14
Spent 2 years brushing dirt off with a stiff brush before a random field director yelled at me to use a dental pick instead
I was on a dig outside Flagstaff and this older guy walks over, grabs my wrist, and says 'stop scrubbing that rim like you're cleaning a toilet' and handed me a little dental pick, and now I see all the micro-grooves I destroyed on past pots - has anyone else had a mentor completely change your basic technique mid-trowel?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
piper91215d agoOG Member
My buddy Dave was on a dig in Arizona and an old crew chief yanked his trowel mid-stroke, then showed him how to use a wet q-tip to lift dirt off a rim. He said it felt like magic, like suddenly the pot was talking to him instead of just sitting there all scratched up. That one change saved him hours of cleanup and he still uses it ten years later.
10
robertgreen14d ago
@piper912 not to be that guy, but that q-tip trick only works if the pottery is already fairly dry and stable. Wet q-tips on soft or crumbling sherds just turns everything into mud and makes the surface worse. It's a great time saver on solid stuff though, especially once you get the touch for how much moisture the dirt needs.
6
the_jason14d ago
Oh man I remember reading something from @robertgreen a while back about how the q-tip trick only works on stable pieces and I learned that the hard way last summer. I tried it on a real crumbly sherd that had been sitting in wet dirt and it basically turned into soup in my hands. Now I stick to dental picks for the delicate stuff and only break out the q-tips once I've let the piece dry out a solid day under the sun.
4