Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Muscleman wanted



Copper clay is pretty; shiny and bright or when it's darkened with a patina. But......... it is a little tougher to work with.

I purposely put off waiting to use my copper and bronze clays (by now my bronze packages are probably dried up.) My friend and I decided that we would let others go through the learning stages and we would wait until all the kinks were worked out. (Didn't follow through on that plan!)

First off I didn't really want to run my kiln that long. A copper firing takes anywhere from 4-5 hours and a bronze firing takes 7-9 hours. Now I'm reading that these long firings will shorten the life of the kiln. If I decide to do lots of firings of these two metals I will get another kiln just for them.

Copper and bronze clay are dirty to work with. They stain the hands, require their own tools and a separate barrel for the tumbler. When sanding I definitely wear a dust mask (that's about as sexy as the magnifying head gear) and I have to scrub the work area down after each session. (house cleaning is not my forte'.)

Both clays have more memory than silver clay, so seams have to be carefully attended to or they will pull apart during firing.

Then there is the firing process. They are fired in charcoal inside a stainless steel container with a lid. (Which leaves a lovely black soot on the inside of the kiln..... more cleaning.) The container has to be raised off the kiln floor. The pieces should have one inch of charcoal beneath them and at least an inch above them. There are two kinds of charcoal, and each kind of clay works best with a specific kind of charcoal. Different firing schedules are recommended depending on where you look for information.

In earlier posts, I've talked about firing the copper (and some problems I've incurred.) For the most part, I've worked out some of those problems.

But now, I've encountered other problems in finishing my pieces. All sorts of copper findings are starting to pop up in the catalogues. If I'm using beading wire, copper crimps and crimp covers are easy to find. But, my latest piece looked best on brown leather cord. I didn't really want to go through the process of making my own ends (rather lazy there.) Finally I found some crimp tubes with loops and hooks. I use these all the time with my silver pieces. The only size available was 2.5 mm and I was using a 2 mm cord. The size difference works fine when I am using sterling silver crimps as they are easy to pinch in the middle with a pair of pliers.

Here in lies the problem. I need a muscleman to pinch them. I squeezed and squeezed. I jumped up and down. I took a screwdriver and hammer to them...... to no avail. There was very little give. So, I bit my lip and pulled out the glue (something which I try not to do.) Using glue in such a strategic place makes me nervous.

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