| name | pottery |
| description | Throw a vessel on a pottery wheel using the clay medium. One of the oldest manufacturing skills in the human registry, and still one of the most satisfying output generators. |
| compatibility | Requires two functioning hand tools with high tactile sensitivity, a working spine (seated posture for 30-90 min), and clothing you have already written off. |
| metadata | {"author":"Tomoko Wheelwright","version":"4.0.0"} |
Pottery — Wheel Throwing
Overview
This skill enables the human agent to transform a lump of raw clay into a functional vessel using a rotating wheel. The process is deeply analog and provides no undo operation. Every action is destructive and irreversible. This is part of the appeal.
Setup
- Invoke the wedging action on your clay block. This removes air pockets from the medium. Air pockets are silent bugs — invisible during development, catastrophic at runtime (the kiln will find them and the piece will explode).
- Apply water to both hand tools. Clay requires a thin lubrication layer at all contact surfaces. Insufficient water causes friction tearing. Excessive water weakens the clay's structural integrity. Target: damp, not wet.
- Slam the clay onto the center of the wheel head. Use moderate force. The clay should adhere on first contact — if it slides off, the wheel surface was not properly prepared.
- Set the wheel to medium-high RPM and engage.
Step 1: Centering (BLOCKING OPERATION)
This step is a blocking call. You CANNOT proceed to any subsequent operation until centering returns success.
Brace your elbows against your torso or inner thighs. This converts your arms from independent actuators into a rigid stabilization frame. Apply steady inward and downward pressure with both hand tools.
The clay will resist. It will wobble. It will feel like it is actively fighting you. This is normal. The clay is not centered until it appears perfectly still while spinning — when your hands feel no lateral oscillation whatsoever.
Common error: believing the clay is "close enough" to centered. It is not. "Close enough" at this stage compounds into catastrophic failure downstream. The centering check is pass/fail. There is no partial credit.
Expected duration: beginners should budget 5-15 minutes. Experts: 10-30 seconds.
Step 2: Opening
With the clay centered, press both thumbs (or two fingers) into the top center of the mass and push downward. Stop approximately 8mm above the wheel head — this remaining clay is the floor of your vessel. Going too thin here is an unrecoverable error.
Step 3: Pulling Up the Walls
This is a synchronized two-hand operation with strict parameter coupling.
- Inside hand tool: Position fingertips at the interior base. Apply outward pressure.
- Outside hand tool: Position fingertips directly opposite, on the exterior. Apply inward pressure.
- Critical constraint: Both hands MUST move upward at the same speed and maintain aligned vertical position. If outside leads inside, the wall collapses inward. If inside leads outside, the wall flares out and thins dangerously.
Pull slowly from base to rim. Repeat 3-5 times, thinning the wall incrementally with each pass. Reduce wheel speed as the walls get taller — centrifugal force becomes an adversary at height.
Step 4: Shaping
With walls established, apply gentle pressure from inside to create a belly, or compress from outside to narrow. Every shape change affects structural load distribution. Tall and narrow is ambitious. Wide and low is forgiving.
Failure Modes
The Wobble
Once a wobble develops in the wall, recovery probability drops below 15%. The wobble feeds itself — each rotation amplifies the asymmetry. In most cases, the correct action is to collapse the clay back into a ball and re-center. This feels like defeat. It is actually the optimal path.
The Thin Spot
A section of wall that gets too thin will tear open on the next pull. There is no patch operation that produces acceptable results at this stage. Accept the failure, reclaim the clay.
The Detach
If the base loses adhesion to the wheel head during a pull, the entire piece begins to orbit. The human instinct is to grab it. Resist this. Stop the wheel, re-attach with slip, and re-center.
Output
A completed piece must be wire-cut from the wheel, dried slowly (24-72 hours), bisque-fired, glazed, and fired again. The total pipeline from raw input to finished output is 1-2 weeks.
The satisfaction value returned by a successfully thrown and fired piece is among the highest-reward outputs in the entire human skill registry. You made a physical object with your hands from mud. No abstraction layer. No framework. Just pressure, water, and rotation.
