{"id":3737,"date":"2011-04-04T09:50:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T17:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/?p=3737"},"modified":"2023-02-22T14:36:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T22:36:30","slug":"sterling-silver-clay-copper-clay-and-mokume-gane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/04\/sterling-silver-clay-copper-clay-and-mokume-gane\/","title":{"rendered":"Sterling Silver Clay, Copper Clay, and Mokume-Gane"},"content":{"rendered":"

After my blog postings about Sterling Silver using Quick-fire Copper<\/a> and about Copper and Silver Mokume-gane<\/a>, the next step for me was to play with making mokume-gane from sterling silver clay and Quick-fire copper. (See instructions for making sterling silver clay in my posting: Sterling Silver with Hadar\u2019s Clay\u2122 Quick-fire Copper<\/a>. Here are some of my results. The first attempt is a pair of mirror-image earrings.<\/p>\n

\"Before\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

Before<\/p><\/div>\n

\"After\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

After<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Before\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

Before<\/p><\/div>\n

\"After<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

After (one side)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Other<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

Other side<\/p><\/div>\n

To my surprise, the lentil sintered without repeating the second phase of firing.<\/p>\n

Here is an experiment with a gradient surface:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And Cabochons:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These are double-sided spinning earrings. They are small, but pretty thick. They also sintered without repeating the second phase.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

One side<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Other<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>

Other side<\/p><\/div>\n

This time I fired in both my kilns, front-loader muffle and top-loader fire brick. I used a ceramic cloth, which is the same as fiber blanket as far as temperatures are concerned. The firing schedule is exactly the same as for copper and White Bronze (how convenient – and weird!). In some cases I skipped the first phase by firing the pieces with a torch on top of the carbon. (I don’t recommend doing this with thin, flat pieces, since they tend to break, and I am not sure it can be done with White Bronze). When I didn’t skip the first phase, I fired in carbon for 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

The temperatures for the second phase: <\/p>\n

Top-loader brick: 1250\u00b0F\/677\u00b0C;
\nFront-loader muffle: 1325\u00b0F\/718\u00b0C.<\/p>\n

I am going to repeat this schedule several times before updating my instruction manual (again?).<\/p>\n

I did not find any difference between firing Quick-fire Copper with fine silver or with sterling silver. The metals seemed to fuse at the same temperatures.<\/p>\n

I did find shrinkage issues with both fine and sterling silver. In some pieces that had a silver backing layer, the backing layer curved backwards because of greater shrinkage. This could be due to the brand of silver I was using. You can try silver clays with lower shrinkage rate. With the price of silver today, I am not sure I can afford it.<\/p>\n

Advice<\/strong>: if you try, test first. Start at a low temperature, sand to check sintering, and if the piece has not fully sintered, repeat the second phase. If it still hasn’t sintered, gradually raise the temperature. <\/p>\n

Warning<\/strong>: Do not fire silver and White Bronze in the same box. If you want to test them both in one firing, use two separate boxes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After my blog postings about Sterling Silver using Quick-fire Copper and about Copper and Silver Mokume-gane, the next step for me was to play with making mokume-gane from sterling silver clay and Quick-fire copper. (See instructions for making sterling silver clay in my posting: Sterling Silver with Hadar\u2019s Clay\u2122 Quick-fire Copper. Here are some of […]<\/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\/3737"}],"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=3737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9449,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3737\/revisions\/9449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artinsilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}