After burning the paddle, take a soft brush and brush the surface clean of the carbonized matter. I use a brass brush for this, or sometimes stiff plastic. Steel is too stiff and will scrub out your hard earned texture. Use water during the brushing process, or you’ll end up looking like a coal miner after a hard days work.

When I looked at the old pots, the surfaces were sometimes pocked with odd bumps, bumps which didn’t look intenional or man made. Finally realized this could have been from wormholes in the paddle used to make the piece. Lacking access to highly trained, hungry pine beetle larvae, I used a rusty nail held in a vice grip to burn texture similar to worm holes into the surface of the paddle. Holding the vice grip away from you heat the nail until red hot with the burner, then jab and drag it into and across the paddle to create your texture. Use your imagination, have fun!

Burn and brush again to knock off the sharp edges from your texture and you’re finished! I don’t usually burn texture into the whole surface of the paddle, since different parts of the paddle can be used for different effects.

This paddle was textured with saw cuts before burning for the crosshatch design.

The other day I made some paddles, and took some pics of the very simple process. Paddles are easy to make, and really have a significant influence on the final look of the pot. You can buy them in various places, but what you get is fairly uninteresting compared with what you can produce on your own for next to nothing.

I first became interested in homemade paddles after looking at old Karatsu pots and pot shards. If I wanted to mimic those pots I was going to need similar tools.

In the first picture you can see the blanks to be used for the paddles. I had a pine branch laying around waiting for a chance to be useful. It is cut diagonally at about a 1″ thickness. If you cut vertically (rip), you will lose the interesting figure created by the growth rings. If you cross cut you will need a very large diameter log to cut blanks from to get the size paddle you need. Also the paddle will be very weak and easily broken. Cutting diagonally solves both problems giving you a strong paddle with interesting wood figure. This will later be reflected in the clay surface. Also, you can get a relatively large paddle from a small diameter branch.

Here are the blanks with outlines of paddles marked on them. I flare the base of the paddle handles because a tapered or straight handle tends to slip during use.

I used a benchtop bandsaw to cut the blanks out. You could use any saw really, it’s just a matter of speed.

Next get your trusty burner torch, and blacken the whole paddle. The burning will create texture in the paddle since the soft ring burn faster than the dense rings, leaving the dense rings raised. Also, it’s just fun playing with the torch, and the pine smells nice. The burning also rounds off sharp edges and corners making the paddle more comfortable to handle.

Traditionally, Karatsu pottery involves a lot of paddling and trimming very soft clay. It’s hard to find tools that do this well, so the easiest way is to make your own. Here are a few of the tools I’ve made. They’re all really simple and cheap, and work better for what I need than what is commercially available.
I have included one bought tool (at left) because I use it a lot for paddling bottoms and lids, and it’s good for comparison. It’s good for bottoms and lids because of it’s even surface, but not good for much anything else, because the design is too even and man made for my taste. The made tools are from left to right:
-Cedar Paddle: cut to shape then burned to soften. ‘Worm holes burned in with a hot nail. use for bigger pieces because the length allows for more support.
-Pine Paddle: Use for small/medium pieces. Since it’s short, it’s easier to collapse what you’re paddling, but it leaves a much more interesting design/deformation.
-Copper Wire footring measurer: I use this to premark all feet before measuring so I get reasonably similar footring diameters. The copper makes it easily adjustable, just bend to desired diameter.
-Cedar Anvil: I cut a section from a cedar fence post and used a burner on it to bring out the figure, then used a small rounded chisel to dig between the rings. Using the growth rings looks more natural than turning rings on a lathe.
-Pine Knife: I made this for incising tea bowls, but I found it not to work well with Karatsu clays, too sharp. Works great with Mogusa and Gotomaki clays.
-Granite Finisher: I use this to erase knife marks, etc. on the bottoms of my paddled pots.
-Two trimmers: made from some cool stuff I found on the road that never gets dull, it’s some sort of laminated bandsaw blade stock with a 3mm strip of really hard metal on the lead edge.
-Pine decorative ‘thwacker’: This has various designs cut into the ends for final decorative markings. If you get it right on, it makes a cool ‘thwack’ noise, if not you’ve just torn a hole in your vessel.
-Footring carving tool: I made this out of some olive wood I had laying around, and mini hacksaw blades from the 100 yen shop, since I needed a footring carving dull loop tool. Brings out the wrinkles in the clay.
-All purpose rough cutting tool: Made out of an old chopstick and a jigsaw blade. I made it for carving the spout holes for katakuchi forms.

The second photo shows more detail and reverse sides of the paddles.