Wheel throwing
Oil Bottles and Cruets
Every other pot you make gets judged by its outside. A cruet gets judged by a hole. Hit the size of the mouth and the rest is just a nice bottle. Miss it by two millimeters and you have made an expensive vase, because the spout you bought will either rattle around in it or refuse to go in at all.
Jump to a section
The short version
Buy the spout first. Then throw a pot around it.
The one number
Throw the wet mouth at 22 mm and it finishes at about 19 mm, which is what a standard oil and vinegar pour spout is built for. That holds on every clay body we stock, from 52 Buff to porcelain.
A cruet is an easy pot with one hard number in it. The belly is a cylinder you pushed out from the inside. The foot is a foot. The part that decides whether you own a bottle or a vase is a hole you cannot see into, and you have to be right about it two firings before you find out.
Clay shrinks as it dries and fires, and a hole shrinks along with it. So the wet mouth has to be roughly two and a half millimeters wider than the one you want. Glaze inside the neck eats about a millimeter more, which is why we keep glaze out of the neck entirely and let the vitrified clay do the sealing.
Pour spouts cost a few dollars for a pack of twelve at any grocery store or bar supply. Buy them before you sit down, keep one on the bench next to your calipers, and measure the one you actually own rather than trusting our number.
01 · The idea
You are not throwing a bottle. You are throwing a hole.
Do this before you touch clay
Buy the spout or the cork first. Then measure it with calipers and write the number down. Everything else on this page is downstream of that one measurement, and nobody on the internet can hand it to you, because your spout is not our spout.
A cruet is a small bottle that pours oil or vinegar in a thin controlled line. Oil bottle, dressing bottle, drizzler, soy bottle, dish soap bottle. Same pot, different thing living in it.
Almost nothing about the form is difficult. The belly is a cylinder you pushed out from the inside. The foot is a foot. If you can throw a mug you can throw the body of a cruet this afternoon.
What makes it a real project is that the working part is a hole you cannot see into and cannot get a finger into. It has to be a specific size when it comes out of the second firing, and you have to hit that size while the clay is soaking wet, before it shrinks by roughly a tenth of itself, and before glaze puts some of that thickness back.
So the order of operations runs backwards compared to every other pot you have made. Decide the finished hole. Work back to the wet hole. Then throw a bottle around it.
That is the whole page. The rest is detail, and the detail is worth having, because a cruet with a mouth two millimeters out is not a pot you can rescue later.
02 · Why this page reads like this
Watching teaches your hands. Reading teaches your order.
What the video does better
Pressure. How hard a collaring hand actually squeezes, how slowly the wheel is turning, what a neck looks like in the half second before it gives up. No sentence has ever taught any of those, and we are not going to try.
There are dozens of oil bottle videos on YouTube. Eight of the ones we think are worth your time are further down this page. So it is fair to ask why anyone would sit and read about it as well.
Because the two are good at different things, and this form is a clean example of the split.
A video is continuous, and you are not. You have wet hands, a wheel that is already spinning, and about four seconds between one decision and the next. Watching somebody do the whole thing end to end gives you a feeling of competence that does not survive contact with your own wheel. What you took away was the shape of it. What you actually needed was the order, the two places where you stop and measure, and the number you were supposed to have written down before you sat down.
Reading has a second advantage, and it is a dull one. A page holds still. A video plays at its own speed and you cannot pause it with clay on your thumb. A list stays exactly where you left it and is still there when you look down.
There is also decent evidence that the two together stick better than either one alone. Watching gives you the picture. Reading the same thing gives you words for it, and words are what you can run through your head at the wheel when your hands are busy.
So watch one. Read this once. Then keep the list near the bottom of this page open on your phone while you work, because reading a step ten seconds before you do it is the thing that turns having watched something into remembering it.
03 · The anatomy
A cruet in section, and the six parts that decide how it pours
Cut straight down the middle, so you can see the wall thickness and the cavity. This is a fairly conservative shape, and it is the one we would point a first timer at.
