How To Mix a Ceramic Glaze From Scratch

 
A red iron oxide glaze in the process of being run through a Talisman Glaze Sieve.

A red iron oxide glaze in the process of being run through a Talisman Glaze Sieve.

 

This post is an overview of how to mix a ceramic glaze from dry ingredients, including the tools, techniques and procedures to get you started.

Whether you buy a pre-mixed dry glaze or weigh each ingredient, there are a lot of advantages to mixing your own glaze:

  • Save money: Mixing glazes in your studio is always cheaper, sometimes as much as 80 to 90 percent cheaper than bottled glaze.

  • Customize: Learn how to modify slips and glazes to suit your kiln and clay bodies.

  • Learn glaze chemistry: Even a bit of info can help you get the results you want.

A variety of our favorite glaze recipes are posted here, and there are lots of websites and books with glaze recipes. There are endless amounts of glaze recipes, so if you are new to this, just start with one basic one such as a glossy clear. There are also pre-mixed, dry glazes which are effective and still save some money over buying bottled glazes.

Keep reading for the complete how to instructions.

Table of Contents

  • Glaze Mixing Tools and Accessories

  • How To Mix Glazes From Scratch

  • Testing and Storing Glazes

  • Summary

Glaze Mixing Tools and Accessories

Here’s what you need to mix glaze in your studio:

How To Mix Glazes From Scratch

  1. Review recipe.

    Check to make sure you have enough of each ingredient. It can be helpful to calculate and write out the amount of each material, to be used as a checklist.

  2. Prepare work area

    Put on a dust mask, clean your scale and work area. Get your materials, buckets, and scoops together.

  3. Zero scale

    Place your measuring pan or bowl on the scale and turn it on. If needed, press the tare button so that the scale is zeroed out.

  4. Weigh ingredients

    Weigh each ingredient (this is where your checklist is handy) and put them in a dry bowl or bucket. After measuring all the ingredients, mix the dry ingredients together. Some glaze ingredients, such as bentonite, are prone to clumping so it is important to mix everything dry first.

  5. Add to water and mix

    Add the mixed glaze materials to water and mix until it is thick cream or buttermilk consistency. An electric drill with a proper mixing blade greatly speeds up this process. A large plastic scraper will dislodge material from the side of the bucket. Once all the dry ingredients have been mixed with water, you can remove your mask if desired.

    Note: it’s best to add glaze materials to water. If you add water to a bucket of dry materials, it’s hard to get everything in the bottom corners mixed.

  6. Sieve and homogenize

    Prepare another clean bucket with a sieve, preferably a fine 80 mesh sieve. Run the glaze through the sieve this first time, to break up any clumps. A brush can help push material through the sieve, or a Talisman Glaze Sieve is a tool made specifically for mixing glaze into 5 or 10 gallon buckets.

    Then, clean the bucket where you will be storing the glaze. Run the glaze through the sieve a second time into this clean bucket.

  7. Test glaze consistency

    Glazes are typically mixed to a specific gravity, which measures the amount of dissolved solids in the water. Usually glazes are around 1.50, which means 50 parts dissolved solids to 100 parts water. Keep records and mix the glaze to a consistency that works for you.

    Specific gravity can be measured with a specialized (but fragile) hydrometer, or you can use a graduated cylinder on your scale. With your cylinder zeroed out on the scale, pour in 100ml of the mixed glaze and check the weight. Add water as needed, and mix.

  8. Label and store

    Glaze containers and lids should be labeled with the name, temperature, and any other information that will help you. Laminated, waterproof labels are best but packing tape can also protect a label for some time.

Testing and Storing Glazes

Testing Glaze

It is helping to make a test tile of a glaze, on each clay body you use. Vertical test tiles such as tubes from an extruder are best, as they show how a glaze will “move” with gravity. Dip your test tile with one and two dips to show how different thicknesses of glaze affect the color.

