Ceramics 101 (Attaching stiff clay together)

1. Marked the area needed to be scored
2. Scored all areas that will be touching with a needle tool in cross-hatched pattern.
3. Wet the scored area with a brush(50 part water + 50 part cooking vinegar works really good too)
4. Scratched all the area again to make slip on all the joining area.
5. Attached the pieces, taking care not to trap any air in the joints, and put firm pressure, pushing both pieces against one another.
6. use a clay coil to reinforce the joint
7. smooth out the coil to the rest of the pieces.
8. Wrap the whole project in plastic to equalize the moisture of the whole project. More extreme and complicated parts, with thick and thin parts need to be left in the plastic longer to dry gradually and slowly. Depending on the complexity of the project, leave the project wrapped in plastic between one day to a week.
9. After equalizing the moisture of the clay, take it out of the plastic and let it completely dry out before it can be bisqued fired.
* Clay are best attached when they are in the leather-hard stage, the clay is stiff but till a little flexible. If the clay already lost it's sheen, then, it is to dry to get a successful attachment.

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[parispotterca]

score, slip, wait, wiggle, worm -- score (scratch both pieces of clay), slip (or water), wait (for the clay to soften), wiggle (to join the pieces), worm (add a thin coil of clay to fill the seam) - basic hand building technique for making any joint and what I used to tell my grade 6, 7 & 8 students and of course practice when hand building.