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The Clay Hole University Ā· Project Guides

Planters with an Attached Drip TrayPrintable pottery guide

The whole planter, in the order you build it: the half inch that decides whether the water goes anywhere, three ways to make one, and the week of drying that keeps the corner from cracking.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 31 printable pages
  • 7 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 Planters with an Attached Drip Tray printable guide?

It is the planter on paper: why the drainage holes go through the wall and never the bottom, the half inch step and how to check it with a needle tool, three ways to build one, a numbers table for a four, six and eight inch planter, how to dry the fast half and the slow half together, and the four ways glaze ruins one. Built to be printed, written in and kept on the bench for the week the drying takes.

Prefer to read it online first? The ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 31printable pages, US Letter
  • 6quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 7hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 21glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For the pot that has to look after its own water

Nobody makes a bad planter. They make a bad decision about the water

Throwing the pot is the part everybody is confident about. The tray is the part nobody thinks about until the plant is in it and there is a puddle under the pot.

A saucer you can lift has one job, and you do it without noticing: you pour it out. Attach the saucer and that job is gone, so the water has to sit somewhere lower than the soil, where you can see it and reach it with a sponge. Whether it does is settled by half an inch of clay, measured in the first few minutes of the throw.

That measurement, the drains that go through the wall, and the week of drying that keeps the inside corner from cracking are the whole difference between a planter and a very heavy ornament. Everything else is ordinary throwing.

Look inside

Real pages, for a bench with a needle tool on it

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

  • Page 3 of the ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ 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. Read it before you throw and again before you glaze.
  • Page 7 of the ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ printable guide: the cross-section, shown with the sample watermark
    The cross-sectionThe whole planter cut in half, with six numbered parts and the key beside the drawing rather than underneath it. It says plainly that it is a sketch, and the real proportions are in the numbers table.
  • Page 19 of the ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ printable guide: nine ways it goes wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    Nine ways it goes wrongFind the symptom, read the cause. Nearly every one was decided at the wheel, days before it showed, which is the annoying part and also the useful part.
  • Page 24 of the ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ printable guide: every planter, and the step you set, shown with the sample watermark
    Every planter, and the step you setA log to write in: the route, the size, the step you set, how many days it took to dry and what actually happened. Two rows in and the second planter starts from a number instead of a memory.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

You will be looking at it with a wet hand

A planter with a tray gets decided in short bursts at the wheel, with days of waiting in between. Paper suits both.

  • It holds still

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

  • A week in the middle

    The drying takes about a week and the corner is the thing to watch. Nobody rewatches a sixteen minute video to remember what to do with the plastic. They come back to a list.

  • A number to write down

    The step is one measurement you set with a needle tool. The guide has a page to put it on, next to how long the planter took to dry.

  • It pins up

    The checklist belongs beside the wheel and the drying rules belong above the shelf, because that is where the question actually gets asked.

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 numbers, run again

    The water each planter size holds was recomputed from the tray and planter sizes in the table, and the moat widths follow from the tray diameters. All of it agrees.

  • A drawing that says what it is

    The lessonā€™s cross-section called itself drawn to scale. Measured, it is a sketch, so the guide says so and points you at the numbers table for the real proportions.

  • The kiln rule, put back

    The glazing list now says what the studio has always said about a wide flat foot: it goes on a glaze catcher or a kiln cookie, every time.

  • Written for any studio

    Our cone numbers, our clay and our glazes 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.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    Six questions, and an answer key that gives the reason behind every answer rather than only the letter.

  • 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 ā€œPlanters with an Attached Drip Trayā€ lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

I have lost count of the planters that come back to the bench with a plant in them and a puddle under them. Nobody made a bad pot.

It is not a throwing problem. It is a plumbing problem, and plumbing gets settled with a measurement, not with skill.

Make a small one first, live with it for a month, and the big one will still be there.

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.

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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 each route, a checklist for the wheel, a planter log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I need a wheel?
Not for all of it. The third route is built entirely from slabs with a rolling pin or a slab roller, and it has its own section with the seams and warnings that go with it. The other two routes are thrown, and all three share the same measurements.
Do I need a bat?
For the thrown routes, yes, and the guide is blunt about why. The finished piece is a wide thin flange that cannot be wired off the wheel head and slid without tearing or warping, so it is thrown on a bat and stays on it until it is dry.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Intermediate, and not because anything in it is a new hand skill. The decision that matters is made in wet clay, early, and cannot be revisited, and a wide flat tray is about the most crack-prone shape you can throw. If you can center, open and pull a wall, you can make this.
Can I use it for a planter that lives outside?
The guideā€™s honest answer is that this is an indoor object. An open patio lets rain fill a moat that has no way to empty itself, and a moat that freezes will split the tray. A covered porch is fine, and the guide says what to do before the first hard freeze.
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 checklist and the one page summary, were checked that way on purpose.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The checklist, the one page summary and the planter log are the three 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.

Set the step first, and the rest is throwing

Get the half inch right, put the drains through the wall, and give the corner a week. Do those three and the rest is ordinary throwing. Get any of them wrong and no amount of skill at the wheel will save it, which is why this one is worth reading before you cut into the mound rather than after.

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