Some studios choose to make a test tile with each batch of glaze. But if you are careful to mix the glaze accurately to a similar specific gravity, and your firings are repeatable, you should get roughly the same glaze results each time. There are no guarantees with glaze though. It is important to keep records, both in a glaze book and a kiln log, in order to get standardized results. But, glaze materials do change over time so as necessary you can make new test tiles.

Storing glazes

Glazes can be stored in sealed containers or buckets almost indefinitely. Most glaze ingredients are inorganic and will not rot. But some ingredients, such as bone ash, can cause some rotting smells. To avoid this, make sure the glaze is mixed with some frequency. If the odor persists, you can add a trace amount of copper to any glaze (even white glazes!) without affecting the color. Copper is an anti-fungal and can cut down or eliminate odor. Read our post on that here.

Remixing glaze

As they are used, glazes do lose some moisture to evaporation and bisqueware can suck extra water out of the glaze mix. It can be helpful to mix and then do a quick visual check of the glaze. If necessary, you can re-check the specific gravity and add water. If a glaze seems thick or is glopping onto your pieces, it’s definitely time to check it and probably add water.

In addition, when I mix glaze, I will usually run all the old and new glaze through a sieve. Small bits of bisque and other contaminants can fall into a glaze bucket. When I’m using it, I want to know what I’ve got in that bucket. It does take extra work but having a double-sieved, homogenized glaze will result more even glaze application and hopefully, better results.

Summary

This post has covered a basic overview of mixing glazes from scratch. It covered the tools, techniques, and a few helpful hints to mix and store glazes. If you can follow a recipe, you can mix glaze. There is an overwhelming amount of glaze info out there, but if you start with just one basic recipe and grow from there, you will be a glaze master in no time and you will be able to customize and mix glazes to suit your own needs.

If you are looking for more info on mixing glazes, the glaze books by John Britt are some of the best resources.

The Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes

Buy at Bookshop.org

Buy at Amazon

The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes

Buy at Bookshop.org

Buy at Amazon

Questions or comments? Let us know in the comments.

The Best Cut Off Wire for Ceramic Wedging Tables

 
The best wedging table cut off wire is Music Wire or Piano Wire.

The best wedging table cut off wire is Music Wire or Piano Wire.

 

The best cut off wire for a wedging table in a ceramics studio is Music Wire or Piano Wire. It’s durable, flexible, and strong enough to make repeated cuts even with harder clay. Under normal use, a few feet of wire can last for years, making this the perfect choice for a DIY cut off wire or as replacement wire for a wedging table. One package of almost 400 feet of this wire costs about $15 and that might be a lifetime supply of cut off wire for your studio. Pair it with a hook and eye turnbuckle and you’ve got a flexible, adjustable cut off wire for your wedging table. Below are images of how to set up a cut off wire.

For shopping, I prefer the 0.031 inch music wire but if that’s not available, try the slightly thicker 0.045 inch music wire. There are a variety of other thicknesses available.

As long as you have that 400 feet of music wire there’s a lot more you can do with it:

> Use to hang plates, bowls or tiles
> Super-strong picture frame wire
> Attach test tiles to screws on the wall
> ??? Sky’s the limit but some extra wire always comes in handy when you need it

Here’s a few pictures of music wire in use with a wedging table:

musicwire2.jpg
 

Here’s a close up of the hook and eye turnbuckle that can be used to fine tune the tension on the wire. This helps to get the wire very taught.

 
musicwire3.jpg
 

To “tie” the wire to the bottom of the wedging table, we just wrap and twist it a few times. Pliers are helpful for this task. This example is from a Bailey Wedging Table, but you can also screw in an eyelet screw if you have a wooden edge on your wedging table.

 
musicwire4.jpg
 

Our last tip is to take a soft plastic blue rib (shop at amazon), screw a hole in it, and attach it to the table with rope or twine. With this set up, you’ll always have a scraper handy to clean your wedging table.

How do you set up your wedging table? Let us know in the comments.

 

Buy items mentioned in this post:

The Best Way to Eliminate Odor from a Stinky Ceramic Slop or Glaze Bucket

Updated and revised, September 9, 2023

A dirty, stinky throwing slop trash can in need of some cleaning and copper carbonate, to eliminate odors.

