{"id":1639,"date":"2009-10-24T16:38:15","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T00:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2023-02-22T14:36:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T22:36:35","slug":"steel-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/24\/steel-clay\/","title":{"rendered":"Steel Clay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may be too early to tell, since there is a lot of experimentation to be done yet, but it seems that my first try at steel clay was a success. <\/p>\n

Here is what I did: I prepared it more or less the same way I make my copper and bronze clay powder. The clay is shiny black, smooth and creamy. I pressed it against a polymer clay mold that I had made. (You can click on the photo to enlarge).<\/p>\n

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Then I cut a circle out of the steel clay and dried. Like bronze clay, it shrank about 10% while drying, and I had to flip it over from side to side to keep it from warping.<\/p>\n

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To keep it simple I drilled a hole at the top.<\/p>\n

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It was fired in carbon. I am still testing the firing schedule, so I will post my results later. It came out black from the kiln, as if I’d already oxidized it with liver of sulfur. I buffed it with a coarse mini-fiber wheel. The shrinkage was like that of bronze – about 25% for flat pieces.<\/p>\n

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It is very strong, and surprisingly light.<\/p>\n

To test joints I made another piece with a bail on the back. The dry bail easily attached to the dry circle and the joint was very strong after firing.<\/p>\n

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I also made a steel rock, and fired it half full of carbon.<\/p>\n

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As you can see in the photo, this time the shrinkage rate was much smaller.<\/p>\n

After sanding and matting it to a satin finish (which was harder than sanding silver), I took a photo of the steel rock next to a silver rock. The steel rock is somewhat darker. <\/p>\n

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It may be too early to tell, since there is a lot of experimentation to be done yet, but it seems that my first try at steel clay was a success. Here is what I did: I prepared it more or less the same way I make my copper and bronze clay powder. The clay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9261,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions\/9261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}