Centering is hard to master. It takes practice. Preparing your clay for centering can make that a lot easier. So to address centering we’ll start with wedging. That’s probably going be one of the most helpful things for dealing with Centering. Wedging distributes moisture evenly throughout your clay. This is covering 3 useful types of wedging and you can use any combination of the types. They are slice-and-slam wedging, rams-head, and spiral.
For Slice and Slam wedging, you may decide to get a wire installed beside the wedging table. That makes slice and-slam so easy. I can’t really demonstrate it without the wire.
Slice and slam wedging is a great for doing clay recycling or just reusing clay. It’s especially good for reconditioning of flopped or mixed up clay prior to rams-head or spiral wedging if you’re starting with particularly uneven clay.
For this type of wedging you put together slices of any mix of clay and then you just keep slicing, stacking and slamming it together. Having an installed wire for quick slicing is a really fast way to do this to re-blend the clay. For example if I took a little bit of fresh flopped clay from the wheel and basically if I just added some good bag-clay to it, I can re-throw with this. I could slice and slam this for like 2 or 3 minutes then rams-head wedge it. It’s always a really quick way to blend your new clay in your old clay. The best thing about that is that it really mixes and compresses the clay before rams-head or spiral wedging.
A lot of people like to just throw right out of the bag— just cut it and go to the wheel. If you try this, you may realize that as new clay sits in the bag, the center of the block stays more soft. That means the moisture in your clay is likely to be uneven. It’s going to be hard to center it. That’s what everyone doesn’t realize — that when you’re wedging you’re taking all the moisture and moving it evenly everywhere. That’s what we want to shoot for when we’re getting ready to center — even consistency. We want to prepare the clay to give it all the help we can in responding well to our hands in centering it on the wheel. Without this pre-game preparation we make it really hard to center and then throw. So let’s wedge this baby. The best advice is to wedge each time. As first timers it might feel like a struggle but you’ll find that every time you wedge, you’ll wedge more easily and. confidently.
I’ll show you guys the most basic all purpose method — the rams-head method. This method is where both of your hands have equal motion. I think of a triangle. The base of the triangle is the table top and then your palms of the hands are making a triangle and shoving. Your thumbs are kind of together at the top forming a triangle up from the table. Your hands are making a triangle with the table. This motion, down, and slightly away from you, is causing layers of clay that wrap up. Basically your main part of your hands on the outside of your ball of clay are going to be near the top of the triangle and your fingers are lower. Your fingers are constraining and compressing inward. Wedging is shoving and compressing. Wedge with a down and forward motion with the balls of your hands — the upper palms. Then you roll the whole thing towards your self just a teensy bit and wedge again. It folds around just right. Wedging in this triangle makes layers of clay wrap. Your results resemble a rams head shape.
Body mechanics are part of this process. I’m tall, so when I do this I need to be at an angle, taking a stance - one foot back and leaning toward the table. Some people are at just the right height for their surface so you might not need to step back. You want to have just a little bit of leverage so that you can wedge at an angle.
Again when you’re doing this, your goal is to try to make it all consistent. If there’s hard clay, then soft clay in your clay, you can’t center it. One other thing is you might hear a little popping, an occasional pop anytime with any wedging you do, because you’re wedging out any little pockets of air.
With rams-head wedging, as beginners, who are first-time learning rams-head, usually what happens is, the motion is being done right but they’re going too far, making the clay go too flat. It’s often that at first try they doing the correct motion through the whole lump of clay — but going too far. Stop the motion before the clay gets flat. You’re going to do a small movement turn slightly toward yourself and repeat. I wedge fast but it doesn’t matter what speed. It’s all about going through the wedge multiple times. 20 times maybe. Spiral wedging: Once you feel comfortable with rams-head wedging, you can shoot for adding the skill of spiral wedging. Spiral wedging is basically where you don’t have both hands evenly doing the same motion but you have one hand leading and the other hand is kind of catching. Your top hand is pushing downward at an angle and it’s kind of creating a longer wrapped up coil. The other hand is catching causing wrapping. It’s keeping it contained.
When you spiral wedge right after the rams-head wedging, the way that I learned it is, you take your rams-head wedged piece and the right hand is now going become the one that wedges starting slightly to the side of rams-head wedged piece. When move from rams-head to spiral wedge I start lifting my right hand to reposition it on top and slightly turn the piece to be at an angle to the table. Wedging down at an angle inward towards the table, and towards your left hand. As you turn it a teensy bit after each wedge, it’s going to roll up. Repeat.
Visualize a shape forming when it rolls up. It’s going to be in a slightly pointy egg shape. You can see the coiling spiral coming. Learning spiral wedge is not so necessary for beginners but when you want to learn a useful new skill, and a variation to rams-head, it’s giving you a great cone shape from which to start centering.
When you first try this you might add bubbles until you get better. That’s just the reality of it. Remember there’s nothing wrong with just rams-head wedging. It’s an added nicety when you can master the spiral too because after the spiral you have a cone shape for throwing. Pre-game preps that make things seem to flow.
Again with a spiral wedge you’re focusing a little bit more on one hand, but you’re wedging down on one side of your imagined triangle with one hand at an angle and you’re rolling this up using the other hand to constrain. The Shape on the bottom is going get a little bit lighter or pointy-er as it’s closing up the bottom. At the top it gets a little wider.
When you’re wedging and preparing your clay you’re going to even out the moisture right out of the bag. Also you compress it a little bit.
You’ve got to be real stubborn with just continuously improving your way. It’s not like you’re going to be bad forever or you can’t do it. It might take time and multiple try’s, like most wheel skills.
One last thing for your studio: I know a lot of people sometimes don’t like having canvas in the studio but, I always like using a canvas covered wedging board and of course I like to have a wire installed to do slice-and-slam wedging. If your clay is a little too wet, wedging it on the canvas can gradually pull off some of that extra moisture.