- The mouth The only dimension on the pot that has to be a particular number. Everything in the next section is about this.
- The neck Wants to be straight and parallel on the inside for at least an inch below the rim, or a tapered spout seats crooked and leaks past itself.
- The shoulder Where the form turns from wide to narrow. This is where a bottle cracks in drying and where it collapses on the wheel, because it is the thinnest clay carrying the most change of direction.
- The belly Holds the oil and does nothing clever. Put the widest point low. A high belly makes the bottle top heavy and it will tip when it is half empty and you are pouring one handed.
- The floor Compress it twice. You cannot reach back in to fix it once the shoulder closes, and a bottle sits full of liquid for months at a time.
- The foot Wider than you think. A cruet lives on a counter next to a stove and gets knocked. We would rather see a slightly clumsy foot than a beautiful pot on the floor.
04 · The one piece of arithmetic
Buy the spout first, then work backwards to the wet mouth
Most oil and vinegar pour spouts, and most tapered bar pourers, are built for a bottle mouth of about three quarters of an inch, which is 19 mm. That is the number they are sold against and it is close enough to a standard that you can plan around it. Then check yours anyway, because plenty of them are not.
Most pour spouts want a bottle mouth of about 19 mm. Measure yours, then work back to the wet size.
The formula
Wet mouth = fired mouth divided by (1 minus the shrinkage). A clay that shrinks 12 percent needs a wet mouth of 19 divided by 0.88, which is 21.6 mm, to finish at 19 mm. Clay shrinks in every direction, and a hole shrinks with it.
| Clay body | Shrinkage | Wet mouth for a 19 mm finish |
|---|---|---|
| 52 Buff | 10% | 21.2 mm |
| B-Mix w/Grog | 11% | 21.4 mm |
| B-Mix | 12% | 21.6 mm |
| B-Mix w/Specks | 12.47% | 21.8 mm |
| Speckled Buff | 12% | 21.6 mm |
| Half & Half | 12% | 21.6 mm |
| #16 Porcelain | 13.9% | 22.1 mm |
| Berlin Gray | 12% | 21.6 mm |
Shrinkage figures are the ones we publish on the clay and pottery calculators page. They are the manufacturers’ numbers and real bags vary a little.
If you want one number instead of a table
The number to set your calipers to
Set your calipers to 22 mm and throw the wet mouth to that. Every clay we stock lands within a millimeter of correct, and a tapered spout swallows a millimeter without complaining. On 52 Buff, which shrinks the least of anything we sell, you will finish a shade generous and the spout will sit slightly deeper. Nobody has ever noticed.
The version with no math at all
This is an old potter’s trick and it works. Take a tapered cork that is the size you eventually want. While the pot is still wet on the wheel, open the mouth until the wide top of the cork just enters it. After shrinking and glazing, the narrow bottom of that same cork will be the fit. One cork, two ends, no arithmetic. Keep the cork with the pot so you can check it again at leather hard.
And keep glaze out of the neck
A dipped coat is around half a millimeter thick and it goes on both sides of the hole, so glazing inside the neck costs you about a millimeter of opening. Wax the top inch before you dip. A stoneware body fired to cone 5½ is vitrified and will not weep oil through bare clay.
- The wet mouth, 21.6 mm What you throw, on a clay that shrinks 12 percent. This drawing is to scale, so the ring you can see between the two circles is the entire margin you are working in.
- The fired mouth, 19 mm What the spout meets. It is a small difference to look at and a total difference in whether the pot works, which is exactly why we would rather you measured it than judged it.
One more thing that eats into the ring: glaze. A dipped coat is around half a millimeter thick, and it goes on both sides of the hole, so glazing inside the neck costs you about a millimeter of opening. Easiest answer is to keep glaze out of the top inch of the neck entirely. A stoneware body fired to cone 5½ is vitrified and will not weep oil through bare clay.
