Three Metals, One Firing
It may be too early to get all excited, but this experiment has worked a few times now. I was surprised enough to discover that bronze and white bronze can be fired at the same time. I wasn’t too excited, though, since the contrast is not so sharp, and patina doesn’t make it any sharper.
So, I tried to fire all three metals together, copper, bronze, and White Bronze, with very little hope. I could not believe that copper could sinter at such a low temperature. Here are my results:
The center panels in these earrings are a combination of copper and White Bronze only.
This one is a two-sided hollow form (lentil).
The firing temperature is the same as for White Bronze. I am not sure yet how long the firing should be, what the size and thickness limitations are, and how way the metals should be combined. I am almost sure the latter is an important factor.
The funny thing is that a test piece, all copper, sintered just fine.
June 7th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Great piece. From the picture they look like copper, bronze and silver.
June 7th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Wow! They look great!!!! What a relief to see some one firing projects!!!! More time for more projects!!! 🙂
Thanks for your continued work and experimentation!!!
Liz Barnes
June 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
This is exciting. I was just wishing today that it would wonderful if all could be fired together.
June 7th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Oh yes! This mixed metals in one fire is what I’ve been waiting for!!
June 7th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Can’t wait to hear the details, because this is what I’ve been wanting to do. Maybe I’ll do some experiments, too!
June 7th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
The three-part earrings are especially fantastic-what a breakthrough!!
June 7th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Hadar,
I am interested in firing hollow spheres filled with cork clay centers.
I have a dozen packs of Rio Grande Bronzclay and several vials of your powdered white bronze and copper clay.
What should be the firing temp for a sphere filled with cork clay (very, very dry) with combination of Rio Grande BronzClay, Hadar’s Copper Clay and Hadar’s White Bronze Clay? Please tell me this is possible? Puh-leeze : )
June 8th, 2010 at 5:38 am
Fantastic Hadar! I love the new white bronze & have been trying it out with both Rio’s clays and Prometheus….and just FYI…. YOUR WB also cofires well “in carbon w/fiber blanket box & no lid” with prometheus’ bronze. Same temp as white bronze gave a great sinter to my pure PB test strips up to 6 cards thick & also the piece combning BOTH in clay state was also fine! Held for 6 hours though….still need to try it for a shorter holding time….when my 4 year old son permits:-P
June 8th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Any update on Pearl-Grey Steel? Do you have a release date?
Do you plan to ever produce your own brand of silver clay?
June 8th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Jenny,
I hope to release Pearl-Grey steel upon my return from Europe, probably August. Silver? I don’t know. maybe one day.
June 8th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Virginia,
It’s not a question of temperature but of time. If you have cork clay, hold at 1100F (front loader) or 1000 F (front loader) for one hour, then continue the the usual temperature. In the case of White bronze it’s enough to just fire one hour longer.
June 9th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Hi,
Im from Mexico City, Im starting on this technique, believe, I’ve seen a lot, and your work is quite unique and original.
Unfortunatly I cant open any of the tutorials. Explorer stops responding every time I try to open one of them. The same happens with the manual.
Planning any future trip to Mexico? I might gather of group of people interested in a workshop. Wich will the cost?
Thanks, I hope I here from you soon.
Regards
June 10th, 2010 at 4:33 am
This is wonderful! It looks a lot like mokume gane. I use that technique a lot in my polymer clay and I can’t wait to experiment with it in metal too. Thanks, Hadar!
June 10th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Alejandra,
The tutorials and manuals are PDF (Acrobat) documents, and you need the free Adobe Reader software to open them. You can download and install Adobe Reader here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/ . After installing Adobe, you should be able to click on the links and the documents will open.
If you have Adobe Reader installed and the documents won’t open in your browser, right-click on the link, select “Save Target,” and save them to your hard drive. Then double-click on the saved document to open it in Adobe.