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So we are making a set of cereal bowls here today and our first step was to weigh the
clay. The next step is to wedge the clay. What we have here is a wedging board which
is a piece of plaster covered in material and the plaster actually absorbs moisture
so that we have a good dry place to wedge and it won't get too wet and the clay won't
stick to the surface. Wedging is the primary reason we wedge clay is to get any remaining
air that is inside the clay out of the clay. So the first thing we do is just put it down
on our wedging surface and start kneading it, much like dough and you are just kind
of moving it around in a circular motion like this and as you can see what I'm doing is
spiraling the clay which prepares it for the wheel and puts the clay into a nice spiral
pattern which is going to make it easier to throw and I'm going to pat the clay into a
ball once again. This makes the whole process of centering the clay a lot easier once you
get on the wheel. I'm going to repeat the process with this one. So now what we've done
is weighed and wedged the clay and the next step is going to be the wheel and we will
get to that in just a moment.