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When we talk about trimming a pot what we're doing is simply trimming a foot onto the base
of the pot. This is important, because as you can see we have a nice flat surface here.
This being a vase, if it was on a table and there was some crumbs or something on the
table; with a big flat surface the pot wouldn't sit flat. So, we want to create what's called
a foot so there's less surface area on the base of the pot. So, what I'm going to use
to do this are these two trimming tools here. Now, I've noted before how much clay I have
underneath there and you can kind of feel. The important thing is to not go through the
pot while we're trimming of course. So, the first thing I'm going to do, again, holding
my hand up top to secure this large piece, I'm going to take this one and simply start
trimming clay away from the edge here. As you can see what I'm doing, as well, is actually
shaping the bottom of the pot at the same time. I can take some clay out of the base
here, simply working up like that. What I'm going to do is just curve it in using the
edge here to create a nice little curved edge on the inside. I'm doing a very basic foot
here. You might want to have a rounded edge. There's many different ways to do this, many
different designs and patterns. I'm simply going to put a pretty standard little foot
on this part. Give it some definition; like so. Now, I've trimmed the edge of this vase.
The next thing we're going to do is trim the top part. So, I'm going to take this larger
tool and first flatten it out; like so. OK. Now, we're going to actually dig into this
piece of the clay and create the foot. Now, with this tool, as you can see, it's got a
rounded edge, so I'm creating a rounded spiral. If I wanted something a bit flatter I could
take my flat edge and simply work my flat edge across the top. OK. Now, as you can see
we've created a nice little foot here on the base of this vase. We've sunken in the inside,
left a nice foot for the vase to sit on. Now, we are ready to just simply pop it off the
bat. You can see that these pieces of clay just come off like this, not sticking to the
vase itself. We simply lift the vase up. There you have it. Next, I'll be just talking about
some simple tips and concerns to finishing this up and getting it ready to be put into
the kiln. We'll be talking about that next.