You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 07.13

The Clay Hole University Ā· Hand Building

Making Your Own Plaster Slump MoldPrintable pottery guide

Cast a permanent plaster version of a dish you already like. An hour of work, a week of drying, and it releases clay on its own for the rest of its life.

$12.505 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 26 printable pages
  • 5 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 Making Your Own Plaster Slump Mold printable guide?

It is the whole plaster recipe on paper, in the order you actually do it, with a tick list at every step and a batch table so you never work out how much to mix while a bag is open and your hands are wet. It covers which plaster to buy and why the craft shop tub fails, hump against slump and how the same dish casts either way, the ratio by weight, what slaking is and why three minutes of doing nothing decides how strong the mold comes out, pouring low so the bubbles end up in the back, and the week of drying that turns a cast lump into something that releases clay with no plastic wrap at all. Six ways it goes wrong each get a page of their own, with what caused it and what to do about the one sitting in front of you. There is a log to fill in for every mold you cast, a glossary, the full quiz with an answer key that explains every answer, and a one page reference for the bench. It is a home project from start to finish, and the guide says plainly why plaster and a shared clay studio never mix.

Prefer to read it online first? The ā€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 26printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 5hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 17glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For the shape you keep going back to

Some dishes earn a permanent copy

There is usually one. A bowl with exactly the right curve, a dish the right size for the thing you keep making, a shape you have lined with plastic wrap so many times that the wrap has become the annoying part of the job.

Plaster is how you stop doing that. Line it once, pour, wait an hour, dry it for a week, and you own that shape forever: a mold that pulls water out of a slab, lets go on its own, and never needs wrapping again. The cost is a bag of plaster and one careful afternoon.

What goes wrong is almost never the potter. It is the recipe, followed by eye instead of by weight, or stirred before it had a chance to slake, or poured from too high. Plaster is unforgiving about things that look like they should not matter, and forgiving about everything else. This guide is the recipe, written down properly, for a bench in a garage.

Look inside

Real pages, for a garage bench and an open bag

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

  • Page 5 of the ā€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ printable guide: the whole job in six moves, shown with the sample watermark
    The whole job in six movesThe shape of the afternoon up front, so you know what you are committing to before you buy plaster.
  • Page 8 of the ā€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ printable guide: weigh it, sift it, slake it, then mix it slowly, shown with the sample watermark
    Weigh it, sift it, slake it, then mix it slowlyThe step everything else depends on, including how much to mix, which the page gets wrong more often than any other.
  • Page 14 of the ā€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ printable guide: six ways it goes wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    Six ways it goes wrongSoft, stuck, bubbled, cracked, in the clay, down the drain. Each with the cause and what to do about this one.
  • Page 13 of the ā€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ printable guide: every mold you cast, and how it came out, shown with the sample watermark
    Every mold you cast, and how it came outOne line per cast: the form, which direction, what you mixed, how long it dried, how it released.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

Plaster gives you about ten minutes and no hands to spare

Once the plaster is in the water the clock is running, and you have gloves on, powder on your fingers and a bucket going off. That is the worst possible moment to be scrolling.

  • It stays on the step you are on

    A page does not scroll, time out or go dark when you have not touched it for two minutes. It sits there showing the slake while you wait out the slake.

  • Nothing to wipe your hands for

    Plaster dust and a phone screen are a bad pairing, and a phone handled with plaster on your hands stays handled with plaster on it.

  • Tick lists you actually tick

    Four of them, one per step, printed with boxes. On the day it matters you want to see which things you have already done, not remember them.

  • The batch table, before you open the bag

    Five common sizes with the water and plaster already worked out, so the arithmetic happens before your hands are busy rather than during.

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.

  • The recipe in the order you do it

    Prepare the form, mix, pour, dry. Four steps, each ending in a tick list you can work off while the plaster is doing something without you.

  • A batch table that does the arithmetic

    Five form sizes with the water and the plaster in grams and kilos, plus one line of multiplication for anything not on the list.

  • Hump and slump, side by side

    The same dish casts either way. The guide shows both, says which is easier and which is more useful, and how to get one from the other.

  • Six faults, each with its own page

    Not a list of tips. What caused it, what to do differently next time, and what can still be done with the one in front of you.

  • Videos as codes you can scan

    Five, from potters with no connection to us, each one chosen for a different part of the job and printed as a code beside the step it belongs to.

  • A log, a glossary and a bench card

    Somewhere to write down every cast, the words the plaster trade uses, and the whole job condensed onto one page for the wall.

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€œMaking Your Own Plaster Slump Moldā€ lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

This is the one thing in the whole University we ask you to do somewhere else, because plaster and a shared clay studio genuinely cannot share a building. That felt like a reason to write it down more carefully, not less.

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
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: 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.

