pottery throwing demo on a car tire~by Hillar Bergman

A demonstration of the car tire potter's wheel in use. There is a video on YouTube showing a potter in India using a primitive wheel at:    • Original pottery wheel  
His wheel is built very low to the ground. If you watch that video, notice how unbalanced the wheel is. That doesn't matter as all the leveling and centering is done on the clay. I wonder what sort of bearing is in his pottery wheel? He also powers his wheel with a spinning stick. I used a tire iron in this video, but think a light wooden stick or dowel would be a lot safer. That tire iron could really be a hazard if it gets stuck when the wheel is moving fast.
I found another video on YouTube of a child in India making a pot on a very simple wheel, and that video is at:    • Kalaghoda Kid's festival - Mishti trying h...  
I may experiment with a different type of stand at a lower height, but for now this works fine for me. I also thought about adding more weight by filling the tire with water, but I'm happy with the way it works without extra weight added. I don't mind giving the wheel an extra spin or two for centering. It would be easy to add a friction-drive motor to this wheel if that was desired. I'll probably keep it simple. I'm throwing "off the hump" in this video, but it's easy to flatten some clay on the wheel surface and use a bat instead.
I ended up building a small "x" shaped stand out of 2x6 wood and screwed a floor flange to the top of the "x". This wheel is now being used in a high school pottery studio.
IMPORTANT!: If you build one, be sure to use a car wheel assembly with the older style OPEN bearing rather than a SEALED bearing such as is common on newer cars. Why? sealed bearings do not perform well under AXIAL loads (the downward load as when using the wheel in a horizontal position). If you build one of these wheels, please leave a comment and let me know how it's working out for you! Thanks :-)