You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 05.10

The Clay Hole University Ā· The Pottery Wheel

Getting the Pot Off the WheelPrintable pottery guide

The last eight seconds of throwing, where more good pots die than anywhere else. Four things are holding a fresh pot down, three of them come apart before you touch it, and the fourth one is you. Five methods, nine steps, and nine ways it goes badly.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 33 printable pages
  • 7 video picks
  • 8-question quiz + answer key

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

What is the printable edition of Getting the Pot Off the Wheel?

It is the free lesson of the same name, rebuilt as a workbook. It opens with the part nobody explains: the pot is not glued down, it is stuck down, and those are different. Four things hold it there, and you take three of them apart before your hands ever arrive. Then all five ways off in one place, the nine steps of wire and lift, a close look at the cheap tool that decides what the bottom of your pot looks like, floating and sliding for the forms you cannot grip, a table that answers eight different shapes, and nine ways a lift goes wrong with what each one is telling you. On paper it adds a lift log, a one-page card for beside the splash pan, a printed quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ is free to read, and always will be.

  • 33printable pages, US Letter
  • 9step method, start to finish
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 7hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 16glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

You get one take

Everything else at the wheel forgives you. Centering can be done again. A wall that goes wrong can come back down and go up again. This one part cannot. The pot leaves the wheel head once, in about eight seconds, and whatever happens in those seconds is the pot.

Almost every wrecked lift is somebody trying to overpower a bond they could simply have taken apart. Slip is clay, and clay is glue. A thin film of water pulls two flat surfaces together hard, and a thicker one lets them slide. A flat bottom on a flat metal disc is a suction cup until air gets under one edge.

None of that is visible while you do it, which is why it feels like a mystery instead of an order of operations. The guide puts the order of operations on one page and keeps it beside the wheel, where the decision is actually made.

Look inside

Real pages, for beside the splash pan

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark. The full guide has none.

  • Page 3 of the ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginThe learning dashboard: what you will learn, what to have ready, the six pitfalls that cause most of it, and what a clean lift actually looks like.
  • Page 6 of the ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ printable guide: five ways off, shown with the sample watermark
    Five ways offAll five methods side by side with what each one is best for, and the honest bit: cutting twice is the free win nobody ever mentions.
  • Page 11 of the ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ printable guide: half of this is the wire, shown with the sample watermark
    Half of this is the wireThe wire diagram, thumbs pressed down on the wheel head, and why a taut wire leaves a floor the same thickness in the middle as at the edges.
  • Page 18 of the ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ printable guide: the lift log, shown with the sample watermark
    The lift logTen rows, one pot each: which of the five methods you used, whether you really cut twice, which of the nine symptoms turned up, and whether it survived.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Wet hands, one take, no scrolling

This decision gets made with slip to the wrist and a pot that is about to move. Nobody is reaching for a phone in the middle of it.

  • The wheel-side card

    The nine steps, the four things holding the pot down, which method each form wants, and what each symptom means, on one page.

  • A lift log

    One row a pot. After a session or two the same symptom number keeps repeating, and that number is the habit to change.

  • Eight forms, one table

    Mug, small bowl, wide bowl, plate, tall and heavy, porcelain, thin and flared, and something tiny off a hump. Look yours up and stop guessing.

  • Nine symptoms, written down

    An oval rim, a dented wall, a domed bottom, a pot that will not budge, a wire that came out through the side, and what each one is really telling you.

How the guide is built

Built for the person about to pick a pot up

Every guide in the series is designed as a workbook first and a document second. For this one, that means:

  • A learning dashboard before page one

    What you will learn, what you need, the traps, and what success looks like.

  • The physics first, in plain words

    The slip ring, the film of water, the seal under the floor and your own grip. Three of the four come apart before you touch the pot.

  • Five methods, then the one you will use

    Wire and lift in nine steps, and the four alternatives for the pots it does not suit.

  • The tool nobody examines

    How a wire is held decides whether the floor comes out flat or domed. A bottom that keeps coming out thin in the middle is a wire fault wearing a throwing faultā€™s clothes.

  • Nine symptoms, each traced back

    Including the one worth knowing: a crack across a floor comes from uneven drying rather than from the lift, and compression is a habit that helps rather than the whole story.

  • Codes that keep working

    Seven hand-picked videos, each on a short Clay Hole address, so a printed copy keeps working when a video moves.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free ā€œGetting the Pot Off the Wheelā€ lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

Every potter you admire has ovalled a rim, dented a wall with their own thumb, and pulled a wire straight out through the side of something they liked. The difference is that they stopped treating it as a mystery and started treating it as four moves in an order. Nobody should have to pay to find that out, so the lesson stays free.

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
Collect them

Build a little pottery library

Every guide carries a permanent number. This one is 05.10, the tenth guide in The Pottery Wheel. The series is designed to live together in a binder, section by section, so the craft ends up on your shelf in the order you learn 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.

See every printable guide

  • 5guides in your cart1 on us
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Where this leads

From the wheel head to the ware board

These lessons pick up where this one leaves off. Each one is free to read now.

Good questions

Before you buy

Is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is complete. The printable adds a lift log, a one-page wheel-side card, a printed quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
I am a beginner. Is this too early for me?
No. The first pot you ever throw still has to come off the wheel, so this one starts on day one. Nothing in it asks for a skill you do not already have.
Why does everything say to cut twice?
Because the pot re-sticks itself in the seconds after the first pass. Almost every beginner who tells us they cannot get pots off the wheel is cutting once, then fighting a pot that quietly re-attached while they dried their hands. It costs about four seconds.
My bottoms keep coming out thin in the middle. Is that my throwing?
Usually not. A slack wire bows upward under the drag of the clay and takes a dome out of the middle of the floor. Thumbs pressed down on the wheel head, real tension, one pass. Nothing about it is visible while you do it, which is why it gets blamed on the wrong thing for years.
My pot went oval on the way to the board. Can I fix it?
Often, by leaving it alone. A soft rim that ovals on the lift will frequently relax back to round within a minute or two if you set it down flat and walk away. Pushing it back into shape with dry fingers is what makes the dents permanent.
What about plates and platters?
A bat, every time. You lift the bat, not the pot. The guide is honest that for anything wider than your two hands together, there is no grip that works, today or in twenty years.
Does this cause S-cracks?
No, and the guide says so plainly. A crack across the middle of a floor comes from uneven drying, usually a thick floor that stayed wet while thinner walls dried and shrank around it. Compression is a habit worth keeping, and a plastic bat is worth watching, but the lift is not the culprit.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. Water, clay and a metal disc behave the same everywhere. Where something is our studioā€™s, such as which clay bodies we stock, the guide says so and dates it.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is designed for an ordinary home or office printer on regular US Letter paper, with nothing important near the edges, so normal printer margins cut nothing off.
Can I print it in black and white?
Yes. Nothing depends on color, and we check that every QR code still scans from a soft grayscale home print.
Can I use it on an iPad or laptop instead?
Yes. Every QR code in the guide is also a tappable link, so on a screen you just tap instead of scanning.
How do I get it after I buy?
Right after checkout you get a download link by email and on your order confirmation page. Each link works up to seven times.
What if the guide gets updated?
Every edition carries a version number. When we correct or improve a guide, everyone who bought it gets an email with the new edition at no charge.
Can I share it with my class or studio?
Please donā€™t. It is licensed for your own personal use. Anyone can read the full lesson free online, and the printable is here if they want their own copy.

Take the slip away. Add water. Break the seal. Move it level.

Print it, keep the card beside the splash pan, and log your next ten lifts.

Get the printable · $5.00

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