Your hand-built piece can look finished and still be risky to dry.

Uneven walls, fresh joins, thin edges, unsupported forms, small cracks, and fast-drying conditions can show up later as cracking, warping, separation, or collapse. The hard part is knowing what matters before the damage appears.

The Pre-Dry Pottery Risk Scanner gives you a guided way to check your piece before drying. You’ll answer a short intake, scan the main risk zones, and get one clear drying-readiness route: proceed, slow-dry, support, repair, rework, pause, or restart.

Mechanism: piece inputs → risk scan → drying route → next action.

Inside, you get the Pre-Dry Scanner Workspace, prescription cards, stop rules, worked beginner cases, and a printable PDF pack for your table or studio.

Your first useful output takes about 15 minutes: a route and next action for the piece in front of you.

This is not a pottery course, firing guide, glaze guide, or promise that your piece will never crack. It is a practical pre-drying decision tool for beginner hand-builders who want to stop guessing before they let a piece dry.