Stacking, Joining, and Building a Wall Upward
Okay, so you've got coils now, rolled even, kept under plastic, not falling apart in your hands. Last lesson was just about making the rope. This lesson is about turning rope into a wall, which is where coil pots actually start to look like something.
Here's the thing about coil building that trips people up: it's not that different from what we already know. You're still scoring, you're still slipping, you're still matching moisture. The only new part is that you're doing it in a stack instead of side to side.
Starting the base
Roll out a slab, not too thick, maybe a quarter inch, and cut a circle for your base. You can use a bowl or a plate as a guide if you don't trust your own eye, which is fine, I use a saucer half the time. Score the edge of that base circle before you set your first coil down. People forget this because the base doesn't feel like a "join" the way two walls meeting at a corner does, but it absolutely is one, and it will crack on you just the same if you skip it.
Score, slip, press your first coil onto that scored edge, and blend the inside seam with your finger or a rib. Leave the outside for now. I'll get to why in a second.
Stacking coil on coil
Each new coil goes on top of the last one the same way: score the top of the coil that's already there, score the bottom of the new coil, slip both, press down, blend. Every single join. I don't care how tired you are or how late it is. This is the one rule I don't bend on in this whole class, and coil work is where people get tempted to cut corners because there are just so many joins in a row. Don't. A skipped score-and-slip is the crack you'll be diagnosing three weeks from now, and we already spent a whole lesson on that, so let's not manufacture more homework for ourselves.
Blend the inside seam of each new coil as you go, but leave the outside alone until you've got three or four coils stacked. Working the outside too early makes the wall soft and wobbly right when it needs some structure to lean on. Let it firm up a little, then go back and smooth the outside seams in one pass.
Keeping the wall from leaning
As you stack, check the wall with your eye from the side, not just from above. Coil walls drift outward if you're not paying attention, because each coil wants to slide a little on the wet one below it. If yours is leaning out, angle your next coil slightly inward to correct it. If it's caving in, angle out. You're steering the whole time, not just stacking.
I'll say the contrarian thing here that I say every module: don't chase perfect symmetry. A coil pot that's a little wide on one side and a little narrow on the other has personality. I'd rather you fix an actual structural lean than spend twenty minutes trying to make the rim perfectly round. Machined and even isn't really the goal here. If it were, you'd be at the wheel, and we've established that's not my strong suit either.
Cover it. Seriously.
Same warning as always, because the air here does not care that you're in the middle of something. If you stop to answer the phone or referee a kid situation, throw plastic over the whole pot, not just the rim. The bottom coils dry differently than the top ones if you leave it open even ten minutes, and then you're joining mismatched moisture again, which we already covered is a bad time.
My son Liam, when he was twelve, built an entire coil pot without me asking him to, specifically to prove to me that my method was slower than it needed to be. He skipped steps left and right, rushed the stacking, didn't bother covering it between sessions. The pot came out lopsided in a way that wasn't the charming kind of irregular, it was the "structurally confused" kind. He never even finished glazing it. I still have it on a shelf, and I bring it up whenever he gets smug about being efficient at something. There's a difference between working efficiently and skipping the parts that hold the thing together. He learned that one the hard way, and now you don't have to.
How tall before you stop
For a first coil vase, I'd cap you around six to eight inches while you're learning. Taller than that and the bottom of the wall has to support a lot of wet weight above it before anything's had a chance to firm up, and that's when walls slump. You can always add more once the base has stiffened up some. Better to build in stages than watch the whole thing sag sideways because you got ambitious on your first try.
Before next time, get a base and at least four or five coils stacked and blended on the inside, and keep it under plastic between sessions even if you think you'll be right back.
~erin