Trimming

Shoot, as long as you keep it moist you can let it sit a year or two before you trim it. :-)

deg

Doesn't matter how long as long as it is kept damp. It all depends on the weather though, cold, wet days and your work takes ages to dry, and hot dry conditions and you need to be very careful things don't dry too fast. Y

Thanks everybody, I feel much better!

LMac

Yes. If you have to leave the work for an extended time, put plastic on the ware board and completely wrap the work up. If the work is left on the wooden board, the wood will soak up some of the moisture.

Lee in Mashiko

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and if you have the piece covered for a long time and it DOES dry out too far you can bring it back to a good leather wetness by covering the piece on a board with a bowl of water and towel In the same bowl. this gets the humidity up higher and slowly the claybody regains lost moisture.

those dry cleaner bags work the BEST for me and they are usually pretty large & enable a good complete wrapping of pieces & the work board & water bowl.

steve

steve graber

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Slgraber) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m12.aol.com:

Talking about dry cleaning bags..

We find that our dry cleaning bags are slightly porous and are great for wrapping any piece in that needs to dry very slowly. With this very slow drying the moisture content is evened out throughout the piece and it dries evenly.

John W

Another variable: what's your environment? I'm in the Mojave desert -- driest area of the US. However, now, during the winter, when items are left in the shop with no heat turned on (especially at night), they dry very little, if at all, within plastic veggie bags. While I'm working, there are lights and an electric floor heater taking the chill off, so newly thrown items "firm" up when just left uncovered. Once our winter weather leaves -- probably the middle of next month for at least a while -- everything will have to be covered quickly & spritzed. The only real change happening will be the difference in temperature, not a change in humidity -- except for short periods, our humidity hovers at about

Kathy

I live in Georgia where we have humidity that can reach 99% so I usually have no problem with my pieces drying to quickly---it's normally the opposite. Our winters are much drier so this is the only time of the year that I really have any concerns about how quickly my stuff is drying.

it is OK it can allow the the clay to be more consistantly moist/dry. I wrap pieces tightly and they last over a week. Erik