"What kind of moulds do the potters in the settlements have to make their things of?" asked Sammy; "or do they make 'em in holes in the ground or on a basket?"
"No, indeed! they make 'em on a wheel."
"Oh, do tell me about it, Uncle Seth! tell me all you know."
"That won't take long. What is called a potter's wheel means not only a wheel, but a good many more things with it; but they all go by the name of the potter's wheel.
"In the first place, there's a rough bench made; and then there's an iron spindle goes through this bench, and not far from the bottom is a crank; and below this crank, about three inches from the lower end, a wheel is put on it as big over as the bottom of a wash-tub, with a gudgeon at the end that goes into a socket in a timber. Upon the other end that comes up about a foot above the bench, a screw-thread is cut, and a round piece of hard-wood plank is screwed on the top of the spindle about a foot over; on this the potter puts his lump of clay, and smashes it down hard to make it stick fast.
"There's a treadle fixed to this crank on the spindle, just as there is to your mother's flax-wheel. The potter puts his foot on this, sets the clay whirling round, sticks his thumb into it and his fingers on the outside, and makes it any shape he wants. After the vessel, whatever it may be, is made, he takes off the finger-marks, and shapes it inside and out more to his mind, with little pieces of wood cut just the shape he wants; then takes it off the wheel, and puts it away to dry."
"Does it take him a good while to make a pot?" asked Harry.
"No, indeed! he'd make a pot as large as that bean-pot in five minutes, and less too. A potter'd make a thousand of four-inch pots in a day. In their kilns they burn thousands of pieces according to size, of all kinds at once; as it don't take much longer, nor is it any more work, to burn a thousand pieces than two hundred."
"That isn't much like me, two or three days making one pot," said Sammy.