05 · On the wheel
Throwing a cruet, in fourteen steps
Throwing a cruet, in eight steps
One pot, one sitting. The two steps in bold are the ones people skip and then pay for an hour later.
- Weigh 1 lb 8 oz for a cruet that holds around 250 ml, or 2 lb 8 oz for one closer to 500 ml. Wedge it properly. A bottle is less forgiving of a badly wedged ball than a mug is, because you cannot reach in and fix anything above the shoulder.
- Center it hard and cone it up and down at least twice. A wobble you would ignore in a bowl turns into a neck that leans, and a leaning neck does not take a spout straight.
- Open to a floor about a quarter inch thick and compress the floor twice. This is your last chance at it.
- Pull a plain straight cylinder first. Do not shape anything yet. Three pulls, even walls, slightly thicker at the top than you would leave a mug.
- Sponge every drop of water out of the bottom now. Once the shoulder starts closing, a sponge on a stick is the only tool that fits, and water left in the base will soften the floor and blow a hole in it.
- Belly it out from the inside with your fingers or a rib, low down. Widest point in the bottom third. Keep the rim where it is.
- Slow the wheel down. Bottles are thrown slower than mugs, and the neck is thrown slower still.
- Start collaring at the top third with both hands making a loose C around the pot. Squeeze gently and travel upward as you squeeze. Never squeeze in one place.
- Collar, then pull, then collar again. Collaring thickens the wall as it narrows it, so every collaring pass needs a pull after it to take that thickness back out and lengthen the neck.
- Leave the neck wall a little thicker than the belly wall. It is carrying a spout, it gets handled every day, and you can always trim it.
- Level the rim with a needle tool while the wheel turns slowly. Hold the needle steady, let the pot come to it, and lift the ring off. A neck rarely ends up level on its own.
- Set the mouth with calipers, not by eye. 22 mm, or whatever your own spout said. Open or close the last few millimeters with a fingertip inside and a finger outside.
- Compress the rim with a chamois or a wet fingertip, and run a finger down the inside of the neck to leave it smooth and parallel. Rough clay inside the neck is what stops a spout seating.
- Wire it off with a taut wire and dry hands, and lift it by the belly, never by the neck. If you threw on a bat, leave it there and take the whole bat off instead.
How much clay, and how tall
A cruet that holds 250 ml wants to be around 7 inches tall including the neck. Around 500 ml, closer to 9 inches. Anything much taller and you are throwing a vase and should read gooseneck and skinny neck pots instead.
The proportion that reads as right
Neck roughly a third of the total height, belly roughly two thirds, widest point below the middle. It is not a rule and plenty of lovely bottles break it, but if yours looks off and you cannot say why, it is usually the belly sitting too high. There is more on this on the throwing proportions page.
Or throw the neck separately
You do not have to do it in one piece. Throw a closed or nearly closed belly, throw a short neck as its own small ring, and join the two at leather hard. It is more steps and far more control, and it is how a lot of production potters make these. The throwing in sections page covers the join.
- Weigh 1 lb 8 oz for 250 ml or 2 lb 8 oz for 500 ml. Center hard, cone twice, open to a quarter inch floor and compress it twice. You cannot reach back in later.
- Pull a plain straight cylinder. Three pulls, even walls, slightly thicker at the top than you would leave a mug. Shape nothing yet.
- Sponge every drop of water out of the bottom now. Once the shoulder closes, nothing fits in there, and water left behind will soften the floor and blow a hole in it.
- Belly it out from the inside, low. Widest point in the bottom third, or the finished bottle will tip when it is half empty.
- Slow the wheel right down. Collar with both hands in a loose C, travelling upward on every pass. Then pull the neck thin again. Then collar again.
- Stop two millimeters wide of what you want and open the last bit with a fingertip. Collaring is cumulative and the final pass always does more than you expect.
