Making pottery ware at home can be a fun DIY experiment. When trying to create a stunning piece from clay using your home oven, you don’t have to worry about the need for an expensive kiln. However, when attempting to create pottery ware with your home oven, there are several essential tools that you need to invest in. Without them, your DIY might not be as successful as you would want it to be. So, what are these essential tools? Let us find out. But first, learn whether you can make pottery with the help of a home oven!
Can You Make Pottery With Your Home Oven?
There is no straight answer to this. When you work with traditional clay variants like stoneware, earthenware, or porcelain, they need to be fired at a high temperature. A home oven cannot reach such high temperatures. However, if you plan on using air-dry clay or polymer clay, you are surely going in the right direction. The traditional clay variants can only be dried in a home oven, while air-dry clay and polymer clay can be adequately cured inside your oven.
Now that you know the truth about making pottery with your home oven, let us count down some of the best pottery tools to aid your home oven pottery-making process.
Tools To Use When Making Pottery With A Home Oven
1. Clay Rolling Pin:
A rolling pin is important when you plan on creating pottery at home in your oven. They help ensure that the thickness of your pottery piece is even throughout. This ensures that the artwork doesn’t dry unevenly inside the home oven. An unevenly dried pottery ware or clay artwork can develop cracks hampering the integrity of the piece.
2. Oven Thermometer:
While most home ovens do have temperature detectors that display the numbers on the oven’s screen, they can be faulty at times. So, it is important to have an oven thermometer with you to ensure that your clay doesn’t fry away due to a lot of heat or get underbaked. You can get yourself the Taylor Precision Oven Thermometer that can detect temperature ranges between 100oF and 600oF.
3. Oven Kiln:
Another necessary tool to have with you for home oven baking is an oven kiln. These kilns are designed to mimic the temperature-concentrating action of a regular electric kiln. This way, the heat doesn’t dissipate and can be utilized the best way for faster drying and curing of the clay.
4. Parchment Paper:
A parchment paper is important to prevent the project’s underside from having shiny spots when you use a baking pan.
5. Clay Cutting Tools:
You can use kitchen knives to create some shapes, but they aren’t safe and also not designed to use for pottery work. The best shaping tools to use when baking clay in a home oven are cutting blades, scissors, shape cutters, and other tools like rotary cutters.
6. Clay Shaping Tools:
With clay shaping tools, you can add some beautiful textures to your piece making the process easier. You can use tools such as tip shaper, ball stylus, needle tools, double-ended scrapers, and more.
7. Piercing Tool:
When baking clay in a home oven, especially if your sculpture is hollow, it is necessary that you pierce the piece. Why so? This helps the moisture or air content within the hollow structure to escape without cracking.
8. Ceramic Tiles:
When baking your clay sculpture in an oven, it is important to ensure that the temperature stays constant. Ceramic tiles placed inside the oven act as a trustworthy heat sink. It helps absorb and evenly distribute your home oven’s heat.
9. Jewelry Molds:
If you plan on creating jewelry with clay in your home oven, molds with different shapes can help make the process faster. Make sure the molds are oven-safe.
10. Tweezers/Forceps:
Even if you wait for the sculpture to cool down after baking in the oven, it can still be hot for your fingers. A pair of tweezers/forceps can help you pick small pieces with ease.
Conclusion
Home oven pottery making is a test and trial activity. There is a chance that your pottery ware might not be perfect in the first run. However, with these tools and some practice, you can reach perfection. Most of all, practice safety and have fun crafting with your friends and family.
