Adjustable Pottery Machine Machine Turntable Clamp and Ceramic Art Repair Ceramic Trimming Tool Sculpting Repair, Teaching Suitable for Beginners and Professionals

Sure, you could slap down $300 for a Griffin, but why bother unless you are running a commercial pottery production line. This unit works just as well, and is perfect for smaller wheels without the need to remove the plastic splash guard from your wheel. For $55, this unit is a steal for what it does. Most others are 75-100 dollars and made for large wheels. This unit is specifically designed to work with a range of the common hobby grade wheels from Vevor, et al, out of China as they are, with few exceptions, all 12 inch or smaller wheels. I really do not understand all the poor reviews complaining about the unit being plastic, poor instructions, etc. 1) All brands are plastic, it's just a question of what plastic. This one is ABS, very well designed and produced, and the wheel is fully assembled in the box, so all you have to do is dial the bottom side in for the wheel you are using, secure the three lock clamps, add the top clamps and you are ready to load greenware to be trimmed and adjusted to your desire. 2) As for the instructions included (with photos of each step and each component), this product is easy to understand and use IF you have ever used a trimming wheel on a pottery wheel before. If you read them and follow them, and have any understanding of pottery trimming wheels, you will have no issues with setting up this wheel. The insutructions are both clear, and fine. What is not clear in the product description is that there is a complete set of different lengths of aluminum poles for the rubber clamps for holding higher profile pottery objects. So you have a full range of lengths and the poles are super easy to change out. They come in a small zipper bag that holds accessories for the wheel. So this unit really is a functional equivalent to a top end Griffon unit, at a much lower price and perfect for wheels that are 12 inches or under (mine is 11 inches). Most trimming wheels offered on Amazon are designed for 14 inch wheels so they are going to be too big on smaller wheels (even though they do adjust down) unless you remove your capture tray from your wheel (which is not a good idea if you do not want trimmings sliding/flinging all over the place while you are working.

For the price, especially if you have a smaller wheelhead, it's great. The directions aren't great and lead the user to discover some things on their own. For instance, it's not entirely clear what all of the knobs are for, but it seems some of the smaller blue knobs are meant to keep the arms from lifting up and off of the surface when you are tightening around a piece. Without them it's easy for your piece to unknowingly get lifted off of the surface and cause you to trim an angled bottom or have an insecure hold (had to go through a couple bud vases to realize this). If you tighten the little knobs just right, you can keep this from happening. Overall I'm very happy and would purchase again. It certainly gets plenty of use and saves me time

This might be the worst item and waste of money that I have spent on Amazon - directions were horrible when I finally figured it out it only works for about 5 mins then becomes unfastened and worthless - the design is horrible - this is a piece of junk DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY - I purchased this 2 years ago and have tried and tried to make it work with no success. I have used the original version at a clay studio and it works great - that is why I went for this one to save money nope didnt save me any money

The idea is good and it works holding the pottery while trimming. The directions were ridiculous. It took one a day to figure it out and yes, we both hold master's degrees. I would buy a sturdier griffin because I'm not sure this will hold up to a lot of pieces. Anyway, I can't comment on the workings of it because I haven't used it too long. Not sure I'd purchase it again due to the directions.

I honestly don't understand why this is not more highly rated. Mine works perfectly and I use it all the time for a variety of sizes and shapes of different pots. A lot of people are complaining about the instructions, but it's not rocket science to figure this thing out -- it probably took me 5 minutes to figure out how it is put together, and I've never used one of these before and didn't even know exactly how it was supposed to work. It's like a third the cost of the Griffin, which I've never used to be fair; but I literally can't find anything wrong with it! I would definitely recommend this product. I see a lot of people in the pottery community online who love to complain about the flood of reasonably priced, high quality products on the market these days without ever having tried them themselves. Not everybody has thousands of dollars to start their own studio; and the availability and quality of all of these "cheap" products I've been using are not only sufficient for my needs; but they far exceed my expectations. Oh my, how will I ever survive without spending thousands of dollars on a Shimpo/Brent/Griffin product?! It turns out, pretty dang well!

