Buying your first pottery wheel

The first thing that I wanted to do when I realised I wanted to do pottery at home was to look for a wheel. Blimey, that was a real head scratcher. Do you go for the cheaper Amazon style wheels like this one? Do you get a beast with an integrated seat that seem to pop up every so often on Ebay? Or do you just go for it and buy a wheel new? Obviously it massively depends on budget as there is something out there for everyone. I knew I wanted something fairly lightweight, but other than that I had (and probably have!) no idea really about the differences. I researched and researched and researched for about 6 months. Basically, what I have found is this. There’s no right answer (sorry!). However…the good news is you generally can’t go wrong either. Here are the main options I looked at:

Lightweight wheels

The cheaper, lighter Amazon jobbies…they’re still good for throwing clay on! They’re probably not going to give you the next Florian Gadsby piece…but they’ll probably see you through your first year or two. For the price you’re paying (generally around £150-£250), it’s not bad…and you can still sell them on down the line. From what I’ve seen they’re re-selling for about £50-£100. The benefit of these are that they’re really easy to move about and obviously the initial outlay is a lot less. The downer is that it really can be a bit of a lottery. I looked at quite a few reviews and they seem to be a fairly mixed bag. Some of the reviews rave about the chosen wheel…others say they aren’t sturdy.  These lightweight wheels are usually powered by the motor of an electric bike – so you should be able to exert a decent amount of pressure, but not as much as on a traditional wheel. The wheel head itself also tends to be smaller. These wheels can generally hold up to about 2, maybe 3kg of clay, so less than traditional wheels. Not that it matters too much to a beginner like me who is still trying to get a small mug right!  I would say you’d need to form some kind of stand with the majority of these as they all look pretty small height-wise too…which might be another cost to factor in.  But overall, for a starter, these are a good investment, one of my friends has bought one and is already making some lovely stuff on there. 

Second hand wheels

I spent almost a year online looking at second hand wheels. Basically searching each.and.every.day. The fact was, I didn’t really know enough about them to make an informed decision…there are sooooo many wheels! I was also looking for a unicorn…a modern wheel at a low price. Let me tell you, they don’t exist (well…if they do, I didn’t spot any!). Places like eBay and Facebook Marketplace are great if you’re looking for a bit of a big workhorse type wheel. I wasn’t though really. I’d think you’d need a few hands on deck to move some of the larger wheels – and I personally wanted something transportable. Prices massively, massively range on there depending on the make and model. Used Shimpo wheels sell for practically new prices (more on this in a while) and unfortunately scammers abound on some of the sites. Be EXTREMELY cautious if you’re on the lookout for a Shimpo Whisper wheel…they seem to be catnip for scammers advertising at lower prices than you’d expect (usually around £1000 second hand). There are some deals to be had though, if you’re not too precious about the make and you’re willing to collect, you’ll probably be able to pick something up for around the same price as/couple of hundred more than the wheels mentioned above.

Another place to consider looking for second hand wheels is Facebook groups. I joined a couple of specific pottery buying and selling groups – the stuff on there is not only more specific (there were so many tandoori ovens when searching on FB Marketplace for kilns!!) but the deals seem to be slightly better too. Don’t forget to haggle as well if you see anything for the same price on eBay and Marketplace…the seller will save the fees on Facebook!

Don’t forget – if you’re buying second hand always ask for a demo video of it working – and ask for something obscure (something like a tea bag/sock/random item) in the video so you know it’s legitimate.

The big guns

The next option, and the one I eventually settled on, is to just bite the bullet and buy new. After a lot of research and learning initially on a Shimpo, I decided that would be the wheel I’d like. There are tons of options though – again with prices wildly ranging (and opinions). This was just what I felt would work for me, As a complete newbie, I didn’t feel I needed to go for something like the Whisper Model – although that would have been *chefs kiss*. I decided on the RK-55. This is kind of an entry level pottery wheel (although still not cheap!) and has a 30cm wheel, whereas some of the others are larger, quieter and can handle more clay. However, it was £1000 rather than around £1400 – and at this point I’m not sure if I will ever be able to throw a straight wall…let alone go over the 15kg that this machine can handle. I shopped around massively to find the best price. Despite a number of retailers saying they offer the ‘best price’ and that they will price match, when it came to the crunch…they didn’t. So, I found that Scarva offered the best price for this wheel when I was looking (May 24) at £930 including VAT. They don’t hold a lot of stock (I think – I was checking daily and emailed to see if/when they would get more. They then sold out a day or two after I bought). You do need to add palletised postage onto that at £90, but I offset that by basically buying loads of stuff I needed at once! Again, when I have looked at these machines on selling websites, they hold their value massively – there are a number of RK-55 wheels on resale sites asking around £900…and they don’t come up often. So I kind of figured that it’s an investment, but one that I shouldn’t lose too much on even if it turned out I hated pottery (I don’t!).

Scarva were absolutely brilliant with their customer service (thanks Teresa!) and everything arrived within 2/3 days. I won’t go into too much detail here about my current set up as this blog is getting long, but it got used straight away – and the wheel itself is pretty damn great!