 I threw these mugs a few days ago. I've taken a few out to work on right now. The rest are under plastic over there. We're going to talk about handles. There are a few different techniques of making handles. I like to extrude mine. We'll talk about that in a minute. You can make a handle. You just get a little bit of clay and you can make a handle just by rolling out a little coil. Let it roll a coil. Your hand goes either back and forth. It is roll it forward, bring it back. I'm going to roll out a coil. I'm going to taper it a bit. When you're rolling a coil, your hands kind of just go out a bit. If you have a problem rolling, you can just pick it up and roll it, bring it back. If you're going flat, flat, flat, you're pushing too hard. Relax. You're just playing in the clay. I'm going to roll out a tapered coil. I'm going to hold my hand at an angle so I get smaller. This is one way. I'm going to flatten it a little bit. You can sponge it with a bit of clay. It doesn't make a bad handle. You can kind of coat it into a handle. You can put that on. I'm not going to attach it. We'll talk about attaching. That doesn't make a bad handle. It's a little thick and it doesn't look all that different. It looks even worse now. Anyway, that's one way of making a handle. Another way of making a handle is you can have a piece of clay and you can buy a handle polar. You can get them at the supply store. This isn't a handle polar. This is a trimming tool. You can see this is the same idea. They come with a wire loop. You pull that through the clay and then you can pull out the handle and put that on. It takes on whatever shape you have on the end of it. I recommend a handle polar or a trimming tool. You can see that does make kind of a neat way. That's a really short one. It does make an interesting and easy way of making a handle, but it's not my favorite way of making a handle. The handles can be pulled. That does take a little bit more practice than the coil or the handle polar. To pull a handle, you have to wedge your clay as if you're going on the wheel. It has to be completely wedged. I don't know if you can notice or not, but I'm wedging on a wet board. I like to wedge on a wet board. A dry board takes all the moisture out of your clay and I'm going to quickly wedge that into kind of a cone shape. Then with a bucket of water, I'm going to gently coax or pull a handle out of here. It doesn't take a lot of strength. We're all strong enough to squish right through there, but what it does, it takes control. You don't let the clay move your hand. It's just kind of a don't mess with me attitude. This is a big piece of clay. I'm just going to pull it out of there. I said you can go round. You can use your fingers to go flat. This is a very large handle. At the end of this, you can run your thumb down it. Now I don't use, as I mentioned at the beginning, a pulled handle. I like to extrude my handles for mugs, but I do pull a handle for teapots and more higher-end things. As I mentioned when they're throwing these, that my pots are more skilled than they are. I can stand there and wait. This is a pulled handle for your mug. It's a little big, but I'm not going to use it anyway. But you can't use it right now because it has to firm up a bit. So when you're pulling handles, what I would do if I am pulling handles for teapots is I'll pull all the handles. I'll go do something else. And when they've firmed up a bit, I'll use them and put them on. You can just set that on the board. It's not wet. It'll take the moisture out. I use extruded handles and I like to keep them in stock is what I call it. And in here are a bunch of extruded handles. An extruder is just a big metal. When you're a kid, you play with Play-Doh pusher outer. It's hard to find another word other than extruder. And it's a big metal extruder. We'll talk about it in our other series, Three Handmade Tools. I didn't make the extruder, but it is handmade. And so all it is is this big tube and you put different dies on the bottom and different shapes and it pushes the clay through this shape and you get these long and lovely extruded handles. And it's just so much easier than pulling them all. We're gonna take a couple of those out. I only need one of those and I do just keep them in stock. I'm gonna tidy this a little bit. Tidy this a little bit with my sponge. And then each one of my handles is five and a half inches long. I don't know if there's a correlation because I throw them five and a half inches tall, but I like a handle. For some reason it's five and a half inches long. I'm not sure if the camera is picking that up, but this is really messy and beat up there. I don't like it, so it's going to go away. This clay could be used again. And then I'm going to measure with my little thing here, five and a half inches. So there's one. I measured one and I can just do two, three. And again, this one's messy. I am very fussy. I don't like that. The clay can be used