Week 2 Readings

This tool is probably one of my most asked-about tools, along with the dent puller, and that is my foot trimming tool. The idea behind this is that it has two shaped ends that are different-sized semi-circles. You push it into the base after you’ve thrown, and it adds a rounded foot in a couple of seconds, rather than having to trim one on later.

I came up with the idea—there are variations on it, but I never found anything quite like this. The thing was, I’d been throwing these small trinket bowls quite flat, so they didn’t have much height to them. When I was trimming them, it was a real chore to get the trimming tool around the foot to trim it properly. I always felt it was worth adding a foot because it made dipping the glaze so much easier. Then again, if you’re using them for things and loading them in the dishwasher, you can pick them up when they’re upside down much more easily if they have a foot, rather than just ending flat.

So, I wanted to add a foot, but trimming them on was probably taking longer for each thing than throwing them did. I was sure there was going to be a better way of doing it. Anyway, long story short, I made myself a tool out of mild steel that did it. People kept asking me where they could buy one, and the answer was obviously that you couldn’t, because I’d made it. I put up build instructions on my blog if you want to make your own, and those instructions are still there.

After a little while—being asked by people who wanted one—I looked into making them out of stainless steel, because mild steel goes rusty, so it’s not ideal. When demand proved to be more than the five that I initially bought material for, I got them laser cut by a laser cutting company. The profile is laser cut, so it’s super precise. Then I do the finishing myself.

Basically, they work like this: you go from having a straight foot to a rounded foot just by pushing that in. I know a lot of you will have found my channel through John the Potter, who has one of these and uses it on a lot of his pots. Yeah—thanks, John. I’m glad he’s still using it after I sent that probably a year ago, and he’s used it on a lot of pieces by now.

I’ve been using mine for years. It’s 2 mm thick stainless steel, laser-cut shape. It’s got an 8 mm round end on one end—which is the one I just used for that smaller piece—and a 12 mm end, which is what I use on my fruit bowls. They’re available from my website, and nowhere else stocks them. Maybe that’s something I’ll look into one day, but I don’t know. I’d much rather be a potter than a tool maker.

This is one of those things where I’m happy to make them and sell them to other people who want them, but I don’t really want that to become the main focus of what I do. But they are available through my shop, and that’s it really. They are what they are. [Music]

I’ll just record one more clip demonstrating how they cut the foot. They are very useful, particularly for smaller bowls where the time to trim a foot afterwards would be kind of a hundred times more than the time to add it like this. Plus, obviously, they give you a very consistent profile to the foot, because it’s 2 mm thick stainless steel and it’s not going to change shape. It’s going to take you years of constant use to even think about wearing it out.

You want to leave yourself roughly the height of clay at the bottom that you want to trim off, and then you just push the foot trimming tool in and you’ve got a foot. Simple as that.