Smoothing Inside and Out, or Leaving the Texture on Purpose
Okay, so you've got a coil pot standing up now, walls built, joins blended where you remembered to blend them. This lesson is about what you do with the surface once the shape is there. And I want to say up front: this is a choice, not a required step. That surprises people.
Why the surface matters
When you're stacking coils, even ones you've smoothed as you go leave a ridged, ropy texture on the inside and sometimes the outside too, depending on how aggressively you blended each join. You've got two honest paths from here. You can smooth the whole thing down until it reads as a solid form, no evidence of coils at all. Or you can leave some or all of that texture showing on purpose, because it looks good and it tells the truth about how the piece was made.
I lean toward leaving more texture than beginners expect to. Here's the thing: new handbuilders tend to smooth everything into oblivion because they think a smooth pot looks more finished, more professional. It doesn't always. A coil pot with visible rings has personality. A coil pot smoothed to death sometimes just looks like a sad, lumpy version of something thrown on a wheel, and it's competing in a category it can't win. This is the same opinion I've given you about symmetry: don't chase perfect and even just because it feels like the safe choice. Fix actual problems—cracks, weak joins, walls that are too thin. Don't sand away the parts that show your hand was involved.
Smoothing the inside
If you're smoothing the inside of a form, especially a narrow one, a rib is your best friend here. A butter knife with a rounded edge works if you don't have a rib yet. Reach in, and in one long stroke, drag it up the interior wall, following the curve of the pot rather than fighting it. Do this while the clay is still soft-to-firm, what we've been calling leather-hard-ish in earlier lessons — too wet and you'll just smear it, too dry and you'll tear it.
Go slow near the bottom. That's where coils stack tightest and where beginners rush and gouge a groove they then have to fix twice.
Smoothing the outside
Same idea, but you have more tool options because you can see what you're doing. A metal rib gives you a crisp, tight surface. A wooden rib gives you something a little softer, less clinical. I use a plastic rib most of the time because it's forgiving and I'm not precious about tool quality — remember, a butter knife and a rolling pin get you further than people want to admit.
Work in overlapping strokes, top to bottom, turning the pot as you go if it's on a banding wheel or a lazy susan. If you don't have either, turn it by hand in small increments and just be patient about it.
Leaving texture on purpose
If you're keeping some rings visible, decide where before you start touching the pot. A common move is to smooth the bottom third for stability of the base and function, and leave the upper coils showing so the piece reads as handbuilt where it counts visually. Or you smooth the inside completely, because that's the part your hand or a spoon actually touches, and leave the outside textured, because that's the part people look at.
Whatever you decide, commit to it in a defined zone. A pot that's smoothed in some random patchy way, half from indecision, looks unfinished in a bad way rather than intentional. Texture on purpose needs a boundary.
The moment I dropped one
I'll tell you about the time I lost a pot at exactly this stage, because it's a good caution and it still bugs me. I'd just finished smoothing a coil vase, spent probably forty minutes getting the outside right, and I was carrying it up from the kitchen table to a shelf upstairs to dry. Missed a step. It went down, hit the stair edge, and split. I said a word I don't usually say in front of the kids. Liam heard it from the top of the stairs and has never let me forget it.
The point isn't the swearing, though I stand by it. The point is that a piece at this stage — walls thinned from smoothing, still soft enough to be vulnerable — is at its most fragile exactly when it looks the most finished. Carry it with two hands, low and close to your body, and don't carry it anywhere while you're also thinking about something else. I was thinking about dinner. That's how it ended up on the stairs.
A caution on tools
Ribs and knife edges used for smoothing can catch a fingernail or a knuckle if you're pressing hard and your hand slips off the clay. It won't take a finger off, but it'll leave a mark. Keep your non-working hand braced against the outside of the pot, not underneath the tool's path.
Before next time
Pick one coil piece from this module and decide, before you touch it again, which parts get smoothed and which parts stay textured. Write it down if you have to — it keeps you from waffling halfway through.
~erin