You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 02.02

The Clay Hole University · Safety and Your Body

The Risks Every Potter Should KnowPrintable pottery guide

The free lesson, rebuilt as a workbook: every real hazard in a pottery studio, ranked by what actually matters, what is overblown, and the eight habits that cover most of it.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 20 printable pages
  • 4 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 printable edition of The Risks Every Potter Should Know?

It is the free lesson of the same name, rebuilt as a workbook. It ranks the real hazards in a pottery studio, dust first by a distance, then your back and wrists, machines, kilns, chemicals and the small stuff, says plainly what is overblown, and boils it down to eight habits. On paper it adds a safety walk-through for your own space, a one-page eight-habit card, a quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” is free to read, and always will be.

  • 20printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 4hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 13glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

Pottery is a safe craft, practiced carelessly

Almost everybody practices pottery carelessly at some point. The dangers are real, slow and easy to ignore, and nearly all of them are solved by habits that cost nothing.

The trouble with most safety writing is that it treats everything as equally urgent, so people ignore most of it, usually including the parts that mattered. This guide puts the risks in order and says which warnings are genuinely overstated.

It ends in eight habits on a single page you can stick up where you work, and a walk-through for your own space so the advice turns into changes.

Look inside

Real pages, for the wall by the wheel

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

  • Page 5 of the “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” printable guide: kilns: heat, fumes and electricity, shown with the sample watermark
    Kilns: heat, fumes and electricityFumes during firing, radiant heat and your eyes, hot shelves, and why only trained people touch the wiring.
  • Page 7 of the “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” printable guide: machines that can hurt you, shown with the sample watermark
    Machines that can hurt youThe slab roller first, then augers, the wheel, grinders and needle tools, and the one rule that covers all of it.
  • Page 12 of the “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” printable guide: the safety walk-through, shown with the sample watermark
    The safety walk-throughEight rows for what you find in your own space: the risk, what you changed, and when you checked it again.
  • Page 17 of the “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” printable guide: the quiz, shown with the sample watermark
    The quizEight questions, with an answer key that explains the reasoning behind every answer.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Safety belongs where the work happens

A page on the wall by the wheel is what turns a good intention into a habit.

  • Eight habits, one page

    The card goes up where you work, so the habits are in front of you when the broom is within reach.

  • A walk-through you fill in

    Walk your own space, write down what you find and what you changed, and check it again.

  • It ranks the risks

    Dust first by a distance, then your back and wrists. Most of the rest is ordinary workshop sense.

  • It says what is overblown

    Wet clay on your hands, a mask to throw, every glaze a poison: what is genuinely overstated, so the real warnings land.

How the guide is built

Built for the first time you look around your own studio

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.

  • Risks in order of how much they matter

    Dust, kilns, chemicals, machines, your back and wrists, and the small stuff, each with what to do about it.

  • Four videos, checked

    Short, well-regarded videos on studio dust, electric kiln safety, kiln venting and a sore back from throwing. Each was checked when the guide was built.

  • A safety walk-through you actually fill in

    Eight rows: what you found, the risk, what you changed, and when you checked it again.

  • The eight-habit card

    The whole guide on one page, with what matters most and what you can relax about.

  • 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 “The Risks Every Potter Should Know” lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

A safe craft, practiced carelessly by almost everyone at some point: that is the honest version. The dangers are real, slow and easy to ignore, and the fixes cost nothing, so this lesson never sits behind a paywall.

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 02.02, the second guide in Safety and Your Body. 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

  • 5guides in your cart1 on us
  • 9guides in your cart2 on us
Where this leads

From the hazards to the details

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 safety walk-through, a one-page eight-habit card, a printed quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
Will it scare me off pottery?
No. It is proportionate on purpose: it says which risks are real, which are overblown, and that none of it is a reason not to make pots.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. Almost everything in it applies to any pottery studio or home setup. The few Clay Hole notes are labeled “At The Clay Hole”.
Does it replace training or my studio’s rules?
No. It is general education. Follow your studio’s rules and the maker’s instructions first, and read the safety sheet for any material you use.
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 don’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.

Eight habits. Stick them up where you work.

Print it, walk your space with the walk-through, and put the card by the wheel. The rest is a mop instead of a broom.

Get the printable · $10.00

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 studio’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 studio’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