- Level the rim with a needle tool, then set the mouth with calipers at 22 mm, or whatever your own spout measured.
- Smooth the inside of the neck, undercut the outside edge of the rim so oil cannot run back down it, then wire it off and lift it by the belly. Never by the neck.
How much clay, and how tall
A cruet that holds 250 ml wants to be around 7 inches tall including the neck. Around 500 ml, closer to 9 inches. Neck roughly a third of the height, belly the other two thirds, widest point below the middle.
06 · The neck
Collaring is a lot of short moves, not one long squeeze
Collaring is the one motion on this pot that is genuinely different from anything you do on an open form, and it is where first bottles die. The failure is almost always the same: somebody squeezes hard, in one place, without moving up.
Clay that is being squeezed inward has to go somewhere, and where it goes is up. If your hands are not travelling up with it, the wall folds instead, and a fold in a neck is not recoverable.
Four things to hold in your head:
- Make a C, not a fist. Both hands loosely around the pot, thumbs and fingers spreading the pressure over as many points as you can manage. Six or eight points of contact beats two.
- Travel upward on every pass. Start below where you want the neck and finish above the rim. Squeeze, lift, release, come back down.
- Pull after you collar. The wall is now thicker than it was. A normal pull with one finger inside and one outside takes it back to thickness and gains you the height you need.
- Slow down. Faster is not more control here. A neck at high speed throws itself off center the moment it is thin.
If the neck starts spiralling rather than narrowing, that is a twist, and it means the clay is going round faster than your hands are letting it. The avoiding the twist page is the fix. For the collaring motion on its own, in more detail than this, we have a whole page on collaring in.
07 · The rim
A lip that cuts the stream, or a lip that runs oil down the side
The inside of the neck is what the spout actually sits on
Oil is thicker and stickier than water and it clings to whatever it touches. A rim that would pour tea perfectly well will send olive oil around the outside of the bottle and down onto the counter, every time, forever.
If a spout is going in
The rim shape barely matters, because the spout does the pouring. What matters is the inside: an inch of straight parallel wall below the rim, smooth, with no ridge or wobble for the taper to rock on. Run a fingertip or a small wooden tool down it while the wheel turns.
If the clay itself is doing the pouring
Then the rim has one job, which is to break the stream cleanly and let it go. Two things make that happen:
- Finish thin, not round. A fat rounded rim is a rail that oil runs along. Compress it, then thin the outside edge so it comes to something closer to a defined edge than a bead.
- Undercut it slightly. With a wooden tool or a fingernail, cut the outside of the rim so it leans very slightly inward, back under itself. Oil reaching that undercut has nothing to cling to and falls. This is the single move that separates a bottle that drips from one that does not.
Test it before you glaze. Fill the bisqued bottle with water, pour, and watch the last of it. Water is thinner than oil, so if water runs down the side, oil is going to be much worse.
08 · Trimming
You cannot put a neck on a wheel head, so make a chuck
Every other pot goes upside down on the wheel head and sits on its own rim. A bottle has a rim the size of a nickel, and putting the weight of the pot plus the pressure of a trimming tool onto that is how you snap a neck off.
A chuck is anything that holds the pot by its shoulder instead. Three versions, in order of how much trouble they are:
- A coil of clay. Fastest. Roll a fat coil, lay it in a ring on the wheel head, press the bottle into it upside down until it sits still. Free, takes a minute, and slightly less stable than the others.
- A thrown chuck. Throw a bottomless cylinder that flares outward at the top, let it stiffen, and drop the bottle into the flare. Once you have one that fits your usual shapes, keep it. Bisque it and it lasts forever.
- Foam. A block of upholstery foam with a hole in it, or a purpose made foam bat. Least fuss, and the one to use if the neck is delicate.
Whichever you use, the pot has to be genuinely leather hard, it has to sit dead still before you turn the wheel on, and the pressure of the tool goes down toward the wheel head rather than sideways. Sideways pressure is what tips a bottle out of a chuck at speed. The general method is on the trimming and turning page.