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

Do I need any of this at the studio?
No, and please do not bring it. Plaster molds, plaster tools, plaster dust and plaster rinse water all stay at home. A single chip of plaster in clay survives the firing and then pops a crater out of a finished pot weeks later, and in a shared studio it travels through the reclaim into everybodyā€™s work. The guide explains the whole thing, and what we have instead.
Which plaster do I buy?
Pottery plaster, sometimes sold as No. 1 pottery plaster or casting plaster. Not plaster of Paris from a craft shop, which is softer, and not the hard dental or hydrocal plasters, which are too dense to pull water out of clay. A mold works because it is thirsty. The guide says what to look for and how to store it.
Is this hard?
It is easy to do and easy to get wrong, which is why it is written down. Nothing in it is difficult with your hands. It is a recipe, and the whole difficulty is following it exactly: weighed rather than scooped, left alone when you want to stir, and left alone again when you want to turn it out.
How much does a mold cost to make?
A bag of pottery plaster, a kitchen scale, a flexible bucket and a dish you already own. The dish is the part that matters, and it is probably already in your kitchen. After the first bag, each mold is pennies of plaster.
How long before I can use it?
About an hour to pour and turn out, then a week or two of drying somewhere warm and airy, turned daily. A damp mold sticks to clay. A dry one draws water out of a slab evenly and releases it with no wrap at all, which is the entire point.
Is it a hump or a slump?
Either, from the same dish, depending on whether you pour the plaster in or around it. The guide covers both directions, says which one to make first and why, and how to cast a matching pair.
What format is it, and how do I get it?
A PDF, delivered the moment you buy it. Download it to as many of your own devices as you like, print the pages you want at home, and print a fresh copy whenever the first one gets clay on it.
Will it print properly on my printer?
Yes. It is set for US Letter with proper margins and prints on any home printer, in color or black and white. The tick lists, the log and the one page bench reference are all designed to be printed on their own and used.
Do I need to be a member of The Clay Hole?
No. The guide is written for potters anywhere, working at home. Where our studio does something differently, the guide says so and explains why, but nothing in it needs a membership or a studio.
What if I already read the free lesson?
Then you know the teaching, and the guide is that teaching rebuilt for the bench: tick lists per step, the batch table worked out, a log to fill in, a glossary, the quiz with an answer key that explains every answer, and a page you can pin up. The lesson is free and stays free either way.

Own the shape, not the roll of plastic wrap

One afternoon, one bag of plaster and a dish you already like, and you have a mold that works on its own for years. Download it, print the tick lists, and keep them on the bench where the plaster is.

Get the guide · $12.50

The Clay Hole University Printable Guide Terms

Licensing, safety, digital delivery, and refund terms

Your copy is yours. The guide is not.

Your purchase gives one individual purchaser a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license for personal use only. You may download the guide to your own devices, print copies for your own use, write all over them, spill clay water on them, replace a coffee-damaged copy, and generally use the heck out of what you bought.

What you may not do is distribute the guide to anyone else, whether you charge for it or not.

That means you may not share, forward, email, upload, post, publish, copy, reproduce, resell, sublicense, redistribute, or otherwise provide the guide, or any substantial portion of it, to another person. You may not place it in a shared drive, group chat, membership library, online community, file-sharing service, studio resource folder, classroom packet, employee handbook, course, workshop, or other shared collection. You may not make copies for students, members, employees, friends, classes, studios, schools, groups, or organizations.

You may not remove or obscure copyright notices, watermarks, attribution, or other ownership information, or sell, republish, or commercially exploit modified or derivative versions of the guide.

Purchasing the guide does not transfer ownership of its copyrighted text, photographs, illustrations, graphics, layouts, worksheets, or other original content. Those rights remain with The Clay Hole and their respective rights holders. Copyright law protects the expression contained in these guides, while ideas, methods, techniques, and processes may have different legal treatment.

If you would like to use one of our guides with a class, studio, school, team, or other group, contact The Clay Hole about permission or group licensing. Please do not make twenty copies and call it manifesting.

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.

These guides are provided for general educational and informational purposes. They are not a substitute for hands-on training, competent supervision, your studioā€™s safety procedures, applicable laws or codes, Safety Data Sheets, or the instructions and warnings supplied by the manufacturers of your clay, glaze, chemicals, tools, kilns, equipment, protective gear, or other materials.

Studios, kilns, clay bodies, glazes, firing schedules, electrical systems, ventilation systems, equipment, environmental conditions, application thicknesses, material formulations, and individual techniques vary enormously. Something that works beautifully in one situation may fail spectacularly in another. That is part of pottery. Occasionally, it is a very expensive part of pottery.

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 studioā€™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.

Ceramics also refuses to sign contracts promising beautiful results. Colors change. Glazes move. Kilns have opinions. Pots crack. Materials interact unexpectedly. Manufacturers reformulate products. Equipment behaves differently. The Clay Hole does not guarantee any particular aesthetic, functional, firing, glazing, structural, or other result.

By choosing to use the information in a guide, you accept responsibility for your own materials, equipment, workspace, safety decisions, testing, methods, and results. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, The Clay Hole and its owners, employees, contributors, and affiliates are not responsible for injury, illness, property damage, lost work, failed projects, kiln or equipment damage, financial loss, or other loss arising from or related to your use of, or reliance upon, the guide.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any right or liability that applicable law does not allow us to exclude or limit.

Digital guides, immediate delivery, and refunds

These are digital products delivered electronically and made available for use immediately after purchase. Unlike a physical book, a downloaded digital file cannot meaningfully be returned to us once it has been delivered.

By completing your purchase and requesting immediate access to the guide, you consent to digital delivery beginning immediately. Where applicable law provides a cancellation or withdrawal period for digital content, you acknowledge that beginning the download, access, or delivery of the digital content may cause that cancellation or withdrawal right to end.

Once access to or delivery of the purchased digital guide has begun, the purchase is final and non-refundable except where a refund, replacement, cancellation, or other remedy is required by applicable law.

If the file you receive is corrupted, inaccessible, materially different from what was described, or there is a genuine technical problem with delivery, please contact us. We would much rather fix the problem than leave you staring angrily at a PDF that refuses to PDF.

Terms version 2026-09-19b