I didn’t want to get started with a new medium but I broke down, the temptation was too great. I’ve been wanting to play with bronze and copper clays but I already doing so much that learning a new thing wasn’t in my plans. I wanted to make some rustic looking charms to use in my jewelry and couldn’t figure out a way to do that easily with a bronze sheet metal so I bought some bronze clay and tried it out. Now I remember why I don’t like metal clays. I don’t like working quickly and don’t like doing test pieces in my kiln to make sure the temperature and time is correct. But I was on a mission. My first batch was a total failure, my second batch took all night to fire because I realized the binder probably wasn’t going to be all burnt out so I turned off the kiln and let the whole thing cool and started the firing over again. Those two pieces turned out great. So, this morning I fired the rest of the pieces I made. Here’s the results:
I used Hadar’s Smart Bronze clay which is fired differently than all the other bronze clays. It’s a nice gold color. These have been cleaned and tumbled. The sterling silver square charms are what I did last night since I couldn’t make beads. I’m still not all that confident that all is well with these pieces. I guess wearing them and time will tell. The reason for this is when I drilled the hole in the charm to the right of the little square charm, I thought the drill bit when through kind of easily and I got out black powder. Also, the second charm from the left has a hairline crack in the back and I’ve tried to break the piece but couldn’t. I did make some thin pieces that came out warped and when I bent them they broke up into pieces. They were about 2 playing cards thick which I did read after I made them that for copper and bronze clay, the pieces have to be thicker than with silver metal clay. The second one from the right, I cored with sterling silver so I did hammer on it and it held up just fine.
Mewkittie Creations 