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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Oil Bottles and CruetsPrintable pottery guide

The whole bottle, in the order you build it: the size of the mouth worked out before you touch clay, the neck that has to be collared without folding, and the glaze that has to stay out of the one inch your spout sits in.

$12.505 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Advanced
  • 28 printable pages
  • 8 video picks
  • 6-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 Oil Bottles and Cruets printable guide?

It is the cruet on paper: how to work back from the spout you bought to the wet mouth you throw, a table of wet sizes for every clay body The Clay Hole stocks, a fourteen step throw with the two steps people skip, collaring a neck in short moves, a rim that does not drip, trimming in a chuck, spouts, corks and thrown stoppers, and how to dry, fire and glaze something you cannot reach inside. Built to be printed, written in and kept beside the wheel.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Throwing Oil Bottles and Cruets” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 28printable pages, US Letter
  • 6quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 8hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 17glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For the pot that is judged by a hole

Every bottle that fails, fails at the mouth

Almost nothing about a cruet is hard. The belly is a cylinder you pushed out from the inside, and the foot is a foot. What makes it a real project is that the working part is a hole you cannot see into and cannot get a finger into, and it has to finish at one particular size.

The clay shrinks and the glaze adds a little back, so the size you throw is not the size you get. Miss it by two millimeters and the spout you bought either rattles around in it or will not go in at all. That is a very expensive vase.

So the order of work runs backwards from every other pot: decide the finished hole, work back to the wet one, then throw a bottle around it. The sum is one line long. Knowing when to do it, and what to do to the neck and the glaze afterwards so the number survives two firings, is the rest of the guide.

Look inside

Real pages, for a bench with a pair of calipers on it

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

  • Page 3 of the “Oil Bottles and Cruets” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginSix boxes on one page: what you will learn, what to have on the bench, what is worth knowing, the common pitfalls, what success looks like and how to practice. The list of what you need includes the spout, bought before you start.
  • Page 6 of the “Oil Bottles and Cruets” printable guide: a cruet in section, shown with the sample watermark
    A cruet in sectionThe bottle cut down the middle, with six numbered parts and the key beside the drawing. The mouth is part one, and it is the only dimension on the pot that has to be a particular number.
  • Page 13 of the “Oil Bottles and Cruets” printable guide: spouts, corks and stoppers, shown with the sample watermark
    Spouts, corks and stoppersThree ways to close a bottle side by side, and what each one asks of the mouth: the pour spout that forgives a millimeter, the cork that doubles as your gauge, and the thrown stopper that is the most work.
  • Page 22 of the “Oil Bottles and Cruets” printable guide: every bottle, and the mouth you set, shown with the sample watermark
    Every bottle, and the mouth you setA log to write in: the clay, the spout you measured, the wet mouth you set, the mouth after bisque and whether it fitted. Two rows in and the second bottle starts from a number instead of a memory.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

The number has to be written down before you sit at the wheel

A cruet is decided twice: once on the bench with a spout and a pair of calipers, and once at the wheel with wet hands. Paper suits both.

  • It holds still

    A page stays exactly where you left it while you collar a neck with both hands. It does not time out, and it does not need slip wiped off the screen.

  • A number to carry

    The wet mouth is one measurement, and it is worked out before you sit down. The guide has a table for every clay and a page to write your own on, so you carry it to the wheel instead of remembering it.

  • Lists you can keep beside the wheel

    The whole job comes down to three short lists: before you sit down, on the wheel, and after it comes off. They are the pages worth having in front of you when your hands are busy.

  • Two firings later

    You do not find out whether a mouth fitted until it has been through the kiln twice. A log on paper is how the second bottle gets better than the first.

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 sum, run again

    Every row of the wet mouth table was recomputed from the lesson’s own formula. Three rows were a tenth of a millimeter high, and they are corrected.

  • A drawing that was measured

    The lesson’s shrinkage drawing says it is drawn to scale. We measured it against the numbers and it holds, to within the width of the pen line.

  • A glaze claim that stopped short

    The clay is vitrified and will not weep oil. The glaze is a separate question, so the guide says that and sends you to the glaze rating lookup instead of promising that every glaze is fine.

  • The kiln and dust rules, put back

    A kiln cookie goes under a glazed bottle every time, and a bisque mouth is opened out with wet sandpaper, never a dry file. Both were missing from the lesson’s own lists.

  • Written for any studio

    Our clay and our firing are named as ours and dated, so a reader working somewhere else knows which parts are a Clay Hole fact and which are a rule of the craft.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every link is a short Clay Hole address. If a video 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 “Throwing Oil Bottles and Cruets” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

I have lost count of the good-looking bottles that have come back to the bench with a pour spout that will not go in them. Nothing was wrong with anybody’s hands.

So turn it around. Buy the spouts, hold one against a pair of calipers, and let its size tell you what to throw.

That is really all a cruet is: ordinary throwing, with the steps in an order you are not used to.

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.

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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, the cross section with its key beside it, a numbered step list for the wheel, three short lists to keep beside it, a bottle log to write in, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I have to buy the spout first?
Yes, and the guide is firm about it. The mouth is the one dimension on the pot that has to be a particular number, and only your own spout or cork can tell you what that number is. Buy it, measure it with calipers, write the number down, and then throw.
Do I need a wheel?
The throwing steps assume one. The guide also says plainly that you can coil build the belly and add a neck from a rolled tube, or pinch two halves and join them, and that the mouth arithmetic is identical whichever way the bottle is made.
Does the table work for any clay?
The table gives the wet mouth for every clay body The Clay Hole stocks, from the manufacturers’ shrinkage figures. If you work with another clay, the formula on the same page works for it too: divide the finished mouth by one minus the shrinkage.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Advanced, and it is the closing of the neck that earns that. The belly is a cylinder you already know how to throw. If you can center, open, pull a straight wall and want to learn to collar, this is a good first bottle.
Will the bottle be food safe?
The clay will, because it vitrifies and will not weep oil. The glaze is a separate question that changes from one glaze to the next, so the guide sends you to the rating lookup before you put oil or vinegar in anything, and leaves an unglazed inside as a reasonable choice.
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. It is designed to stay readable in grayscale, and the pages that matter most at the wheel, the short lists and the wet mouth table, were checked that way on purpose.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The three short lists, the wet mouth table and the bottle log are the pages worth having by the wheel. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
Can I read it on a screen instead?
Yes. It is an ordinary PDF and it reads fine on a tablet or a phone. The workbook pages are the ones that want paper, because you write on 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 wheel 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.

Measure the hole, and the bottle takes care of itself

Buy the spout, work back to the wet mouth, and collar the neck in short moves. Do those three and the rest is ordinary throwing. Get the first one wrong and no amount of skill at the wheel will save the pot, which is why this is worth reading before you cut into the clay rather than after.

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