The Clay Hole University · Project Guides
A Ceramic Wall Clock That Actually WorksPrintable pottery guide
The four numbers that decide whether a handmade clock keeps time, the order they happen in, and how to stop a wide flat piece warping while you are not in the room.
- Skill level: Beginner
- 33 printable pages
- 7 video picks
- 7-question quiz + answer key
- Instant download
- Prints on any home printer
- The full lesson stays free online
What is the A Ceramic Wall Clock That Actually Works printable guide?
It is the whole clock project on paper, in the order you actually do it: what to buy before you touch clay, the hole that cannot be redone, three ways to make the face, the drying discipline that keeps it flat, dividing a circle into twelve with a compass, and what to do when one of seven things has gone wrong. There is a page to keep on the table and a log to write down how each one came out.
Prefer to read it online first? The “A Ceramic Wall Clock That Actually Works” lesson is free, and always will be.
- 33printable pages, US Letter
- 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
- 7hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
- 21glossary terms in plain language
- 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
The hardware does not shrink, and it does not care
Every other pot you make only has to satisfy you. A clock has to satisfy a threaded metal shaft that was made to a tolerance by a company that has never heard of clay. Your pot is going to shrink by roughly a tenth before the two ever meet, and almost everything that goes wrong with a handmade clock comes out of that one sentence.
So the order matters more than the skill does. Buy the movement before you cut a circle. Cut the hole generous while the clay is still soft, because a fired hole cannot be made bigger with anything you own. Buy the hands last, after the piece is fired and measured, because they are the only part of the project that does not shrink.
Get that order right and the rest of it is a good flat pot with a drawing on it, which is a genuinely lovely thing to spend an evening on. Get it wrong and you have a beautiful plate with a hole in the middle and nothing that will fit through it.
Real pages, for a work table and a drying shelf
These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark. The full guide has none.
What you will learn, need and get wrongThe whole project laid out before you start, including the mistakes that only show up four days later. 
Flat is not freeNobody loses a clock to a bad drawing. They lose it to four days on a shelf while they were not watching, and this is how you stop that. 
Seven things that go wrong, and whyFind the one that just happened to you, and whether it is a ten dollar problem or a lost piece. 
Every clock, and how it came outThe clay, the size, the movement you bought, how long it dried and whether it stayed flat. Two or three of these and the guessing stops.
The decisions are spread across a fortnight, not an afternoon
A clock is not one session. It is a purchase, then a build, then a week of drying, then a bisque, then a glaze, then a day with a screwdriver. Every one of those is a chance to forget what the last one decided.
It is already open at the right page
You come back to a piece on day four with dry hands and no memory of what you told yourself on day one. A page you left open says it back to you without unlocking anything.
The numbers stay put
Four of them decide whether the clock works at all, and none of them are the sort of thing you remember correctly under a slab roller. They are on one page you can keep on the table.
You can take it to the shop
The movement gets bought somewhere that is not your studio, from a listing full of numbers. The page that tells you which number matters goes in a pocket.
It has somewhere to write
The only way to learn how fast your own room dries a wide flat slab is to write down what happened. There is a log for it, with room for the ones that warped.
Rebuilt for paper, not printed from a web page
Every guide in the series is set from scratch for print. Here is what that meant for this one.
A section drawing with its key beside it
The face, the hole, the movement, the shaft, the hands, the back rim and the keyhole, numbered, with the key on the same page rather than over the fold.
The four numbers, up front
The hole, the dial thickness your movement must clear, the longest hand a standard motor will drive, and a finished size that keeps you inside all three.
Three ways to make the face, side by side
Slab into a slump mold, flat slab with no mold, or thrown on the wheel, each with what it costs you later rather than which one we prefer.
A shrinkage table for our own clays
What a half inch hole finishes at in each body on our shelf, and how much clearance that leaves on the shaft. Checked against each clay’s own published figure.
Seven faults, diagnosed
Written so you can find the one that just happened to you, and told plainly when the answer is that the piece cannot be saved.
A quiz with an answer key that explains itself
Every answer says why it is the answer, so a wrong one teaches you something instead of just being wrong.
The lesson is free. It always will be.
All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “A Ceramic Wall Clock That Actually Works” lesson at The Clay Hole University, which anybody can read without paying us anything.
A clock is the first project most people make that somebody else sees every single day for thirty years. That felt like a reason to write the boring parts down properly, not to skip them.
The University is free and stays free. The guides are the version rebuilt for paper with an unreasonable amount of care, and buying one keeps the free side going.
Thank you. Genuinely.
Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
Build a little pottery library
Every printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper: the teaching in the order you do it, the numbers where you need them, a quiz with an answer key that explains itself, and somewhere to write down what actually happened when you tried it.
Put any five printable guides in your cart and the cheapest one is on us. Put in nine and the two cheapest are on us. It happens automatically at checkout, no code to remember.
- 5guides in your cart1 on us
- 9guides in your cart2 on us
Three lessons that pick up where this one leaves off
Each one is free to read online, and the codes in the guide take you straight there.
-
Guide 07.04 · free lessonHow to Use Slab Molds, Step by StepThe first recommendation in this guide is a slab laid into a shallow round slump mold, and this is the lesson on how to get a clean, even, undistorted slab out of one. It also covers which molds the studio has, which is the difference between a face that comes out dished and one that comes out stuck.
Read the free lesson -
Guide 08.02 · free lessonCeramic Tiles That Stay FlatThe same enemy, on a smaller piece. A clock and a tile are both wide flat forms that spend days deciding whether to stay flat, and everything that lesson says about compressing, drying between boards and firing straight on the shelf applies here over four times the span.
Read the free lesson -
Guide 10.02 · free lessonCarving and SgraffitoThis guide gets a reader as far as twelve accurate positions and then lists six ways to mark them. Cutting the numerals in, and scratching back through a coat of color, are the two that need no drawing ability and read best under a glaze that breaks. That lesson is where the technique itself lives.
Read the free lesson
Good to know
How is this different from the free lesson?
Do I need a slab roller or a wheel?
Will it print properly on my printer?
Does it work in black and white?
Can I read it on a screen instead?
Can I print only part of it?
Is it too early for me?
What about the clock movement itself?
How does delivery work?
What happens when the guide is updated?
Can I share it?
Buy the movement, then start the clay
One evening, one flat pot with a hole in the middle, and a week of leaving it alone. Then it hangs on a wall and tells somebody the time every day for thirty years, which is a job not many pots ever get.
Get the guide · $10.00