Getting to know the pottery tool kit

It is not enough to have just kaolin and black clay as the heart of ceramic work. You must also have reliable equipment such as surface decorating tools which is like a right hand for potter to work on ceramic as he pleases (but you must choose to use the right one according to what you need)

• Clay scraper Scrap the clay while it is still damp. It has different shapes and characteristics but mostly will have the handle part made of wood or plastic and the part used to scrape the clay made of solid wire, both normal and non-rusting wire. The characteristics of this wire clay scraper are available in many sizes and forms. To use it to scrape the clay out of the product formed by the pottery wheel to be as thin as needed including decorating the product legs and decorating the product surface to create a pattern and texture
• Carving tools are similar to the softwood carving tools. It is designed to be used on one side with the handle made of wood and used as a hammer to increase pressure. The other end is a head for carving stainless steel or steel.

However, in general the decoration of patterns on the surface of damp clay ceramic workpieces will need both scraping tools and carving tools by using according to the characteristic of the tools. The tool that is a sharp iron or a pointed stick is used for sketching, stenciling, punching, or making dots and lines. The V-shaped, U-shaped carving tool with different curvature sizes and wire scraping of different sizes are used to carve out traces of different depths and lines.

In addition, the indispensable equipment for surface decoration is Surface finishing toolsdesigned to smooth product texture and create patterns. They can be divided into 2 groups which are a wet decoration tool which can be used to remove traces on the surface with water as a medium to adjust the surface of the molded part, and a dry finishing tool which is a tool with a rough and hard surface that can be used to polish the product to the required sizes. It is used for products that are completely dried and products after the raw firing.