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The Clay Hole University · Firing and Fixing

How to Rescue Pottery at Any StagePrintable pottery guide

Rescuing a pot on paper: the odds at every stage from wet clay to fully fired, the fixes that hold, six questions for save or let go, and a log for every pot you try.

$16.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 20 printable pages
  • 3 video picks
  • 5-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 How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage printable guide?

It is the free “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” lesson rebuilt for paper: three questions to ask before you touch a pot, then each stage in turn, wet clay, leather hard, bone dry, bisque, glazed but not fired and fully fired, with the real odds and the fixes that hold. It ends with six questions for deciding whether to save a pot or let it go. Built to be printed, kept beside the bucket and written in.

Prefer to read it online first? The “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 20printable pages, US Letter
  • 5quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 3hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 13glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For anyone standing over a cracked pot

Every potter has done this math.

You are looking at a pot with a crack, a chip or a warp, and asking whether it is worth saving. Every potter has stood right there, and the answer depends almost entirely on the stage the clay is in.

The guide gives you the ladder: wet clay heals, leather hard still joins, bone dry barely joins at all, and after the firing it is a different game. It also gives you the best do-over of all, the one between the glaze bucket and the glaze firing, where almost everything can still be washed off and done again.

And it gives you what a web page cannot: a log to write in. What was wrong with the pot, the stage it was in, what you tried and whether it held. A few weeks of notes show you which rescues pay off and which ones are a coin flip.

Look inside

Real pages, for beside the bucket

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

  • Page 3 of the “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginOne page before any pot is touched: what you will learn, what you would need, what is worth knowing, the common pitfalls and what a good result looks like.
  • Page 4 of the “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” printable guide: triage and the ladder, shown with the sample watermark
    Triage and the ladderThe three questions that come before any fix, and the whole ladder from wet clay to fully fired, best odds to worst.
  • Page 10 of the “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” printable guide: save or let go, shown with the sample watermark
    Save or let goThe honest page: six questions to tick through while you stand over the pot, and permission to use the reclaim bucket.
  • Page 14 of the “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” printable guide: every pot i saved, and every pot i let go, shown with the sample watermark
    Every pot I saved, and every pot I let goA log to write in: what was wrong, the stage it was in, what you tried and whether the pot was saved or let go.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

A pot, a bucket and a page of questions

Deciding whether to save a pot happens with the pot in your hands. Paper suits that.

  • The questions where you can tick them

    Six save or let go questions with a box beside each, on a page you can set down next to the pot.

  • The odds in one place

    The one page summary lays the stages side by side, so you can see at a glance what your pot is up against.

  • A log for your own pots

    Columns for what was wrong, the stage it was in, what you tried and the result. A few lines of notes beat a memory of what worked.

  • It does not mind a wet bench

    A page stays where you put it. It does not lock its screen, and you can wipe it down with the rest of the bench.

How this one is built

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.

  • Read against the studio’s own rules

    We checked the lesson against The Clay Hole’s rules and our other lessons. Where the lesson was out of step, the guide now says what those pages say.

  • Wet work stays wet

    Sanding a bisque chip or grinding a fired drip is done wet, over a bucket, in safety glasses and an N95 or better. The guide says so where the lesson did not.

  • Plainer about glue and urushi

    Epoxy gets gloves, fresh air and a covered table, and never goes back in a kiln. Traditional urushi is a home craft with a skin hazard, and the guide says so.

  • Video notes that match the videos

    Each of the three videos is described from its own chapters and description, so the note says what is actually in it.

  • Steps that read as sentences

    Many of the lesson’s steps were cut in half by a bold lead. On paper they read as one sentence each.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every link is a short Clay Hole address. If a page moves, we repoint the address and your printed copy still goes to the right place.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “How to Rescue Pottery at Any Stage” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

Some pots are finished, and letting one go is a real skill, not a defeat. The clay goes back in the reclaim bucket and comes back as something better.

If you are standing over one right now and cannot decide, come ask us. We would rather look at it with you than watch you spend an evening on a bad bet.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
The series

Build a little pottery library

Every printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper, with workbook pages, a glossary and a quiz with a worked answer key. Each one keeps its number for good, so a guide you buy today is the same guide in the same place next year.

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
  • 9guides in your cart2 on us
Sits next to

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.

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 that teaching rebuilt for paper: a learning dashboard at the front, a log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Will it tell me whether my pot can be saved?
It tells you the odds at each stage and gives you six questions to work through. The honest answer is often that the reclaim bucket wins, and the guide says so without making it feel like a defeat.
Does it cover repairing a fired pot?
Yes. It covers reglazing and refiring, grinding, and two kinds of kintsugi, with links to our full lessons on each. It also says plainly that a fired crack on a surface that holds food or drink is a retirement notice.
Is it safe to use glue or epoxy on pottery?
For display pieces, yes, with gloves, fresh air and a covered table, and never on a surface that touches food or drink or anything headed back into a kiln. The guide covers it, and our epoxy lesson goes further.
Do I need to be a member of The Clay Hole to use it?
No. The rescues work in any studio or at home. Where a line is only ours, such as showing our team a mended pot before it goes in a firing, the guide says so.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Intermediate. It helps to have made and fired a few pieces first, and the glossary fills in the words.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is set 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.
Does it print in black and white?
Yes. The text, the tick boxes and the tables are black on white, and color is used for headings and small labels.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The one page summary, the save or let go questions and the pot log are the pages worth having beside the bucket. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
What about the videos?
The guide lists the three videos from the lesson, each with a short note and a code that takes you to it. The videos belong to the potters who made them.
How does delivery work?
It is a digital download. The link arrives by email and on the order confirmation page right after checkout, so you can have it printed and beside the bench the same evening.
What happens if the guide is updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page. When we correct or improve one, the new edition replaces the old one in the shop, and we can send the updated link to anybody who already bought it.
Can I share it?
It is licensed for your own use. Print as many copies for yourself as you like, on as many of your own devices as you like. Please do not pass the file on, upload it or use it with a class or a group without asking us first.

Save the right pots

Know the stage, know the odds, and keep the questions in front of you at the bench.

Get the guide · $16.00

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Pottery is wonderfully unpredictable. It also carries real risk.

We work hard to make The Clay Hole University accurate, useful, practical, and ridiculously thorough. But pottery is a hands-on craft involving countless variables that no written guide can completely control or anticipate.

Depending on what you are doing, ceramics may involve extreme heat, kilns, electricity, gas, flame, sharp tools, spinning machinery, heavy equipment, pressurized equipment, silica-containing dust, fumes, chemicals, raw materials, stains, oxides, glazes, combustible materials, hot surfaces, breakable objects, and other hazards capable of causing serious injury, illness, property damage, fire, or worse.

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You are responsible for determining whether any technique, material, combination, firing schedule, tool, or process described in a guide is appropriate and safe for your specific circumstances before using it.

Use appropriate protective equipment. Use adequate ventilation and dust control. Read manufacturer instructions and Safety Data Sheets. Follow your studio’s rules. Obtain qualified instruction when a process or piece of equipment requires it. Test materials and techniques before committing important work to them. If you do not understand how to perform something safely, do not proceed until you do.

Never assume that a ceramic surface, glaze, clay body, firing method, finished vessel, repair, decoration, or other result is food-safe, microwave-safe, dishwasher-safe, oven-safe, structurally sound, chemically stable, or suitable for any particular purpose solely because it appears in or is discussed in one of our guides. Verify suitability independently when it matters.

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Terms version 2026-09-19b