Lids!

I made two lids for my first jar. As I haven't done this before I followed vague memories of Youtube videos from the night before and produced the above items.

The lid on the left started as a straight sided bowl. I then squeezed the top in until I had a sort of squished hollow globe shape with a point on the end. The divot around the point was unintentional and a result of pushing down while trying to close the point. I then used a wire while the bowl was turning to cut it free. There was minor deformation while I lifted it off onto the board but I was able to recover from that during the trimming stage with some gentle squishing. I'm not very good at hollow shapes so this lid was quite thick and needed a lot of internal trimming. It's a perfect fit though and I really like it.

This lid will be bisque fired on the jar so hopefully they shrink at the same rate.

The lid on the right was thrown as a bowl so I could create a slight gallery and internal lip to lock with the one in the jar. The base of the bowl was quite thick so I could trim a knob into it later. It required a lot of clay removal. The remaining clay was still very maliable so as I formed the knob I was able to create another lid divot which should help give fingers space to grab the knob. I'm not as happy with this shape as it's more conic than the other. It is slightly smaller so this is a back up plan if the first lid doesn't shrink enough during firing.

Thoughts:  Not sure which approach I like the best. The first one makes it easier to have straight edges on the lid which is good if it's an insert lid. The second one allows fancier knobs but next time I'll use a heat gun to dry it a little during the trimming process. These are now both drying out and will be submitted for bisque next week assuming Claymake is permitted to operate the firing services.


Update: I killed the jar by breaking the rim while it was still greenware. These two lids are in the queue for bisque firing but will then wait until an appropriate replacement jar is made. I’ve got a lot to learn about shrinkage rates now.