What’s On My Bench Now

By: ornamento.blog
altering tools, Art, Bronze Metal Clay, porcelain, rock tumbler, Tools, What's on my bench, , , , Leave a Comment on What’s On My Bench Now

I’m in the process of refining my homemade bronze clay firing schedule. The pieces below sintered beautifully, but they were the only things in the kiln that did. I had to re fire everything else, but they turned out fine on the second firing. Some more tweaking is clearly in order.

 

Second firing before cleaning. Everything sintered

I’ve been fooling a around with low-cost texture sheets. These are silicone brush cleaning mats that I cut up to make them easier to use. You can find these at Five Below, Wish.com, and Amazon

I got this texture stamp at Wish.com. I can’t find the link, but they have hundreds of designs.

 

Some previously-fired bronze that I have shaped in a swage bock. I’m waiting for it to talk to me.

Some more bronze and ceramics. I think the white pieces will end up as earrings. The bronze triangle might end up as part of a toggle clasp.

Some more ceramics and bronze wire in various shapes.

I have been thinking about riveting these two pieces together. I don’t know. They might work better as separate pieces.

A ceramic piece waits for me to decide what to do with it.

More ceramic pieces.

I am in the process of finishing a new batch of ceramic components. I burnish them in a rock tumbler and am trying different polishes to see what I like best.

My new dual barrel tumbler from Harbor Freight. I still have my vibratory tumbler, but I thought I’d give this one a try. The first one delivered from Harbor Freight had a leaky barrel. I asked for a replacement. They said they didn’t stock replacement barrels and sent me a while new unit. Which is a good thing because the first tumbler developed a short and ended up frying a circuit breaker. (Which the electrician pointed out to me after the tumbler tripped the circuit breaker several times.) The second tumbler is working fine and I hope it doesn’t develop a short. Which leads me to another thing. Before the second tumbler arrived, I looked high and low for instructions on how to repair the leak in the barrel. I found nothing. One site said it couldn’t be done. Then I found a tumbler barrel repair kit on line which inspired me to devise my own repair. If you can patch tires, why can’t you patch a rubber tumbler barrel? I mean really.

I had some liquid latex that I use for mold making. I cut a two-inch square of scrap silk fabric (because I figure silk in strong), soaked it with the latex and applied it to the barrel. I let that dry and added another layer of latex. When that dried, I covered the patch with a piece of packing tape.

No leaks yet and the tumbler has been going for a few days. Liquid latex is not that expensive and has many uses. For more information, check out the ultimate guide.

My Head Is Exploding

By: ornamento.blog
Art, Baltimore, Bronze Metal Clay, Fiber Art, , , , Leave a Comment on My Head Is Exploding

My head is exploding this week.  I have been working with bronze metal clay and making bigger pieces and hollow forms. unfiredBronzeClayBead I am going to have to rethink my firing methods and schedules.  The folks on the Metal Clay Now Facebook group have given me lots of great advice.  Stay tuned on this one.

I went to Baltimore last week to play with  friends and to go to a sale at Maja, one of the most incredible bead stores I have ever encountered.  I treated myself to an incredible sterling bead decorated with dragonflies.  (When I manage to take a decent photo, I will post it. ) The next day, we went to the stores in the Village of Cross Keys and I saw the most incredible fiber jewelry in The Store LTD,  the very same store that Betty Cooke owns and from which she sells her marvelous modernist jewelry.

I was so inspired that when I came home, I got out the fabric stash and began dyeing and cutting silk that I’ve recycled from thrift shop finds I bought on a former fabric frenzy.

Then I got out the drop spindle  and started to make knittable fiber (could I even call it yarn?) from  strips of fabric sewn together.

Fabric of spun yarn

My aim is to ply this fiber with ribbon or cord and make something from it.  Stay tuned on this one too.

Try Something New

By: ornamento.blog
Art, beads, Boris, Bread making, Humor, , , , 4 Comments on Try Something New

Autumn is upon us (although we keep regressing back to Summer in Philadelphia).  Time to try something new!  I sold my beloved kiln and controller that I used for bead annealing, fusing glass and, most recently, metal clay.  I want to upgrade to a kiln that can handle cone 6 firing so I can work with porcelain on a regular basis.  Here are some new baubles I’m currently working on.  Cone 6 white porcelain and Mason stains, unglazed.

YouTube videos

2
The same, with a cold finish

Five Star Bronze Clay Torch Fired

I wrote a  review of Prometheus Clay while back.  This time I tried Five Star Bronze Clay which is also torch fireable.  And I can say that Prometheus clay wins hands down, at least for torch firing.  I find Prometheus easier to condition, easier to work with and I got more consistent results with the torch.  I have not tried kiln firing with 5 Star Bronze yet.  I’ll let you know the results when I do.   But the BIG story is that I am now making my own bronze clay.  I saw Alan Wiggens’ YouTube videos on the subject and decided to give it a try.  I read about metallurgy to get an understanding of the sintering process so I could find the best deal on a powdered bronze that would work.  Preliminary torch fire tests have been successful!  Not in making a finished product, but in making metal that I can pound out with a hammer.    I am eager to test my homemade clay in a kiln which is how Alan Wiggens recommends firing it.    Stay tuned.

9
Bronze clay ready for my future kiln.  The lighter clay is my homemade clay.  The darker clay is Five Star Bronze.

My mother made bread every week when I was growing up so the process is no mystery to me.   I generally throw flour into a bowl,  add yeast and some honey and sugar to feed the yeast and park it under the kitchen tap and turn on the water.  No measuring, no recipe.  And no salt.