While it is upside down, this is also the moment to check the mouth again with your cork or calipers. Clay has already shrunk a few percent by leather hard, so the number should have moved, and if it has moved much more than you expected you still have time to know about it.
09 · What goes in the hole
Spouts, corks and stoppers, and what each one asks of you
Pick this before you throw, not after. Each option wants a different mouth, and two of them want a different neck.
A tapered pour spout
The metal or rubber kind sold for oil, vinegar and bar work. Around 19 mm, tapered, so it forgives a millimeter either way and seats deeper or shallower to suit. Wants an inch of straight smooth neck below the rim. This is the easiest option and the one we would start with.
A cork
Cheap, comes in graduated sizes, and doubles as your measuring tool while you throw. Seals better than a spout, so it suits vinegar and dressings that you shake. Does not pour in a controlled line, so you are taking it out and putting it back every time.
A thrown clay stopper
Best looking and the most work. Throw it off the hump while the bottle is still wet so you can size it against the real mouth. Glaze the top, leave the plug bare, and glue a strip of cork or a rubber ring around the plug after firing.
Bare clay against bare clay does not seal, and glazed clay against glazed clay welds
This catches people every time on their first stopper. Unglazed stoneware against unglazed stoneware leaves a gap you can see daylight through, so oil creeps out and dust gets in. Glaze both faces so they fit tightly and the kiln fuses them into one object you will be breaking apart with a chisel. The answer is to make the seal out of something that is not clay: a cork sleeve, a rubber O-ring, or a strip of adhesive cork sheet. Fire the two pieces separately, and never fire a clay stopper sitting in its own bottle.
10 · After the wheel
Drying, firing and glazing something you cannot reach inside
Drying
A bottle dries unevenly whether you like it or not. The neck is thin and exposed and races ahead. The belly is thick and mostly sealed off from the air, so it lags behind. That difference is what cracks a shoulder.
- Loose plastic over the whole pot for the first day, then a bag with the bottom open, then out in the room. Slow is the entire technique.
- If the neck is drying much faster than the body anyway, put a small piece of plastic over just the neck and leave the belly out.
- Turn it upside down for the last stage, resting on a soft pad, so the base gets some air. The base is the last thing to dry on every bottle.
- Give it longer than you think before it goes in the bisque. A bottle holding damp air in a sealed belly is one of the more reliable ways to hear a bang from a kiln.
Firing
Bisque goes to cone 05. Glaze goes to cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve minute hold. At that temperature every stoneware body we stock is vitrified, which is why an unglazed interior will not weep oil. If you want the detail of what the kiln is actually doing, that is on the kiln firing page.
Glazing
The outside is a normal glazing job and the dipping glaze method applies exactly as it does to anything else. The inside is where a bottle is different, and the difference is that anything you pour in has to come back out.
- Keep glaze out of the top inch of the neck. That is the seat for the spout, and a coat of glaze on both sides of it costs you roughly a millimeter of opening. Wax it before you dip.
- If you do want a glazed interior, pour in a small amount, roll it around for a few seconds and pour it straight back out. Then upside down on a rack and check with a flashlight that nothing is pooled in the shoulder.
- A puddle of glaze that does not drain is a crack after firing, or a pot welded to a kiln shelf, or both.
- Wax the foot as usual. Then wipe the rim and the inside of the neck with a damp sponge, and wipe it again.
- Do not fire the pot with a cork or spout in it. That should be obvious and it is not always.
Is it food safe
Any glaze in the studio fired to cone 5½ on a vitrified body is fine for oil, vinegar and dressings. If you are choosing, look for a smooth glaze rather than a heavily crazed or crackle one. Crazing is a network of fine cracks, and oil sits in cracks and eventually goes rancid there. The glaze finder will tell you what a glaze does before you commit a bottle to it.