I thought adding the locking pins would make it better. It was easy enough to figure out and should be great except it doesn't really lock on the wheel. So, my pieces wobbled and I ended up trimming right off the wheel. What a waste of money. Wish I hadn't waited to use it, because I would have returned it.

I used the name brand version this week for the first time and loved it. But I did not want to spend the money for the name brand. I purchased this on Tuesday, it was delivered on Thursday. Could not be happier. My piece was small, so I did not use the arms. There were small intentions in my piece but that was from me twisting it so hard. I do not see this as an issue, it is simply learning the tool and the moisture content of the piece. Far easier to fix than clay scraps when trimming with clay securement. This was not difficult to set up. Tip... you do need to install all braces before turning. Otherwise the braces will get out of sync. The only other problem I see is where I will store my 100's of pieces now that I can crank them out like a machine and trim like a pro.

Great for the price. I modified unit by removing bottom plate and drilling over sized holes to fit on bat pins. Now it can be used with pins installed on wheel. Make sure you measure carefully to center the 10” bat pin pattern on bottom piece before drilling. Also make sure your not going to drill into clamp area. Another tip is to use a marker on top showing tighten and loosen direction for plates and clamps.

It works like it should and is much cheaper than symilar products on Amazon and elsewhere.

Muy seguro

I love this, it is so helpful for more efficient trimming--the clay I use dries out very quickly, making it hard to use the little clay bits fast enough to trim before they stop sticking . I've used the original Giffin Grip at another studio, and though this knockoff is a little more difficult to work with (stiffer to adjust and lock down, especially now with some clay shavings in there), it's overall comparable and seems sturdy enough to last a long time. Based on the pictures, I wasn't sure if this model would come with multiple lengths for the holders, but it does (4 lengths, I believe). Like the GG, you can also reverse the blue parts if you need to, giving you an extra inch or so for big pots or short pots. I added some home-made grips (some child-profing stick-on foam) for when I do this to help keep the hard-plastic off of the pot. I agree with the other reviewer that thinks the not-great instructions are easily overcome with some patience and thinking, and once you figure it out you're good to go from then on! I definitely suggest doing a big batch of trimming at once, as getting this on and off the wheel can be somewhat time-consuming if it decides to be finicky. I've used If you can afford the OG GG, I think it's worth the price--if only to support the designers. That said, I couldn't afford it, and 3 months in I am very, very happy with my more economical purchase!

I've been using this for a couple of years, and whilst it does auto centre and speeds up trimming for *some items*, it's virtually useless for mugs. The little grippy feet that come with it are off at a weird angle and don't really grip the pot well at all. Also the longer rods included were all different lengths. Like, they didn't match each other. The blue things tend to put large indents in leather hard clay. You can flip them around to get a better grip, but when you have them flipped around, they don't spiral all the way in towards the centre. This also gets full of clay trimmings and gets stuck all the time. It's honestly more work maintaining this thing than it is to just tap centre and stick a couple of slugs of clay on. TL;DR, its not good for trimming anything less than 6" in diameter. If you try a real Griffin Grip (or one of the Chinese dupes), you'll see there's a world of difference. It's absolutely worth the frustration saved to spend the extra couple of hundred dollars on the real deal.

This product deserves a higher review! I believe most of the negative reviews here are unfair assessments based on the misunderstanding the product. Once you have it actually assembled, it works very similarly in feel and ease to the griffin grip (including auto-centering which is one of those things you don't truly appreciate until you've tried it!). Yes, the manual is pretty useless. But I think one poorly written piece of paper should not justify a bump in stars. I was able to figure it out in under 30 mins with some fiddling and examining pictures. If you believe yourself to be a moderately intelligent problem-solver, don't pay heed to all those claiming it's unusable. All in all, this works fine. I trim my pieces with much more symmetry, ease, stability, and speed than using clay wads. Maybe it's a little less elegant than a griffin grip, but it's a fraction of the price. The negativity in reviews is unjustified: For example, one of these reviews says something about a missing piece… I know what pieces they’re referring to and they are NOT missing: they’re simply a different color than the pictures. Tip: If you're worried about clay falling into the cracks, try placing painters tape along the openings once you have your piece in place. It's cheap and can be bought in bulk.