A dirty, stinky throwing slop trash can in need of some cleaning and copper carbonate, to eliminate odors.

Stinky slop and glaze buckets can be a problem in any ceramic studio. The smells range from a swampy, pond-mud smell to a very strong sulfurous odor. All are caused by some kind of organic matter in your clay or glaze.

In addition, some glaze materials such as bone ash or CMC are organic materials and will start to smell over time, especially if the bucket is not stirred regularly.

To deal with smelly buckets, the best practices are to:

  1. Keep organic materials like brush bristles, paper, etc out of your buckets and jars

  2. Stir and mix your materials more frequently

  3. Cycle materials more frequently

  4. Clean your buckets with soap and water, and sterilize them with bleach

Adding bleach? In some studios, bleach is added to slop buckets or clean up buckets and mixed with the clay slop. This is an ok thing to do, but has it’s drawbacks. Usually, the bleach will just mask whatever the problem is for a few days or weeks, and then the smell will return. And I personally don’t like to add bleach to buckets where the material is being recycled such as clay slop buckets. And if you add too much bleach, the slop water can be rough on your hands.

The following article covers some ideas for eliminating odors from glaze buckets, underglaze jars, and slop buckets. Discussed is a somewhat extreme method of adding copper carbonate. In general, I would use this as a last resort after you have tried to cycle material, or clean outed and sterilized the problematic bucket. A little bit of copper can get rid of smells, because of the antimicrobial properties of the element, but using it does have some drawbacks as well.

This practice of adding a small amount of copper carbonate comes from a tip I read many years ago I read in Ceramics Monthly. (I haven’t been able to find the link) The tip from the potter was adding a trace amount of copper carbonate to glaze buckets. My memory is just a gram or two. It wasn’t enough to change the color of the glaze (even in a white glaze), but it was enough to prevent mold growth. If you have a glaze that regularly smells, try adding an extremely small amount of copper carbonate to any glaze, and see if that fixes the problem. The tutorial below also covers adding copper carbonate to slop buckets, in addition to some strategies to deal with smell glaze and underglaze jars.

Table of Contents

  1. How To Eliminate Odor From Glaze Buckets

  2. How To Eliminate Odor from Underglaze Jars

  3. Maintaining and Dealing with Odor in Slop Buckets and Reclaim Clay

How To Eliminate Odor From Glaze Buckets

Stinky glaze buckets happen from time to time. Usually, this is caused by some sort of organic matter. It could also be caused by organic glaze materials such as bone ash or CMC gum. For bone ash glazes, try stirring the glaze more often, or proceed with the copper carbonate fix as detailed below. For glazes with CMC gum, try replacing that with bentonite, which is a very fine, inorganic clay that can help glazes stay in suspension.

Before adding copper carbonate to a stinky bucket, screen the glaze first to make sure you’ve removed any brush bristles, bisque chunks, or other foreign matter. Sometimes, just stirring the glaze more often may eliminate the issue, so try that first!

Method:

Add 1 gram of copper carbonate per 5 gallons of glaze, stir, and wait 24 hours.

That’s it!

Just a bit of copper should take care of the problem, and in such a small amount, it shouldn’t change the color of the glaze. I even did this once with 5 gallon bucket of white glaze. A little risky, but it worked without changing the glaze color.

If you are nervous about adding copper carb, or if your studio scale is not very accurate, try measuring the smallest amount you can, such as 2 or 5 or 10 grams, and then physically dividing it up to get down to something like .5 grams or 1 grams, and add that small amount to your glaze. If the smell isn’t gone in 24 hours, repeat the process.

If the copper carbonate doesn’t solve your problem, don’t keep adding it past 2 or 3 grams. Eventually, you will add enough to alter the color of the glaze. If the problem persists, you may have to discard the glaze and start over with a fresh batch.