Drying
The neck is thin and races ahead, the belly is thick and sealed off from the air and lags behind, and that disagreement is what cracks a shoulder.
- Loose plastic over everything for the first day, then a bag with the bottom open, then out in the room.
- If the neck is still drying faster, cover just the neck and leave the belly out.
- Give it longer than you think before it goes in the bisque. Damp air in a sealed belly is how you hear a bang from a kiln.
Firing and glazing
Bisque at cone 05, glaze at cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve minute hold. At that temperature every stoneware body we stock is vitrified, so an unglazed interior will not weep oil.
- Wax the top inch of the neck before you dip. That is the seat for the spout and glaze on both sides of it costs you a millimeter.
- Check with a flashlight that nothing pooled in the shoulder. A puddle that does not drain is a crack, or a pot welded to a shelf.
- Never fire it with a cork or a spout in it.
11 · Troubleshooting
Eight ways an oil bottle goes wrong, and what actually caused it
Three ways it goes wrong tonight
- The mouth closed up while you were collaring. You kept squeezing after it was the size you wanted. Collaring is cumulative and the last pass always does more than you expect. Stop a couple of millimeters wide and open the last bit with a fingertip.
- The spout will not go in after firing. Either the wet mouth was too small, or glaze went into the neck, or both. Bisque can be opened out a little with wet sandpaper or a round file. Glaze fired stoneware cannot, in any way that is worth your evening.
- The spout falls straight through. The wet mouth was too big, and this one has no fix. Measure next time. It is still a good vase, and a single stem looks better in it than you would think.
- The neck spiralled instead of narrowing. A twist. The wheel is faster than your hands are permitting the clay to go, and the clay is winding up. Slow the wheel, lighten the pressure, and keep moving upward.
- The neck folded over on itself. Too much water and too many passes. Every collaring pass adds water and subtracts strength, and there is a fixed number of passes any given neck will take. Fewer, firmer, more deliberate moves.
- There is water sitting in the bottom. You closed the shoulder before you sponged. If the mouth is still wide enough for a sponge on a stick, do it now. If it is not, the honest options are to cut the pot open or to leave it upside down for a very long time and hope.
- It cracked at the shoulder in drying. Uneven drying, almost always. The neck dried and shrank while the belly was still wet, and the shoulder is where those two disagreements meet. Slower drying, and cover the neck rather than the body.
- It pours down its own side. The rim is too round and has no undercut, so oil clings around the edge instead of releasing. Nothing to do after firing except put a spout in it, which is a perfectly respectable answer.
12 · The videos
Five more potters, five different bottles, none of them us
Two are further up the page already. These five are the rest. Nothing loads from YouTube until you tap one.
The whole bottle, start to finish
Several at once, and how a maker actually works
When you want the neck, not the bottle
Where to go after these
If the collaring is the part you want to drill, the collaring in page has its own set of videos on that motion alone. If you want to keep going up rather than closing in, that is gooseneck and skinny neck pots. And if you would rather not fight a neck at all, a thrown lid solves a similar problem in a completely different way.
Keep this open at the wheel
The whole cruet, on one screen
Tap copy and it lands in your notes app, so you are not scrolling a page with clay on your thumb.
Before you sit down
- Measure your actual spout. Write the number down
- Wet mouth = fired mouth divided by (1 minus shrinkage)
- For a 19 mm spout: throw the mouth at 22 mm
- Or size it against the wide end of a tapered cork
- Calipers on the bench, sponge on a stick on the bench
- 1 lb 8 oz for 250 ml, 2 lb 8 oz for 500 ml
On the wheel
- Center hard, cone twice, floor compressed twice
- Straight cylinder first, shape second
- Sponge the water out before the shoulder closes
- Belly low, widest point in the bottom third
- Slow the wheel down before you collar
- Collar, pull, collar. Always travelling upward
- Stop 2 mm wide, open the last bit with a fingertip
- Level the rim, then check the mouth with calipers
- Smooth the inside of the neck. Undercut the outside edge
After it comes off
- Dry slow. Cover the neck, not the belly
- Trim in a chuck, never on the rim
- Re-check the mouth at leather hard
- Bisque at cone 05, glaze at cone 5½
- Wax the top inch of the neck before dipping
- Any inside glaze goes in and straight back out
- Nothing pooled in the shoulder. Check with a light
- Never fire it with a cork or spout in it
13 · Questions
The ones we get asked about bottles
Anything not here is on the studio FAQs page, or ask whoever is behind the counter.
