Follow directions

My husband refuses to read directions (until after he's done something wrong!)  I do read directions and try to follow them (when I remember what I've read.  That's getting harder to do the older I get.)  

As mentioned in the previous posts, I've been working with Hadar Jacobson's powdered copper and bronze clays.  Hadar has four books out and the most recent book has directions for doing inlay with copper and bronze.  (Hadar is a smart cookie.  It's necessary to have all of her books.  She mentions a technique and instead of repeating herself, tells you where to find it in a previous book.  Smart!)

Anyway, the inlay technique (and there are several ways for creating a base for the inlay..... will talk about that later) requires a base which has a deeply impressed design in it.  Then contrasting clay is rolled out and worked into the recesses.  In the process, the entire piece gets covered with the contrasting clay which has to be sanded down until both colors of clay can be seen.  Hadar says to do this with the top, face down on the sandpaper.  As soon as you can see the two colors coming through, she says to turn the piece over and work from the top.  That way you can see your design and this will keep you from losing parts of your design.  It's true........ take the extra time it takes to sand from the top. 

Look closely at my fish and you'll see what I'm talking about.  I've learned my lesson.  No more shortcuts!  This piece will be added to my visuals of what not to do.  (Got one of those for torch firing too.  Everyone has to see what it looks like when you melt silver.)

Copper and Bronze clay

     As was mentioned in my previous post, I've revisited working with copper and bronze clay.... via Hadar Jacobson's powdered clays.

     A little over a week ago several of my friends and I had a play day to try out the clay. Ginnie Weltner, who is a frequent student and friend and my college roommate, Cindi Armstrong  (who visits every Labor Day weekend and is a once a year student) helped me test out the powdered clays.

     We each mixed our own clay and tried Hadar's "inlay" technique which is one of the first projects in her most recent book, Pattens of Color in Metal Clay; Canes, Gradients and Mokume-Gane.   My friend Carol Scheftic has a photo of two of her pieces in Hadar's book.  One of them is the inlay project.  The book is worth checking out.

     The inlay project is made by rolling the copper clay to the thickness of two popsicle sticks, impressing a deep texture or object into the clay, filling the depression with the bronze clay and sanding the piece to expose both of the clays in a level surface.  (Now I know that my description is not very detailed and it's not meant to be.  For more detail, check out Hadar's book.)

     For the most part it's not working with the clay that stresses people out but the firing process, which I'll talk about in another post.   Luckily, both my test piece and the final pieces fired successfully at the recommended temperatures.  

     The only thing I noticed was that the bronze appeared to be more porous looking and had small cracks in it.  (It wasn't the same in all the pieces which could be attributed to us each mixing the bronze clay differently.)  I also know  I wasn't as careful mixing the bronze as I was the copper and felt that we all had it a little drier than it should have been.  (Another learning experience!)  We could repair the cracks and re-fire the pieces.  (Which we don't plan on doing as they were very small.)

     The final step was to apply Baldwin's Patina to the highly polished and cleaned pieces.  Baldwin's Patina is specially formulated to work on copper and bronze.  I found it worked best when the piece was warmed up in very warm water.  (Otherwise the clay just seemed to suck the patina right in.  It didn't do that in the video!  Hadar's blog offers a video on how to apply the patina.)   The patina highlights the contrast between the copper and the bronze.

     So far, the only thing I do not like about using the bronze and copper clays is that they are very dirty to work with.  Using liquid gloves does help keep the hands cleaner, but somehow the darn stuff manages to still get under the fingernails and the dark dust is everywhere.

     I have several other pieces ready to be fired before I decide for sure whether I like this clay or not.  They all use the drape method and will be much lighter in weight than the inlay pieces.  I'll keep you posted.

Trying again

Silver's gone up and so has the price of metal clay. The last time I ordered it had jumped up $2. Right now I have no money (well, I have enough to pay the rent but not much else.)

So, I decided to turn to the base metal clays. I had part of a 100 gram pack of CopprClay (which was as dry and crumbly as cookie dough), part of a 100 gram pack of Bronze clay (which was hard and green), one 200 gram pack of Bronze Clay, two 50 gram packs of Art Clay copper, (the opened, but never used pack was hard as a brick and the other pack was nice.) Plus I had one vial each of Hadar's copper and white bronze clay. (It was way past time for me to use these clays.)

I also had some unfinished pieces from Debra Weld's class in August of 09. (Obviously I didn't have to worry about them not being dry.) I made some major changes to their design though since the clay was dried up. The CopprClay carved liked butter and was easy to drill through.

The first time I fired pieces from the class it went well. The second time was a partial disaster. The pieces I created in class fired fine, but the pieces I attached to them disintegrated in the tumbler. (What pretty coppery water it was though.) Today I fired more of the class pieces using a two part firing technique. I fired on an open shelf at a ramp of 500 degrees per hour to 555 degrees and held for one hour. When the pieces were cool enough to handle I put them in the stainless steel container with charcoal and fired for four hours. (The directions said 3-5 hours so I aimed for the middle.) I won't know until tomorrow morning how they turned out.

While the CopprClay was firing (which seemed like forever) , I decided to try the Art Clay Copper for the first time. Since everything with these clays is so variable, I try to keep it simple for the first few times out. The pliable clay was pretty easy to work with, except the first time it stuck to my teflon sheet. (Go figure!) It was also easy to drill but not as easy as the CopprClay.

Art Clay Copper can be torch fired, so I gave it a try. I torched from 3-5 minutes per piece. The silver clay is torched to a peachy glow and the copper clay is torched to a cherry red (which is hard to see through the safety glasses.) Immediately after torching, the piece is quenched in water to remove some of the fire scale. Then it goes into a pickle solution for about 15 minutes to remove the rest of the fire scale. Now here is where I started to get nervous. I assumed the fire scale would be black (like the picture of the copper clay in the kiln), but it wasn't. It was basically a dark red, which dropped off in the water. I didn't even have to put it in the pickle (which was a good thing...... didn't have any.) But when I went to brush the piece, a wet red color was wiping off the piece. That made me nervous since it was a reminder of the disintegrating incident earlier. They felt very hard so I popped them into the tumbler and held my breath. Two hours later they came out of the tumbler shiny and in once piece. Phew! The color isn't quite as coppery as the CopprClay though, but they're nice. And it is nice to be able to torch fire. Tomorrow I'm going to try kiln firing the Art Clay copper. It only takes 30 minutes (which is a lot better than 3-5 hours.)

The Copprclay was air dried which is what Debra wanted us to do. I dried the Art Clay copper on the candle warmer. Debra told us the base metal clays have more elasticity than the silver clay which may make more cracks appear as the clay tries to return to it's original shape. I think that is why she recommended air drying. I did notice that it was a little difficult when I tried to form a circle over the back of a paint palette. The little bugger kept wanting to pop up.

I did work with Hadar's white bronze clay once and felt the consistency of her copper clay. I may work with her clay tomorrow, but I need to use up the opened pack of Art clay before it dries out. That is the nice thing about Hadar's clay. You don't have to worry about it drying out and I know the consistency is nice and creamy not stiff like the other clays.