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The Clay Hole University · Electives

Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own PotteryPrintable pottery guide

The fifty things that kill a pot, in the order they happen, from the bag of clay to the shelf after the glaze firing, each one with the fix that takes less time than the pot took.

$20.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: All levels
  • 24 printable pages
  • 5 video picks
  • 7-question quiz + answer key

Flip through the free sample
  • Instant download
  • Prints on any printer
  • The lesson stays free
The printable, at a glance

What is the Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery printable guide?

It is the free “50 Easy Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” lesson rebuilt for paper: all fifty ways grouped into six stages, each one a sentence on what went wrong and a sentence on what to do instead, plus a log for working out which of the fifty keeps happening to you and a one page summary to keep on the drying shelf.

Prefer to read it online first? The “50 Easy Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 24printable pages, US Letter
  • 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 5hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 20glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For anyone who has opened a kiln and found a dead pot

A pot almost never dies at the moment it falls apart.

It dies days earlier, at a stage nobody was watching. The floor never got compressed. One side of the pot sat facing a vent. The handle went on while the mug was stiffer than the handle. By the time the crack shows up, the moment that caused it is long gone, and the pot gets blamed on the kiln.

That is the only reason a list like this works. Almost nothing on it is a mystery. Every one of the fifty leaves a mark you can read, and once you can name the mark you catch yourself making it, which is the whole trick.

This guide is the list on paper, in the order the mistakes happen, so you can carry it to the wheel and to the drying shelf and work backwards from a broken pot to the thing you did three days ago.

Look inside

Real pages, for the wheel and the drying shelf

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark.

  • Page 3 of the “Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginWhat the guide covers, what you need, what to watch out for, and what it looks like when it is working. The page to read once before the fifty.
  • Page 5 of the “Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” printable guide: stage one, the clay, shown with the sample watermark
    Stage one, the clayEight ways to start a pot already in trouble. Every entry on every stage is shaped like this: what went wrong, then what to do instead.
  • Page 17 of the “Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” printable guide: every pot that went wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    Every pot that went wrongA log for the piece, what it did, which stage it came from, which of the fifty you decided it was, and what you changed. After a few pots the same number keeps coming back, and that number is your habit.
  • Page 20 of the “Fifty Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” printable guide: test yourself, shown with the sample watermark
    Test yourselfSeven questions on the fifty and their fixes, with an answer key that explains every answer, including the wrong ones.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

You read a list like this with a broken pot in your other hand

A phone goes to sleep, needs a clean thumb and loses your place. This one is meant to live where the pots live, so it is there at the moment you need it rather than three days later when you remember to look.

  • On the drying shelf

    The one page summary is the stages and the handful at each one that cost the most pots. Pin it where you leave work to dry, which is where most of the fifty are decided.

  • Worked backwards

    A pot cracked. Start at the crack, find the stage, find the way, and read the fix. The numbers run straight through from one to fifty so an entry can point at another one.

  • Marked up

    Circle the ones you know you do. Most potters have three or four favorites, and a list you have written on is worth more than a list you have read.

  • Kept, not scrolled

    This is not a guide you read once. It is a guide you come back to the next time something goes wrong, which is why it is built to sit out and get clay on it.

How this one is built

Rebuilt for paper, and checked against our other lessons

Every guide in the series is set from scratch for print. Here is what that meant for this one.

  • Checked against the lessons that own each technique

    A list of fifty touches a dozen subjects, and a one line fix can quietly disagree with the lesson that teaches the whole method. We read our wedging, drying, compressing, throwing, scoring, glazing and firing lessons against this one and brought the stricter version here.

  • Every count counted

    Where the lesson said most of them, half of them or every one of them, we counted. Where the count did not match what it counted, the sentence changed.

  • The safety rules spelled out

    Fired clay dust, sealed forms, glaze buckets, rinse water and who loads the kiln. Where the lesson gave a rule without its reason, the reason is now there.

  • Videos checked against their own chapters

    Each video note was written from that video’s description, chapter list and run time, so what the guide says is in a video is what the video says is in it.

  • A log and a one page summary

    Neither exists in the online lesson. The log is for finding your own repeat offender; the summary is the version for when your hands are covered in clay.

  • Set for a home printer

    US Letter, black text on white, no full bleed photographs to drain an ink cartridge, and a glossary and answer key at the back so nothing has to be looked up on a screen.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “50 Easy Ways Potters Mess Up Their Own Pottery” lesson, which anyone can read online without an account. What you are buying is the printed version, the practice log and the one page summary.

This is not a list to make you careful. Careful potters make stiff pots.

It is a list so the next one is not the same one.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
The series

Build a little pottery library

Each printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper, with a workbook page or two that only exist in print. This one is number 15.06 in the Electives, and that number never changes, so a guide can always point at another one.

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Sits next to

Three lessons that go deeper than one line each

Each one is free to read online, and the codes in the guide take you straight there.

Questions

Good to know

How is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is not going anywhere. The guide is the version you can print, write on and leave in the studio, and it adds two pages that do not exist online: a log for every pot that went wrong, and a one page summary of the stages for the drying shelf. It also carries a glossary and an answer key for the quiz.
Is this too much for a beginner?
No. Beginners get the most out of it, because almost everything on the list is something that has not happened to them yet. It is written so you can read it once, forget most of it, and come back to the right stage the day a pot goes wrong.
I have been throwing for years. Is there anything here for me?
Most experienced potters find two or three they still do. The list is in the order the mistakes happen rather than in order of difficulty, so the ones at the clay bag catch people who have been throwing for a decade.
Does it work if I only hand build?
Yes. Stage four is joins and slabs, and the clay, drying, glazing and kiln stages apply to anything made of clay. The wheel stage is the one you can skip, and the guide says so.
Will it print properly on a home printer?
Yes. US Letter, black text on white, no full bleed photographs. It prints on any home printer, and it is readable in black and white because nothing in it is explained by color alone.
Can I print only part of it?
Yes. The one page summary and the practice log are each a single page, and the contents page lists every section with its page number, so you can print the stage you are working on and nothing else.
Can I just read it on a screen?
You can. It is a normal PDF and it reads fine on a tablet. We built it for paper because a phone goes to sleep and needs a clean thumb, and this is a guide you reach for with clay on your hands.
Are the studio bits only useful if I come to The Clay Hole?
The fifty are written for potters everywhere. One section says where our studio stands on the ones we see most, and it is marked as ours. Everything else applies in any studio, including at home.
How does delivery work?
The download link is sent as soon as the order goes through, so you can have it printed within a few minutes. There is no account to make and no email course attached to it.
What happens when the guide is updated?
Guides get corrected and improved over time, and every edition carries its version number on the cover. The lesson it comes from is free and always current, and the code on the last page takes you to the latest version.
Can I share it with my class or studio?
It is licensed for your own personal use. If you want to use it with a class, a studio, a school or a group, write to us and we will sort something out; we would rather say yes to a real request than find it posted somewhere.
Do I need any tools to use it?
Nothing beyond what you already throw with. A needle tool, a rib, a wire and something to write with. The useful thing to bring is a pot that went wrong.

Every pot that died had a reason

Now you have fifty of them, in the order they happen, each with the fix. The good potters are not the careful ones. They are the ones who stopped repeating their favorites.

Get the guide · $20.00

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