Primitive pottery 1: Potter's wheel from limestone slabs ⚱️
Channel: Make It Primitive
Date: 2020-03-17

To level up my primitive pottery from simple pinch pots, I built myself a simple potter's wheel out of two flat slabs of limestone. Even though this type of wheel is too slow for "throwing", I was surprised to notice that it still already foreshadows the advantages that a fast potter's wheel would have.

Welcome to my "primitive maker cave", where this time I build a simple potter's wheel from two limestone slabs. I was surprised that it works quite a bit better than I had expected.

The area I live in consists pretty much exclusively of limestone - luckily with the occasional piece of flint strewn in. The limestone comes in many forms and shapes. I found a good source of flat limestone slabs near my cave, some of them very even and smooth. I already have several projects in the works or in planning for this interesting material, and this potter's wheel is the first of them.

00:00 Intro
00:19 Gathering limestone slabs
00:59 Building the potter's wheel
05:49 Making a clay pot on the potter's wheel

There are basically two types of potter's wheels: Slow potter's wheels are simply devices that allow you to turn pinch pots and coil pottery as you work on them, so you don't have to constantly pick them up and reposition them. They can be as simple as a flat rock in the sand. Fast potter's wheels are those that spin constantly and enable rapid production of more elaborate forms.

The tool I built was originally just intended to be a slow wheel. But due to the rotational inertia of its top plate, it does actually allow for some refinement and smoothing of pinch pots and coil pottery.

#primitiveskills #pottery