My Aunt Jeannine is an amateur potter. She has a potter's wheel, which she uses to "throw" vases, bowls, plates, and other everyday items. She's pretty good at it and is able to sell what she makes.

             One day I visited her to see how she did it. She threw a couple of new pieces, and then unwrapped a large platter she had thrown before. She said it was "leather hard" and ready to trim. From her many tools she pulled out a "shureform." This is a piece of metal with sharp teeth, sort of like a cheese grater, held by a handle. She used this on the leather hard platter to take partly-dry clay off the bottom of the platter efficiently. .

             I asked her where she got such a wide variety of tools. She told me that many are available in art supply stores, but that she got the shureform from a hardware store about two years ago. Then she told me about going to buy it. She went into the hardware store and asked where she would find a shureform. The older man helping her didn't know what it was, so she described it and told him it was a woodworking tool.

             The man said, "What are you going to do with that, young lady?" Since my aunt was about 50 at the time, she knew the man was trying to be charming, so she smiled and said that she would actually be using it as a pottery tool.

             "We don't sell pottery tools here," he said.

             "I know," she responded. "What I want is not a pottery tool. It's for woodworking.".

             "What are you going to do with it?" he asked again.

             "It doesn't really matter what I'm going to use it for," she said. "I just want to buy a shureform.".

             "If I knew what it was for, it would be easier for me to help you find it," he said.

             "Never mind," she said. "I'll look around and find it myself." .

             "We don't sell pottery tools!" he repeated. My aunt just ignored him, looked around the store, found the tool she wanted, along with a couple of other things she thought she might be able to use, and went to checkout.

             The young man checking her out picked up the shureform and asked, "What are you going to do with this?" My aunt explained that she was going to use it to trim pottery pieces.