The sky-rocketing price of silver has inspired us to do a few things in the last couple of weeks. First, we gathered all of our reject silver to send off to Rio Grande to recycle.
We had fun assembling a big pile of assorted silver items. There were our old silver jewelry collections from the 80's and 90's, sterling silver bits and pieces from Angie's traditional silversmithing days, and early and/or disappointing metal clay projects that just weren't worth saving. Now we have a sizable Rio credit to use to buy new silver clay. Hooray! How exciting to recycle old, unwanted items into new possibilities in silver clay!
The other inspiration was to start experimenting with Hadar's white bronze clay. Would it be possible to create jewelry that looks like silver but without the exorbitant cost? I mixed up a batch of white bronze clay as per Hadar's instructions and was happy with the results. The clay was very easy to work with as it took texture very well and held its shaped easily when domed. We have found that the more recent "fast-fire" clays are wonderful to work with. I made a few pieces, and added some of Hadar's fast-fire copper clay to some. Pictured below is a pendant in the dried clay stage.
After reading Hadar's instruction manual, I learned that white bronze fires at a lower temperature than copper or bronze clay. So I did a first firing at 1100 degrees F for an hour, let the pieces cool, and then fired them at 1250 for two hours. I thought I had good results when I started finishing them but soon realized that although the outside looked like metal, the inside had not sintered.
The outside looked sintered but the pieces broke when I applied pressure.:( I also noticed that the copper circles sintered but the copper bands on the dome had cracked.
When I read Hadar's latest blog, she mentioned that a student who had a kiln similar to mine (Paragon SC2, front-loading) had good sintering results at 1325 degrees F. So I re-loaded the jewelry, covered it with an inch of activated carbon again and decided increase the firing temperature to do the second firing at 1300 degrees F.
I left it to cool overnight and was excited to see if I had been more successful this time. I took out the test pieces and they looked great! All the jewelry was soot black when it came out so no need for liver of sulphur, just some cleaning and polishing with a rotary tool. And, hooray! Success! Silver-looking earrings with a bit of copper thrown in!
I decided to try my "Lake Huron" series texture on a pair of earrings and they look very similar to my silver ones.
Although the color of white bronze clay is very similar to regular bronze clay in the wet and dry clay stage, it really is comparable in color to silver when it is fired.
So after these initial experiments with white bronze, here are the things I've learned so far:
* a successful sintering temperature for white bronze in my front-loading Paragon SC-2 kiln is 1300 degrees F using a stainless steel box for firing...I may test at 1325 F if I make bigger pieces
*thin (2 cards) bands of copper will crack especially on a domed surface but small circles are more successful
*if possible, I should fire copper and bronze pieces at higher temperatures first, before adding white bronze which is fired at a significantly lower temperature
*try firing white bronze, bronze and copper clay together at the white bronze firing schedule if all three clays are "equally represented" in a piece such as "mokume." Think polymer clay techniques (Angie is trying some "mokume" designs now and we'll let you know how it goes!)
*at 25.00 for 100 grams of clay, white bronze is a very affordable alternative to silver right now and allows me to be more playful and experimental in my designs. Perhaps, some of the designs I try in white bronze, regular bronze, and copper will help me have more confidence when trying them in silver
Enough experimenting for now. It's time for another adventure in Toronto! It's off to see Sarah McLachlan at Massey Hall and have a delicious vegan dinner at Fressen. We love T.O. getaways! Happy St. Patrick's Day!