Centering 2 kilograms without my shoulders
For a year I threw with 600 to 800 g of clay, which is a mug or a small bowl, and I could center it in a few seconds without thinking. In May I asked to move up to 2 kg, with the idea of throwing a proper serving bowl, and discovered that centering is a completely different problem at that weight. The clay pushed my hands around instead of the other way, and after two Tuesdays my shoulders ached for days.
What I was doing wrong, as it turned out, was using my arms. With 800 g you can center with hand pressure alone and get away with it. With 2 kg the clay has enough momentum to shove a hand off, and I was responding by pushing harder with my shoulders, which meant my hands wobbled with every heartbeat and the clay wobbled with them. The instructor watched for about ten seconds, then took my left elbow and tucked it against my hip, and told me to lean from the waist instead of pushing from the shoulder. The wheel does the work; the body is just a brace.
With the elbow braced, the 2 kg lump centered in about fifteen seconds. Cone up, cone down, twice, with the heel of the right hand pressing down on top and the left hand braced against the side, both arms locked to the body. The clay stopped fighting because nothing was moving except the wheel. It felt like a trick.
The bowl that followed was not a triumph. I opened too wide too fast and the wall at the base was 2 cm thick while the rim was 4 mm, and it slumped on the second pull and ended up as a shallow dish 28 cm across that I kept because the slump made a nice curve. The second attempt the following week was better: 24 cm across, 9 cm tall, walls even at about 7 mm, trimmed the next Tuesday to a foot ring 10 cm wide.
It is now bisque fired and waiting for glaze, probably the studio’s tenmoku with a wax-resist band so the iron shows through at the rim. Two weeks until I find out. The shoulders, meanwhile, have stopped hurting, and the 800 g pieces now feel like they center themselves.