 I threw this platter a few days ago. It's leather hard, actually it's leather hard on the harder side of leather hard. I prefer to trim a bit softer, but a lot of times if you put a large platter on when it's fairly soft, there's a lot of weight between here and here and now it's slumped. So this is firmed up enough to hold itself up. I have it on the back. Just moisture holds this on the back. I have just some water on the rim of the platter. It keeps it stuck and I've leveled it. A lot of time when you're throwing, the bats aren't completely level and the bat you're trimming on is a level. So there's always a little bit of play in there, but you want to make the bottom when you're trimming completely level. So if it touches all the way around with the needle as level, if it touches only a little bit, it'll show what the low spots are. Lift them up and put a bit of play under it until the needle touches all the way around and it's level and then you want it centered. Again, I'm only going to center when I'm trimming. I'm only trimming from here up and level from there down. So it doesn't matter if the rest of the platter is not completely centered because I'm not trimming the rest of the platter. I'm going to use this little Kemper tool. I've used this shape forever. It is, I think it's a Kemper K4 but I've used it for so long I buy it by shape and not by number. It's a great little tool. If it's comfortable in your hand, you can hold it and it's a ribbon tool, meaning the ribbons are thinner and they cut better. The wire tools are, I prefer not to use them the rounder and they don't cut and they're kind of going through with the plow. So I'm just going to hold on to my tool, my elbows on my knee, my arms under my ribs. My hands are joined and I'm going to start cutting this platter. I don't like to put the foot on the platter that I do in the bowl. When I trim the bowl I give it what I call a presence. And this one I like it to fit, to sit flat on the table, easy for me to say. And just sort of become one of the table. So I don't do a lot of trimming on the plate. Not the profile I want. Again you have to make sure you keep in mind that there is a finite amount of clay here. You have to keep in mind the angle, the shape you want to make your platter and the amount of clay you're working with. I do want to undercut it because when it's glazed I don't want to see where the clay ends and the glazing starts. So if that's undercut and in shadow you don't see. Again this is a dark clay so I'll be firing up with a dark glaze. And then I'm going to define where I want the foot to be in this clay in the middle. I'm just going to take it off by putting the little toe of this camper tool in and then putting the pressure on down to the heel and dragging it across the radius tight where I want the foot to start. And now I switched my elbows on my other knee but my elbows are still into my ribs and my hands are joined. You go at the speed where you're comfortable with the wheel. If it feels too fast it is and if it feels too slow it's too slow. The higher the pitch the thinner the clay. So I'm just about done trimming this guy. Go look at it, trim with my sponge. I'm going to wet it. Trimming you open the clay up and you can see where the trimming ended and the throwing starts. By sponging it you bring a little particle back to the surface of your piece and you seal what you sealed the clay and you can't see where your trimming started and you're throwing ends. It just looks nicer. I think a pot should look as tidy and as completed on the bottom as it does on the top. I don't sign a pot at this stage. I like to sign them when they're dry. I wet them with a sponge and then sign them at that point. It also gives you that one last look at it before it goes in the kiln. You see it in fingerprints or an oddball of clay or something. It's one last minute to tidy it up if you go over and sign them when they're dry. It is to have one last check. I'm going to stamp it with Out of the Fighter Studio in Alberta, Canada so we know who made it and where it came from. I'm going to put it on the board it was thrown on. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put the paper under it. The paper, if you put this just on the board, it will stick to the board and dry and you're just going to have to get off. It won't shrink if it's stuck to the board and the edges will shrink and it will crack and it becomes unpleasant. So if you put this layer of paper between your pot and the board it sticks to the paper because the paper is wet but it releases very easily from the paper once it becomes a little bit dry. So I'm going to put this on and then I'm going to flip it over and I've made how to tidy up the edge. We've got this flipped over without incident and now I want to release it from the big bat I trimmed it on and if you lift it up it will stick and it can stick or it can come off, it can come off halfway and you'll ruin your piece. If you gently tap and then lift it up evenly you don't want to lift it up. It's a fairly big bat and you lift that one side it's about quite a bit of weight. It will push down the other so lift it up evenly and now you just have an area here where you touch the throwy bat and sometimes you capture in smaller plates a little bit of air here and this will pump up and it won't dry properly so if you just lift it gently and push down in the middle it gets rid of any air that's trapped in there. Now I'm not even going to worry about centering this because I'm just going to tidy it and we can all see it's not centered but if you concentrate it's not that weird. So I want just to spin it off I left a handprint on there when I'm showing you I don't like any hand prints or fingerprints on this and when you trim sandwich between the two bats like I do you can do a lot of when you can do all your sponging and not touch it and not leave messy fingerprints. Now this is trimmed and I trimmed this one a couple days ago and you can see that it's dried it still hasn't turned color but it's quite firm and it just releases from the paper the paper sticks to the bat but not to the pot and then you can pick this up I'm drying this now that I can pick it up and it's firm enough to handle I'll put it on some VAKA's racks that are totally encased in plastic and I'll dry it very slowly the rims are the smallest amount of clay and they want to dry first if they dry first and become immovable and the bottom has a drive and the bottom wants to shrink and the rim won't give you'll either have warping in the rim this way or just a big crack in the rim that way so to get rid of the cracking and the top very slowly so that's trimming the platter and that's trimming the platter