How to Eliminate Odor from Underglaze Jars

Underglaze jars can get really stinky. Some in particular, such as the various reds from the Amaco Velvet Underglaze line, seem prone to getting stinky.

To prevent odors with underglazes:
> Remove any cardboard liner from the caps
> Stir to mix. Don’t shake all the underglaze against these cardboard liners
> Try to prevent brush bristles from dropping in
> Keep any other organic matter out of the jar

But if your underglaze gets stinky? There may not be much you can do. It’s such a small volume, and our best remedy, copper carbonate, is a colorant. Still, you can try adding a very small amount of copper, approximately 1 gram or less. Stir into your underglaze, cap it up, and wait 24 hours. Check and repeat if necessary. Caution: you will change the color of your underglaze if you add copper to them! I’ve done this a few times with the extremely-prone-to-stinkiness Bright Red Velvet Underglaze. The copper mutes the red a bit, but it’s actually a lovely result that is still red.

But the conclusion is, there may not be much you can do for a stinky underglaze except to tolerate it and/or discard and buy a new jar.

Maintaining and Dealing With Odor in Slop Clay Bucket

A slop bucket is a great way to reduce the amount of clay going into your sink and can also be used for initial cleaning of splash pans and throwing buckets. If there was room, I’d have a series of three of these for cleanup. But in the studio I manage, there is just one 40 gallon trash can with a mesh lid. It’s used to collect all the throwing slop.

Ideally, this trash can gets completely emptied about once a month and the heavier slop is saved and mixed with reclaim clay. But while the slop is building up, the bucket can get pretty stinky. And if you recycle stinky slop, then you have stinky reclaim clay (although the process of mixing does seem to help alleviate some problems with smell.)

The first step I would take with a stinky slop bucket would be to completely empty it and clean with soap. Then, sterilize the bucket or trash can with bleach and let it dry completely. Usually this will eliminate your stinky slop bucket problem for at least a few months up to 6 months. Slop buckets will always get smelly at some point so just plan to fully clean and sterilize it on a regular schedule.

A more extreme solution is adding a small but regular dose of copper carbonate to your slop bucket. Caution: adding copper carbonate to reclaim clay may result in small green spots showing up through white or clear glazes as you are adding copper to your clay! Use this method at your own risk.

The tutorial below covers maintaining a slop bucket with copper. As mentioned, try cycling your materials more regularly, keep organic material out of your bucket, and give your bucket a deep clean before trying this method!:

Step 1: Remove water, add copper carb, and stir

Ideally, the slop bucket is a settling tank so that heavier clay particles will separate and fall to the bottom. Pictured here is a 40 gallon trash can. As the can fills to the top and settles, pull off the top 10 gallons of water. This watery slip goes down the sink in my studio, but you could choose to let it settle and then decant.

After taking off the top 10 gallons, add about a half a spoonful of copper carbonate. This is about 2-3 grams of copper carbonate.

After adding the copper carbonate, stir or mix the whole slop bucket with a drill. It helps to disperse the copper.

Add about 1/2 spoonful of copper carbonate per approximately 20-30 gallons of slop.

Add about 2 to 3 grams (about 1/2 spoonful) of copper carbonate per approximately 20-30 gallons of slop.

Copper carbonate on the surface, ready to be mixed into the slop.

Copper carbonate on the surface, ready to be mixed into the slop.

Step 2: Clean the Lid

A clean lid for our slop bucket.

A clean lid for our slop bucket.

Not exactly necessary, but a regular lid cleaning makes it easier to maintain and inspires respect from your fellow studio mates.

It’s a bit hard to see in the picture, but I am are using my favorite pro-grade cleanup sponges.

For the lid on our bucket has a DIY screen made by cutting a hole in the trash can lid and attaching rubberized mesh with nuts and washers. The mesh helps to keep tools, sponges, and large chunks of clay out of the slop bucket.

 

Step 3: Repeat as Necessary

Our bucket with a clean lid and a bit of copper to prevent any stinky odors.

Our bucket with a clean lid and a bit of copper to prevent any stinky odors.

