You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 05.17

The Clay Hole University Ā· The Pottery Wheel

How to Use a Kick WheelPrintable pottery guide

Your leg is the engine and the flywheel is the battery, so every move happens while the wheel is quietly slowing down. Five steps from the seat to the wire, six things that go wrong, and the one habit the whole skill rests on: hands fully off before the leg moves.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 25 printable pages
  • 5 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 Use a Kick Wheel?

It is the free lesson of the same name, rebuilt as a workbook. It opens with what a flywheel actually does, then the six parts of the wheel you are sitting on, then five steps: the seat, the long kick stroke, centering in bursts on a wheel that is always losing speed, one full pull per coast, and letting it stop before you wire off. After that come six things that go wrong and what each one is telling you. On paper it adds a session log, a one page card for the table beside you, a quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? ā€œHow to Use a Kick Wheelā€ is free to read, and always will be.

  • 25printable pages, US Letter
  • 5step method, start to finish
  • 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 5hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 16glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

It makes your mistakes audible

Nothing on a kick wheel is hidden. Press too hard and you hear it. Kick from the hip and the pot goes off center while your leg is still moving. The wheel answers every habit you have, out loud, in the same second.

That is also the reason it is hard to learn from a screen. The five moves read in a paragraph. The rhythm underneath them, kick between the moves and never during them, only arrives after a few evenings of counting strokes and watching your own shoulders.

So this one is built to sit on the table next to the water bucket: the tick lists on one card, and a log that shows you, session by session, where your wobble was coming from.

Look inside

Real pages, for the table beside you

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

  • Page 5 of the ā€œHow to Use a Kick Wheelā€ printable guide: the five minute version, shown with the sample watermark
    The five minute versionThe whole thing in six moves: sit right with the foot ready, kick in long strokes, center at full speed, pull slow, never kick mid move, and let it stop before you wire.
  • Page 6 of the ā€œHow to Use a Kick Wheelā€ printable guide: what you are sitting on, shown with the sample watermark
    What you are sitting onThe six parts that matter on our own Lockerbie Model K, from the concrete flywheel and the wheel head to the shaft, the seat, the table and the direction it turns.
  • Page 7 of the ā€œHow to Use a Kick Wheelā€ printable guide: the seat, and the kick, shown with the sample watermark
    The seat, and the kickSeat height and how to test it, the table set before you sit, hair and sleeves tied back, the four point tick list for the seat, and the start of the long kick stroke.
  • Page 12 of the ā€œHow to Use a Kick Wheelā€ printable guide: the kick wheel log, shown with the sample watermark
    The kick wheel logOne row a session: the date, the lump weight, a box for every pot, and three habits ticked off. Hands off to kick, six strokes, flywheel wiped.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Your hands are wet and your leg is busy

A kick wheel gives you about half a minute of usable speed at a time. Nobody spends it unlocking a phone.

  • The kick card

    The five tick lists from the lesson on one page, plus the six things that go wrong and what each one means.

  • A session log

    Eight rows, ten pots each, and the three habits ticked pot by pot until your own pattern shows up. Most people see the change by the fourth row.

  • Nothing to wake up

    No screen to touch with clay on your hands, and nothing that goes dark in the middle of a coast.

  • Read it, then watch it

    Five video picks, each behind a QR code, so you can read a move first and then watch somebody do it properly.

How the guide is built

Built for an evening on one wheel

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 wheel before the moves

    Six parts of a kick wheel, so you know what the flywheel, the shaft and the steel band are doing before you sit down.

  • Five steps, each with a tick list

    The seat, the kick, centering, pulling and finishing, with the place each one fails marked.

  • Six things that go wrong

    Off center every time your leg moves, a wheel that dies under your hands, a foot that slides on the return, and what each one is telling you.

  • Checked against the maker

    The wheel described here is ours, a Lockerbie Model K, and its numbers were checked against the makerā€™s own specifications. The flywheel weighs about ninety pounds, which is quite enough not to brake with a shoe.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every QR code points at 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 Use a Kick Wheelā€ lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

A kick wheel is not faster and it is not more authentic. It is a teacher. It makes your mistakes audible, and after a month on one people go back to the pedal and center in half the time. That is worth knowing whether or not you ever sit at one, 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 05.17, the seventeenth 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

From the flywheel back to the pedal

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 session log, a one page kick card, a printed quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
Do I need a kick wheel to get anything out of it?
You need one to practise on, and most people meet theirs at a studio or a school rather than at home. If you have never sat at one, the guide is also a fair way to decide whether you want to, because it says plainly what the wheel gives you and what it asks of you.
Is it for beginners?
It assumes you are already centering and pulling reliably on an electric wheel. The moves are the ones you know. What changes is the rhythm, and a first wheel is a lot to learn at the same time as a new rhythm.
Which foot kicks?
The right foot, on a wheel that turns counterclockwise, because the front edge of the flywheel is travelling left to right and a right foot pushing away from your body pushes with it. The guide walks through the stroke itself, which is long and low rather than hard.
Will it hurt my knees or hips?
Usually not, if the seat height is right and the kick comes from the knee. Aches nearly always trace back to the seat, so the guide spends a page on getting that right before it teaches you anything else.
Is it any good for trimming?
It is wonderful for trimming. Two gentle strokes and a long slow coast is exactly the speed a foot ring wants, and the wheel will never overshoot it. Tap centering works the same as it does on an electric.
Can I use my bats on it?
On ours, yes. The head is drilled for bat pins ten inches on center, which is the usual spacing, so a standard studio bat drops straight on. Check the head on the wheel you are using before you buy bats for it.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. It is written for potters everywhere, and the one page about how things work in our studio is marked as ours. Where kick wheels differ, the guide says what to look at on the one in front of you.
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 looked at the workbook pages in grayscale to be sure.
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.

Hands off. Then kick.

Print it, keep the kick card on the table, and fill in the first row of the log tonight.

Get the printable · $5.00

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