One-Piece Jar

We missed our pottery class last week because of the snow.  I'm pretty sure that ours was one of very few groups of students at Cleveland Community College who were disappointed to miss class.  The big question that we had for Ron this week was, "Do we get to make last week up?"  Not one of my math students asked me that question.  

This week, Ron had something special for me to work on - jars with lids that are thrown as one piece and then cut apart.  My first few tries weren't particularly impressive to look at, but this weekend I managed one that I'm not embarrassed to show you. 

This is the finished piece.  

I almost forgot to take pictures of the process, so this isn't exactly what it looked like when I finished the throwing part.  I started with a cylinder and then closed the top and made the knob.  Closing up and making the knob is by far the most challenging part of the whole process.  Step by step pictures of that would be nice, but my hands were way to messy to touch my phone at that point.  Then I used a tool to push in that gallery that you see.  Then the piece needs to dry to leather hard.  Over night worked for me on this one.  

Then I used a tool to cut off the top.  Its important to make the cut at the very top of the indention so that the two pieces fit together correctly when you are finished.    

Next I did some trimming.  Using the bottom of the jar as a chuck, I trimmed the inside of the lid.  I also trimmed a little bit off the outside of the indented part of the bottom piece.  

The idea was to get the lid to fit over the indented part of the bottom.  In this picture, I've gotten the inside edge of the lid and the outside edge of the bottom trimmed just right.