As stated above, it takes us approximately 1 month to end up with about 15 gallons of heavy slip but usually every week or more often, I remove the top layer of watery slip from the bucket. Every time water is removed, I add copper to the bucket.

Once there is 15 gallons or so of heavier slop at the bottom of the bucket, I remove it and put it in 5 gallon “settling tanks,” This watery slop is then poured over dried out scraps or added to the pugmill as needed. It’s the best way I can think of to capture all the fine particles left over from the throwing process. I’ve also found that as this slop with copper moves through the reclaim process, it combines with other clay and helps keep that reclaim from getting stinky too.

Occasionally, I do notice a little green copper speck popping into a white glaze from the reclaim clay, so if you want to be extra careful, use the least amount of copper necessary, or mix it into a watery slurry before adding to your slop bucket.

Summary

This post has covered a variety of ways to deal with smelly glaze, underglaze, and slop buckets. Also detailed is how to use copper carbonate to eliminate odor in glaze buckets, underglaze jars, and slop buckets. It’s an effective and affordable way to manage the inevitable odors that arise in a ceramic studio.

Do you have any other techniques for maintaining odor-free slop and glaze buckets? Let us know in the comments.

Shop materials and tools mentioned in this post:

How To Use and Clean Up Wax Resist in a Ceramics Studio

 
Brushes covered in wax. In this post, we’ll show you how to clean them with boiling water.

Brushes covered in wax. In this post, we’ll show you how to clean them with boiling water.

 

Wax resist is a great thing to use with ceramics and pottery. It gives you a lot of decorative glazing options, and is useful when glazing rims, lids, feet—anywhere you need to keep free of glaze. But inevitably, you will have to clean it up.

The best way to clean wax resist is with boiling water. Below is a step-by-step tutorial of how to clean your wax brushes and container. There’s also a review a favorite electric water kettle, and some tips of how to best use wax resist. The post will start with a review of wax resists.

Table of Contents

  • Our Favorite Wax Resist: Amaco Green Wax

  • How to Use Wax: Tips and Tricks

  • What You Can Do With Wax

  • How to Clean Wax Brushes tutorial

  • Our Favorite Electric Water Kettle

  • Wrap-Up: Wax Resist Use and Clean Up

The Best Wax Resist

The best wax resist is the green Amaco Wax Resist available in pints and gallon jugs. It’s a premium wax resist that doesn’t peel or fall off when using on top of other glazes for decorative effects. You can buy it by the gallon, which is more economical. One gallon lasts 12 to 15 months in a busy community studio, so a pint is probably an appropriate amount for an individual studio. This resist does everything you need a wax to do and the green dye makes it easy to see on bisqueware or if it drips on a counter top. Out of the bottle, it’s a bit thick so it’s recommended to water it down by about 1/3 to 1/2 with hot tap water.

To store the watered-down wax, use an old container that can also hold your designated wax brush. To make cleanup easier, put a plastic plate or take-out-lid underneath, and and make a notched lid to go around the brushes to prevent the wax from drying. As needed, top up the jar with more wax and water. Inevitably, the brushes and sides of the jar will get wax build up. Below is a tutorial on how to clean this with boiling water.

Buying by the gallon and using a jar is a trade-off. It’s economical to buy in bulk, but the wax jar does take some maintenance. For a busy academic or community studio, this is an easier system to use and maintain than a pint jar with a threaded, screw-on lid. In most shared studios, those threads never stay clean which means the cap is never screwed on tight which can mean…ugh…semi-frequent spills of a pint of wax resist. You definitely don’t want a pint of wax resist all over your floor.

How to Use Wax: Tips and Tricks

This post is mainly about cleaning up wax resist, but here’s a quick overview of how to use wax resist:

Some recommend painting wax resist on the bottom of every pot, but I do not. Instead, think about your piece: will it be easier to clean up your glaze with or without wax? If it’s a large, flat form like a plate, you probably should use wax to cover the bottom. If it’s a small foot ring, it will be easier and faster to clean with a sponge. The key with wax is that you don’t want to unnecessarily waste time, material, or energy because of drips or simply using wax where you don’t need it.