I have a friend who says that the flour and bread we buy in the United States is stale and a bit moldy and that is the reason most (not all) people have a problem with gluten.  (I have another friend who gets sick every time she eats pasta in the U.S. but can eat all the bread an pasta she wants when she goes to Italy).   So I decided to grind my own flour.  I got a grinding mill and 40 lbs of wheat berries.  Grinding your own flour is not cheaper than buying it, although there are wheat berry bargains to be had.  And the process is labor intensive.  First, you have to drag the 40 lb bucket into the house.  Then you have an argument with your husband about where to set up the mill.   Then you and your husband have to watch an [expletive deleted] video to figure out how to get the [expletive deleted]  lid off of the [expletive deleted] bucket of [expletive deleted] wheat berries.

Bread1

Next comes the grinding.  After hand cranking the wheat berries,  we learned why we refer to arduous tasks as a “grind.” (Or maybe he knew already.  He has a Ph.D. in English Literature).

Bread2

Here is the flour.  What you don’t see is all the[expletive deleted] flour around my kitchen.

Bread4

Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven,. Well, almost nothing.

Bread3

BreadMill

And in the spirit of trying something new,  let me introduce you to our new motor for the grain mill.  It makes a sound like squealing pigs on steroids, but it does the job.  And the towel is to keep down the flour dust.

Now, on to trying the autolyze process.

On a final note, even Boris is trying something new.  He is off the Prescription Diet and is now eating a new, almost as expensive Hills Science cat food.  And he likes it!

Boris8748

 

Product Review: Prometheus Clay

By: ornamento.blog
Art, metal clay, product reviews, , , 1 Comment on Product Review: Prometheus Clay

Prometheus clay has been around for a while, but I decided to try it after achieving some nice results with Hadar Jacobson’s Quick Fire Bronze  and Copper Clay.

Prometheus  Clay’s  attractive feature is that you can torch fire it.  One of the least desirable things about working with non-precious metal clay is the need to fire it in charcoal or a similar medium  to keep the surface from oxidizing during the firing process. You don’t have this problem with fine silver because it does not contain the copper that causes the oxidization.  (I have not worked with Sterling Silver clay  and am not familiar with how it is fired)

The Hadar’s clay that I worked with needed two step firing.  First, you had to bring the clay to a certain temperature to burn off the binder material in the clay and then you have to let the kiln cool to room temperature.  Only then could you start refiring the clay to the sintering point where the  remaining materials  would fuse and give you metal.  Needless to say, this takes a long time.  It’s really a two-day job.

My experience with torch firing the Prometheus clay was mixed. It is not as easy is it looks but with practice, I think it is viable alternative  to kiln-fired metal clay.    I  am confining my experiments to Bronze clay because I think it’s rich looking and attractive.  I work with the  copper i metal sheet and wire and really like it but I do not think that the results you can achieve with copper clay are worth the time and effort.  That is just a personal opinion.

img_2703

. The Prometheus Clay was workable out of the package although conditioning is recommended.  For a video showing how to condition the clay, press here.  I formed a pendant shape and two smaller shapes to suspend on ear wires for earrings

image

I used  rubber  stamps to impress the designs into the clay and then let the pieces air dry for a couple of days.

image

They recommend you torch fire the dried clay on a screen for seven minutes which you start counting after you have burned off the binder.  Here I am torch firing two  earring pieces.  I learned the process after watching this video.  I am using an EZ Torch.

 

image

At the conclusion of the firing, you drop the pieces into water and the oxidation starts to peel off.  You  have to clean off the remaining oxidation by hand using a brass brush.

image

I was able to clean off the oxidation but I lost the spiral pattern I had impressed into the wet clay initially.  See top picture. The pieces withstood hammering and a trip through the rolling mill (which I used to try to put a new pattern on the metal) but the latter revealed that the pieces were not completely sintered.  You can tell from looking at the edges in the above photograph.

I don’t have any process pictures for the pendant, but it turned out much better.  While it was larger in diameter (the size of a large guitar pick) than the two earring pieces (which were about the size of a dime), it was thinner.

image

After the initial cleanup, I decided to use a swage block to give the pendant more of a shield shape.

img_2747

 

image

The pendant withstood the hammering and I achieved a shield shape without any trouble.

 

final-5

The pendant after polishing and finishing.   I did notice minor layer separations on the sides of the pendant but I was able to tap these together with a hammer and and  smooth them out with a file.  I would guess that the metal was not completely sintered  in those spots.

What’s my verdict?   Overall,  I like Prometheus Clay. Torch firing metal clay is not as easy as it looks.  You don’t want to under or over heat and you need to keep the torch moving.  It is easier to maintain a consistent temperature in a kiln.   I suspect that the problem with the earring pieces is that they were not totally 100% bone dry.  The pendant was completely dry and sintered more completely.  The oxidization was fairly easy to clean off and the torch firing method is quicker than the kiln firing I’m used to.  On the other hand,  the designs I stamped into the clay did not remain as sharp as I would have liked.  I don’t know whether that is a by-product of the torch firing process or  my inexperience.

You can kiln fire Prometheus clay too.  I might explore that in the future but for now, I will keep experimenting with the torch firing.  You can purchase Prometheus Clay from Clayrevolution.com.  The site runs sales from time to time and contains a lot of useful information on working with metal clay.