Where do I buy the spouts?
Any kitchen shop, most grocery stores, and any bar supply. Look for tapered oil and vinegar pourers or bar speed pourers. They come in packs of a dozen for a few dollars, which is worth doing, because then you have one to keep on the bench as a gauge and eleven for the pots. We do not stock them.
Do I have to glaze the inside?
No. Every stoneware body we stock is vitrified at cone 5½, which means the clay itself is no longer porous and oil will not seep through the wall. A glazed interior is easier to rinse out and a bit nicer to look into, and it is also the thing most likely to go wrong on a bottle, so an unglazed inside is a completely reasonable choice.
Can I make one without a wheel?
Yes. Coil build the belly, then add a neck from a rolled tube, or pinch two halves and join them. The mouth arithmetic is identical and so is the drying problem. The blended coiling page covers the building, and score and slip covers the join where the neck meets the shoulder, which is the one that fails.
How do I clean an oil bottle?
Hot water, dish soap and a bottle brush, or a spoonful of uncooked rice with hot soapy water and a good shake if no brush will fit. Rinse until the water runs clear and stand it upside down to drain. Old oil left in a bottle goes rancid and the smell moves into the next batch, so wash it out when it is empty rather than topping it up indefinitely.
Is it dishwasher safe?
It will survive, but a narrow bottle does not really get cleaned in a dishwasher. Water goes in and does not circulate, and it comes out with soapy water in the bottom that you then have to deal with. Hand wash these.
Can I put a handle on it?
Absolutely, and it makes a cruet much easier to use one handed. Pull it and attach it at leather hard, top of the handle high on the shoulder and the bottom low on the belly, so the pot tips forward when you lift. The pulling handles page has the method.
Can I use it for vinegar, or does that eat the glaze?
Vinegar is fine in a properly fired stoneware bottle with a stable glaze. It is acidic enough to matter only against a badly formulated or underfired glaze, and everything in the studio goes to cone 5½. If a glaze ever looks dull or etched after holding vinegar for a long stretch, stop using that glaze for food and tell us which one it was.
My mouth came out at 25 mm. Is the pot wasted?
No, it is a bud vase, and it is a good one. It is also a soap dispenser if you buy a pump sized to fit, and those come in a wider range of sizes than pour spouts do. Measure what you have and go shopping for hardware that matches it, rather than the other way round.
Last thing
Measure the hole, and the bottle takes care of itself
That is the working version
Nothing on this page is difficult. Centering is not new, pulling walls is not new, and a belly is a shape you already know how to make. The only genuinely new idea is that one dimension on this pot has to be right in a way that no dimension on a mug ever has to be, and that you have to be right about it two firings in advance.
Which is why we would rather you spent four dollars on a pack of pour spouts and two minutes with a pair of calipers than another evening throwing beautiful bottles that nothing fits. Buy the hardware. Measure it. Then go and make the pot around it.
Buy the spout. Measure it. Throw the wet mouth at 22 mm, sponge the water out before the shoulder closes, collar upward in short moves, and keep glaze out of the neck. That is a cruet.
There is a much longer version of this page, with the cross section drawing, the shrinkage table for all eight of our clays, trimming in a chuck, eight videos and every way we have watched this go wrong. The toggle at the top switches to it any time.
Keep going
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.