

   Cross hatch hard enough to see the marks, both faces, then a thin coat of slip made from the same clay. Slip made from your own scraps beats water and beats slip from another body.

6. Wrap it around a former and press the joint home.

   A dowel or a marker wrapped in a strip of newspaper gives every link the same hole and releases cleanly. Press the ends together and give them a small twist so the faces actually mate instead of kissing.

7. Blend clay across the seam from both sides.

   This is the step that separates a chain that lasts from one that does not. Drag clay from each side over onto the other with a wooden tool, so the seam is bridged rather than butted. Both faces, all the way round.

8. Add a collar and blend it in.

   A thin band of clay wrapped over the joint and smoothed into the link. It hides the seam, doubles the thickness at the weakest point, and if you do it on every link it reads as a design decision.

9. Thread the next coil through before you close it.

   From here on, link two goes through link one while it is still an open arc. Everyone forgets this once. Everyone only forgets it once.

10. Set each finished pair down flat and covered.

    Do not hang the chain, do not coil it tight, do not let it take its own weight. Flat, supported, covered, from the first link to the last.

Search YouTube for: Making chain out of clay! OMG! step by step realistic chain tutorial!, by Ceramics by Julia Making chain out of clay! OMG! step by step realistic chain tutorial! Ceramics by Julia · 40:37 Watch on YouTube →

The whole method, start to finish

The same home studio video in full. Its chapters take you from rolling the coils through cutting links, joining them and final assembly.

Search YouTube for: Making a Ceramic Chain | Xirix Studio, by Xirix Studio Making a Ceramic Chain | Xirix Studio Xirix Studio · 16:31 Watch on YouTube →

A shorter take, different hands

Worth watching second, because the small differences are where you find your own way of working. This one is a chain attached to a vase, and the description says the vase cracked while drying, so there is no finished reveal.

Slab-cut rings, where only half the links have a seam.

If the joint is enemy number one, the smartest move available is to build a chain that only has half as many joints. Cut your rings whole from a slab and only open every second one. It is a flatter, more graphic look than rolled coils, and it is structurally the safer method.

1. Roll a slab a touch thicker than your intended coil.

   Slabs give you a flatter, more graphic link than a rolled coil. On our slab rollers, one pass at your chosen setting; you want it even more than you want it thin.

2. Cut whole rings with two round cutters.

   A larger cutter for the outside, a smaller one centered inside it for the hole. What comes out is a flat ring with no seam anywhere in it, which is the entire point of this method.

3. Cut every second ring open, and only those.

   One clean cut through the band. Those are the links you will thread and rejoin. The whole ones never get touched, so half your chain has zero joints and cannot crack at a seam.

4. Soften the cut ends and slant them.

   Same joint craft as method one. Slant the two faces so they overlap, score, slip, and press.

5. Thread and close, alternating.

   Whole ring, cut ring, whole ring, cut ring. The cut ring goes through both of its neighbors before it closes.

6. Blend and collar every join.

   Only half as many joins to make as method one, so give each one twice the attention. Blend across from both faces, then collar.

The firing is where chains become sculptures of chains.

Bisque is the easy one. At cone 05 there is no glass in the room, so links touching each other come apart fine. Lay the chain flat on a scatter of sand so it can shrink and slide, keep it loose, and it will be waiting for you.

The glaze firing is the whole problem. At cone 5½ the glaze is molten, and molten glaze between two links is solder. There is no careful version of this. If glass is present where clay meets clay, they fuse.

The four options

• Fire flat and loose, on a cookie you made, with alumina or sand scattered on it. Everything in a glaze firing sits on a cookie or a catcher here, every time, and a chain covers more shelf than almost anything else you will make. Roll a slab of your own scrap clay a little wider than the nest the chain sits in, bisque it, and scatter alumina or sand over it. A taut chain pulls at its own joints as it shrinks the last few percent, so lay it loose either way.
• Wax resist plus alumina on any contact zone you are unsure about. The same trick used on lidded jars, and it works here.
• Never stack anything on a chain. A shelf post landing on a link is a broken link. Staff load every kiln here, so tell the studio team how the chain should sit and what you brought to go under it.
• Assume one or two links will fuse anyway on your first attempt. Build two spare links into the length so a rescue still leaves you with a chain.

Search YouTube for: How to glaze fire beads, ornaments and ceramic jewellery without them sticking to kiln shelf, EASY!, by Karen Wilde Art How to glaze fire beads, ornaments and ceramic jewellery without them sticking to kiln shelf, EASY! Karen Wilde Art · 6:50 Watch on YouTube →

Firing small pieces so they do not stick to anything

A 7 minute video on firing fully glazed small pieces without them sticking to the kiln shelf, by building a clay shelf with high temp wire hooks to hang them from. It is about beads, so we show it for the idea of keeping glazed pieces apart. Check with us before trying any wire in a kiln.

Bisque firings are free here, every time. Glaze firings are priced on the box the piece fits inside: a $4.80 flat rate covers anything small, then five cents per cubic inch above that, and small pieces that fit together on one 6 inch kiln cookie with a quarter inch between them count as one piece under 125 cubic inches. A chain measured coiled into a nest takes up a lot less box than one measured stretched out. The firing calculator will do the sums, and you can pay for a firing here.

The rest of it.