You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 05.12

The Clay Hole University Ā· The Pottery Wheel

How to Stop Pots TwistingPrintable pottery guide

The spiral seam climbing a cylinder, the cone that screws off in your hands, the neck that wrings itself like a wet towel. Five separate disasters, one piece of physics, and one sentence that fixes four of them.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 24 printable pages
  • 6 video picks
  • 7-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 How to Stop Pots Twisting?

It is the free lesson of the same name, rebuilt as a workbook. It starts with the one cause underneath all of it: a wheel hands you the same clay once per rotation, and if you climb faster than it can bring that clay around, the path your finger traces stops being a ring and becomes a screw thread. Then the five places it shows up. While you pull walls, where the fix is the opposite of every instinct. While you collar, the one move in the whole guide that wants a slower wheel. While you cone, at the rim, and at the base where the seal to the bat quietly dissolves. After that a nine row table that takes what you are actually seeing and puts you in front of the right section. On paper it adds a twist log, a one-page card for the wheel, a printed quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? ā€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ is free to read, and always will be.

  • 24printable pages, US Letter
  • 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 6hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 16glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

The fix feels wrong for about two weeks

A pull starts going sideways and every instinct in your body says the same two things. Slow the wheel down. Move your hands faster. Both are backwards, and doing them is what writes the spiral into the wall.

That is a hard thing to learn from a screen, because the moment you need it is the moment your hands are busy and a pot is getting taller. Instinct wins arguments you are not having.

So the answer lives on a card instead. Fast wheel, slow hands, wet clay, with the one exception written right underneath it. Read it between pots, often enough that the new instinct arrives before the old one does.

Look inside

Real pages, for the shelf beside the wheel

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

  • Page 3 of the ā€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginThe learning dashboard: what you will learn, what to have ready, the seven pitfalls that cause most of it, and what a clean pull looks like.
  • Page 5 of the ā€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ printable guide: the spiral seam, shown with the sample watermark
    The spiral seamThe first of the five twists: the five things you would be looking at, the three causes in the order we see them at the wheels, and the fix that starts with speeding the wheel up.
  • Page 12 of the ā€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ printable guide: at the base, shown with the sample watermark
    At the baseThe six fixes for a pot that jumps off center, from a bone dry slam to sponging out the moat, and what to do when it has already torn loose.
  • Page 15 of the ā€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ printable guide: the twist log, shown with the sample watermark
    The twist logTen rows, one pot each: which of the five it was, what you actually saw, the one thing you changed next, and whether it helped.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

A card that argues with your instincts

The whole guide is one sentence applied five times. It only works if you can see it in the seconds before the pull, not afterwards.

  • The twist card

    The one sentence, the exception, the fixes for pulling and collaring, and the cone, rim and base rules, on one page.

  • A twist log

    One row a pot. After a few sessions the same number keeps coming back, and that number is the part of your throwing to work on.

  • Nine rows of triage

    Find the line that sounds like your last ruined pot, read across, and go to the part that is actually about it.

  • The exception, in writing

    Collaring wants a slower wheel, a loose ring rather than a grip, and several small passes. Getting that backwards is why so many first bottles fold at the shoulder.

How the guide is built

Built around one sentence

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 cause before the symptoms

    A helix rather than a ring, explained once in plain words, so the five fixes stop being five things to remember.

  • Five twists, same shape each time

    What you are looking at, why it is happening, the fix in order, and what to do if it has already happened.

  • The web picker, run on paper

    The lessonā€™s symptom chooser is nine buttons online. Here it is nine rows you read across, with the part of the guide to turn to in the last column.

  • Corrected where it needed it

    A neck that folds over is a seam that never bonded and a pocket holding water, not trapped air, and the rim is the least supported part of a pot rather than always the fastest moving.

  • Codes that keep working

    Six 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€œHow to Stop Pots Twistingā€ lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

Fast wheel, slow hands, wet clay. You will hear it shouted across our studio most nights of the week, and every single fix in here is that sentence applied to a different moment. One sentence is not something anybody should have to pay for, 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 05.12, the twelfth 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

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Where this leads

Each twist, in full

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 twist log, a one-page twist card, the symptom picker printed as a table you can read across, a quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
What actually is the twist?
A wheel hands you the same piece of clay once per rotation. Climb faster than it can bring that clay around and the path your finger traces is a screw thread instead of a ring. That thread is the twist, and it is the same physics in all five places it shows up.
Should I speed the wheel up or slow it down?
Up, for pulling, which is the opposite of what a bad pull makes you want to do. A slower wheel gives the clay fewer chances per second to come round and meet your hand, so every bit of hand movement gets written into the wall. The one exception is collaring, and the guide gives it its own section.
Can I save a pot that has already twisted?
Sometimes. A surface ridge will usually rib out. A genuine thin stripe will not, because the clay is already gone from there. Each of the five sections ends with what is still possible and where the honest answer is the reclaim bucket.
My rim goes oval and leans. Is that a rim problem?
Usually not. The rim is the least supported part of the pot, so it exaggerates whatever happened lower down. A spiral of thick and thin from an earlier pull arrives at the top as a rim that leans. Level it, compress it, then go and look at the bottom third of the wall.
Why does my pot jump off center halfway through?
That one is not about hand speed at all. The seal to the bat has failed, either because the clay was never slammed onto a bone dry surface or because water pooling round the foot has dissolved the seal while you worked. Six fixes, and sponging out the moat is the one people skip.
Is this for beginners?
It is written for potters who can already center and pull a wall. The twist is what turns up next, and it starts at the very first cone, so if you are centering and coning you are ready for it.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. The physics is the same on any wheel with any clay. Where a number is our own teaching rather than a published figure, such as three full seconds from base to rim, the guide says so.
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.

Fast wheel, slow hands, wet clay.

Print it, keep the twist card on the shelf beside the wheel, and log the next pot that goes sideways.

Get the printable · $5.00

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