  • As mentioned above, watered-down wax resist is preferred because it dries faster and leads to less build-up on your ware. A thin coat is all you need. Mix 1/3 hot tap water to 2/3 wax resist and stir. You might be able to go thinner! Test what works for you.

  • When applying, be careful to not create drips or puddles where you don’t want wax to go. To remove wax, you may have to re-bisque fire a piece. Alternately, you can remove by sanding or scraping, or by pouring boiling water on the bisqueware. The problem is that wax gets into the pores of your bisqueware, so it can be hard to remove.

  • Allow wax to dry completely before glazing. This can take 15-30 minutes.

  • Wax can be great as a decorative tool, especially on top of one glaze to create a resist effect in combination with a second coat. Cheaper wax resist options often peel up or don’t work on top of a chalky, dried glaze. That’s one reason to use the green Amaco wax. It works on top of every glaze I’ve tested and stays in place with no peeling.

  • Keep in mind that wax burns off anywhere from about 200–500 degrees. It doesn’t do anything to protect your kiln shelves. As this burning can create some smell and a small amount of smoke, it’s best to minimize wax use if your kilns are indoors. Definitely vent your kilns!

Other ideas for wax in the studio

  • Paint over thin areas of greenware to slow the drying of the clay.

  • Lid Wax: add 1/2 cup Alumina Hydrate to 1 pint wax to create a special wax for firing lids on pots. When the wax burns off, the powdered, refractory alumina hydrate will stay behind, leaving a chalky resist. This will hopefully prevent glaze runs, etc, that could cause the lid to stick to the rim of the pot.

How to Clean Wax Brushes and Jars: A Tutorial

To prevent contamination and keep things efficient and functional, designate 3 or 4 brushes of different sizes as wax brushes. These brushes sit in the wax resist pot, and over time, wax builds up on the sides of the brushes and the rim of the wax jar. Here is how to clean them.

Step 1

Brushes and jar with built-up wax resist.

Brushes and jar with built-up wax resist.

Here is a picture of a wax jar with dirty brushes. The wax jar is a wide-mouth, recycled underglaze jar. For brushes, try using economical 1/2” chip brushes, and a few smaller brushes.

 

Step 2

Move brushes to a small container. Pour boiling water over the brushes.

Move brushes to a small container. Pour boiling water over the brushes.

If you have heavy wax build up on your brushes, you may want to cut off and dispose of this build up with a fettling knife.

Then, move brushes to a small container, such as a recycled yogurt cup. Boil water and pour over the brushes. Swirl the brushes in the water and use the brushes to clean the sides of the other brushes.

 

Step 3

One brush cleaned, four more left.

One brush cleaned, four more left.

Here’s a picture of the cleaning in progress and then the cleaned brushes.

After you’ve cleaned all your brushes, set them aside. The water and cup you’ve used for cleaning can be thrown away. (Don’t pour wax down your drain!) Or, let the water cool, remove and dispose of the cooled wax, and then clean the container. If possible, you could save this one container to reuse over and over as your wax-brush cleaning container.

 
The brushes after cleaning.

The brushes after cleaning.

Step 4

Removing built-up wax resist

Removing built-up wax resist

Next, it’s time to clean the cup. Using a fettling knife, cut off built-up wax from the rim and inside of the cup. If needed, pour out any wax into a reserve container, and use boiling water to clean the entire cup or jar.

Another option, if you have heavy build up, is to switch to a new container. The wide-mouth underglaze jars from Spectrum underglazes are great for a wax container.

 

Step 5

wax6.jpg

After cleaning the brushes and jar, refill the cup and you’re ready to go. Pictured here are a fresh glaze cup and lid. Depending on how often you clean, you might need a new wax cup about once a year or you could completely clean it and keep it going longer than that.

To conclude: Cleaning wax resist with boiling water is quick, easy, and effective.