again. So I've got three handles here and I'm only gonna put on one. But you can see the extruding the handles is so much easier than pulling them. Now to get this going, I'm going to run my thumb along that. And just smear that clay off. Now I consider this mug is trimmed now. I undercut it and I cut when I was throwing it. I cut the extra clay off with the needle and I run my thumb along there and I'm just going to tidy it. I make sure that it's all nice and tidy. To me that's trimmed and I got a nice smooth spot to put my handle. I'm going to score a little bit and then score a little bit down here. Okay now it's scored. I'm going to put my handle on. I don't bother to score my handle. I can add a little moisture here. Add a little moisture there. Put my handle now. I didn't say it but when I was cutting them, I was cutting them at an angle this way. That way and that way. So it's not square but this is at a bias or 45 degree angle. I can put some water on there like I mentioned and put it on at a bit of an angle and give it a wiggle. And I'm going to drop that down to score down there. It's not really necessary to score the bottom one. Now maybe I'm the only one who has problem with this because I've been teaching pots for years and everyone looks at me and goes well of course. But I have an issue with making sure when I put the handle on one it's straight this way and not off to the side. And it's straight this way perpendicular and not off like that. So maybe I'm the only one who sees crooked but if you're one of these people like me who sees crooked just give it a look. Make sure that the handle is perpendicular to your pot and that it's not off to one side. Now I really beat this up talking about it. I'm going to put it on and I gave it a wiggle. See that's crooked again. And then I'm just going to with my thumb. I like to push down. I'm just going to give it 1, 2, 3. And you can tell it's handmade and then join this in here. If you have a little bit of score marks not a big deal. And then with my sponge I'm going to make it tidy. We all know by now I like my pots to be tidy. And I'm going to, one thing I didn't talk about is what I'm going to change now is the negative space. When you're making a handle I never look at the handle. I look at the space the handle makes. And you can see by just by moving us a little bit that'll give it more balance. This is really crooked. It has a funny dog leg to it. So just by push it, don't push it around when you're doing it. But just by pushing it around I want you to look at how it really changes the look of the mug. So to me that's not attractive at all. And I'm going to bring it up this way. Make it tidy and give it a nice negative space. So there's one handle. I'm going to make sure it's tidy. I'm going to put it upside down and let it dry. I'm going to go through that quickly just one more time. I'm going to put a handle on here. I'm just going to rub that extra bit off with my thumb. I'm going to sponge with a damp sponge. Make it tidy and sponge it around. I'm going to score a little bit. That one I scored twice. This one I'm not going to. It doesn't really matter. I'm going to put it on an angle. Add some water. And I always put it on an angle pointing into the pot. I'm going to put that on. We'll go that on. Put it fall down in a natural. Wipe my hands on my pants. And I'm going to put it on. Make sure it's perpendicular and it's the top is right above the bottom with your thumb. Well that was rude. With your thumb we're going to 1, 2, 3. So it's one with the clay. And blend in that top. And have a look at your negative space. It's got a funny flat thing on the top. And you can release the difference there. How much a nicer shape that is. I'm going to take my sponge. Make it tidy. And I like the dents in the handle. I don't like sharp. And then I'm going to turn it upside down. It has to go upside down because quite often there's a lot more clay in the bottom of your mud than there is in the top. And it just tends to slow the drying down. If you leave it this way it dries quickly. Quite often you're going to have a lot of cracking at the top where the handle joins on upside down. And you don't get the cracking. I'm going to stamp them. I'm going to stamp it out of the fire studio. Because I am out of the fire studio. And I'm going to stamp it Coots Alberta. Because I'm in Coots Alberta. I like to stamp the mugs. And then I'll stamp that one. Like I said I had the other ones over there. We're going to finish them later. You don't have to watch that. Now these mugs what I'm going to do is I'm going to let them dry upside down under plastic. I'm going to cover them for tonight. And then I'm going to just slow the handles down a little bit. You can kind of put them in toward each other. If you have a bunch of mugs all your handles go in the middle. And just let them dry slowly. If they dry slowly your handles won't crack. There they are. I think we've got it handled.