Skip to main content

PMC Books & Tools For Sale!

Just before Christmas I decided to have a go at making some jewellery with copper clay. This medium fascinates me - I love the scope it gives you in shape, texture and design

I'd read that it was possible to fire copper clay with a torch which was great as I don't have a kiln. The distinct lack of definitive firing times for copper clay using a torch should have made me think about it a bit more! The brand I used recommended at least 7 minutes for small pieces......................


I tried and tried with my propane/butane mix torch to sucessfully fire my small and not very thick pieces to a fully sintered stage - where the clay has changed structure and become 100% copper. Up to 15 minutes plus on most pieces and did it work? No it did not! Being used to working with sheet copper and feeling slightly suspicious of the look of the fired and cleaned up clay pieces, I took my pliers to them and managed to snap every single piece quite easily, revealing a very thin layer of copper around the outside with the centre still very much in it's clay form! So disappointing! The thin copper layer tricks you into thinking the torch firing worked - the piece sounds metallic when you drop it into the pickle pot and looks like copper when you clean it up but attempt to bend it with some pliers and watch it snap! I contacted the manufacturer asking for some guidelines on firing times and was basically told what I already knew - fire for a minimum of 7 minutes, no other info at all. Very helpful! Firing them for longer may have worked but pointing a torch at a small piece of clay for 20 minutes plus is not time-effective, not very good for your health and would frankly drive me insane!

And the moral of this? Don't believe what the manufacturers tell you about torch firing copper clay - in my humble opinion it does not work. Correctly firing it in a kiln is the way to go!

Hence the reason I'm selling my pmc books and tools! Available in my eBay shop

 New Directions In Metal Clay by Cece Wire 

Metal Clay Jewelry by Louise Duhamel

Texture mats

Roller, needle cutter and circle cutter set

More texture mats
Labels:

Comments

  1. LesleyFriday, February 17, 2012

    Oh what a shame! I do know people who say the've torched fired copper clay successfully but I've never managed it either. I use a kiln and even with that base metal clay can still produce far more issues than silver. I have things working well now but it took a lot of testing. That said, your sheet metal work is beautiful so at least we'll see plenty more ofthat!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cinnamon JewelleryFriday, February 17, 2012

    Thanks Lesley! It is a shame it didn't work as I did enjoy the making side of it :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Eve SmithFriday, February 17, 2012

    Keep your tools and try the silver clay, you can use a torch on these, or either try a butane gas torch rather than the propane as it gets hotter, this is mapp gas in the yellow bottle, i would try this before you give up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tania CovoSaturday, February 18, 2012

    Don't give up on metal clay! You might get a kiln one day! I have never fired my pieces in a kiln, only torch fired them, but most of them are tiny, so they worked ok.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Cinnamon JewellerySaturday, February 18, 2012

    Thanks! I did think about trying silver clay but the price is so high which puts me off.
    Will stick to sheet metal I think!

    ReplyDelete
  6. A Hovel to HomeSaturday, December 22, 2012

    I mentioned in an earlier comment that I love near to Eastbourne, and I do have kilns, if you ever wanted to use a bit of space in mine let me know.

    Kay
    Toodles and Binks

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.

Popular posts from this blog

Combining Soldering And Enamel

The need to make cute, brightly coloured enamel studs propelled me into the world of combining soldering with enamel a couple of years ago. I knew from reading up on it that it was possible to enamel and solder on the same piece but wasn't too confident I was able to do it back then. It was a slightly embarrassing occurance that made me just get on with - I'd made some enamel studs with glued on stud posts. I'd used 2 part epoxy resin which was a job in itself as it set hard after 5 minutes so I had to keep mixing more up. The finished studs looked ok but that little voice in my head kept asking "are you sure you want to use glue?" I wasn't but didn't think I had any other way to do it so I used glue. I sold my first pair and merrily sent them on their way to Canada. A couple of week later the buyer got in touch to say the stud post had come off one of the earrings and the other was hanging off. I was mortified, apologized profusely and refunded her m...
32 comments
Read more

Torch Enamelling - What I've been Up To Recently!

I've admired enamelled jewellery for a while now and not too long ago did a blog post about Etsy seller tekaandzoe  and her wonderful kiln enamelled creations. I didn't think at the time that it was something I would ever be able to do as the cost of kilns plus lack of space would be a problem for me. That wasn't until I saw an advert for a torch enamelling tutorial from US jewellery supplies website Beaducation  by Steven James . It's a great tutorial showing the basics on how to torch enamel on copper. Of course I bought it! I then spent hours scouring the internet for more information on torch enamelling, where to buy the tools I'd need and of course the enamel powders. There are quite a few UK sites selling enamelling supplies and tools but as usual I found the US sites had more choice (why do we always lag behind?) I bought some enamel powders from a couple of UK sites to begin with - Cookson Gold have a good selection but bear in mind th...
37 comments
Read more

Etching Silver Using Nail Art Stamps

So my love/hate relationship with etching sterling silver continues. I've tried a few times now and always end up with different results most of them not that great to be honest. I've tried connecting the silver and a piece of copper to a 9v battery and also heating the ferric nitrate. Sometimes the results are good sometimes not so good. I currently have an etched piece of silver sheet waiting to be reticulated and rid it of the mess that is the etched "pattern".  I now know that using stamps and Stayz On ink just doesn't work with silver - the time needed to etch using ferric nitrate is much longer than etching copper and the ink starts to wear away after about an hour. This results in the pattern being patchy as the resist is eaten away and the silver ends up quite lumpy and course looking. I have yet to try using pnp paper. I don't know why but it all seems a bit of a faff to do. I don't have a laser printer so would need to find somewhere or...
34 comments
Read more