Our Favorite Electric Water Kettle

To clean wax resist, you’ll need boiling water and an excellent kettle is the Chef’s Choice Cordless Electric Kettle. This is not a comprehensive review of kettles, but this kettle is great. In community studio I manage, it’s been in heavy use for almost 18 months and has had no problems.

Here’s what I love about it:

  • Sturdy construction and design. Simple on / off switch with light

  • Kettle is cordless

  • Base has storage area for excess cord.

  • Easy to clean

  • Inside is all metal

  • Boils water quickly

This is a great kettle that does exactly what you need it to do. If you don’t have a water kettle in your studio, it’s a simple addition that is great for making tea or instant soups. Adding the option of hot tea can really augment and improve the culture of your studio.

Wrap-Up: Wax Resist Use and Clean Up in a Ceramic Studio

Wax resist is a great tool for a ceramics studio. It takes some clean up, should be used only as needed, and my recommendation is to use a premium wax resist such as the Amaco green wax resist. To apply, try using chip brushes or other simple, cheap brushes.

It’s easiest to clean up with boiling water and this tutorial provides some tips, tricks, and ideas of how to do that.

What do you use wax resist for? Do you have a favorite brand? Please share in the comments.

Make Your Own Metal Pottery Rib

 
A handmade, metal pottery rib.

A handmade, metal pottery rib.

 

Making your own tools is a great way to get exactly what you need, and a metal rib is one of the easiest tools to make. For a DIY metal pottery rib of any shape, all you need is a small sheet of metal and wire snips. My favorite shape is the flat-edged teardrop shape with a point pictured above, but you can make any shape.

To make this DIY metal pottery throwing rib, you will need:

  • 24 or 28 gauge galvanized steel sheet. This thickness has the right mix of hardness and flexibility. You can buy galvanized steel at your local hardware store or click here to shop Amazon for an affordable 12” x 12” sheet.

  • Metal Snips, such as aviation snips. (Shop aviation snips at Amazon)

  • Marker, such as a Sharpie

  • Sandpaper. 3M Pro-Grade sandpaper is my favorite (shop at Amazon)

  • Rib template, use an old rib or make a cardstock template

The galvanized steel is flexible but harder, resulting in a more useful rib that that which comes with a basic pottery tool kit. (Check out our review of the best beginner pottery tools here.) The galvanized steel also stays relatively rust free, if you keep your tools clean and dry.

These homemade ribs were introduced to me many years ago when I was first studying pottery. I can’t imagine using any other rib to get just the perfect curve in a bowl and the pointed side is super handy for cleaning up the foot or adding a decorative notch. I also use these tools to remove the slip from the outside of pots, and to shape the inside of a bowl. They also make great ribs for hand building. I occasionally use wood or plastic ribs for throwing, but this metal rib is my go-to pottery workhorse.

Make a Metal Rib: Step by Step

Step 1:

Gather your materials. You’ll need a piece of 24 or 28 gauge galvanized steel, metal snips, a marker, sandpaper and a template. Links to order materials online are above.

metalrib.jpg
metalrib1.jpg

Here’s a close up of the label on the metal sheet. It’s a 1 foot x 2 foot, 28 gauge sheet of galvanized steel.

Step 2:

Trace the template outline with your marker.

metalrib2.jpg
 

Step 3:

metalrib4.jpg

Make a rough cut of the rib. It’s easier to make the more exact cuts on a second pass with the snips.

 

Step 4:

Make a second cut to get the exact shape you want. It’s ok to make multiple cuts if you want to alter the shape.

metalrib3.jpg

Step 5:

Sand any burrs or rough edges.

metalrib5.jpg
 

Step 6:

Congrats! You have a new rib. Time to throw awesome pots.

metalrib6.jpg
 

Step 7:

Make more ribs! Your friends could all use one. Or make a bunch of different shapes. Small ribs, big ribs, whatever you need.

metalrib7.jpg
 
metalrib8.jpg

What’s your favorite rib? Have you ever made your own tools? Leave a comment below.