5 tips to prevent pottery warping

After watching one of my YouTube videos, a viewer asked:

Thanks for all the tips! can you tell me a little about drying please. I made some porcelain brooches recently and some of them warped. I think the problem was in the drying….. i think! any help would be brill x

Suzanne Orford, via YouTube

Warping in pottery is a tricky problem to tackle and can occur for a number of reasons, here are my tips to avoid clay warping for small flat items such as broaches, earrings, pendants etc:

1. Use a good quality clay and be sure to wedge it well
2. Make sure your items are thick enough, my work is at least 3mm thick
3. Dry items on a flat hardboard, I use MDF boards
4. Slow dry your items, you can cover with plastic to trap moisture and extend the drying time
5. Be patient and keep practising, pottery is a craft to learn over a long period

If you don’t currently have flat hardboard’s it is easy to have them made. I recently popped down to B&Q and found a large sheet of MDF which made 6 boards for around £14. They have a cutting service in-store at no extra cost, give them the size of boards you want and you’ll walk out the store with them ready to use!

I’ve seen others place a board on top of their work when drying. This isn’t something I do, my personal experience is this can lead to items cracking.

If you have any other questions or have your own tips why not join this pottery community, where we support each others journey with clay: https://community.cabinceramics.co.uk/