My very first (and I do mean first) pair of metal clay earrings were made following directions in CeCe Wire's book, Creative Metal Clay Jewelry. I was starting to teach myself metal clay, this was the first and only book I had and this was the very first project in the book. ( That's a lot of firsts!) The directions said to use a dab of syringe to attach a sterling silver earring post to the back of the fired snail shape. She also said to paint the posts with silver clay slip prior to firing so they won't oxidize and turn black. (I used fine silver posts so I didn't have to do that.) The firing time was stepped down, (due to the use of sterling.) I still followed her temperature and time though; 1, 110 degrees and two hours.
My second pair of post earrings, actually began as a ring. This was the second ring I made (before I started to use ring pellets) and it did not shrink as much as I thought it would. (You know, it's that Murphy's Law thing.)
Anyway, it didn't look much like a man's ring, so I got out the old jeweler's saw from my college days. (I was surprised that I still had it.... let alone find it.) and cut it in half to make semi-hoop earrings. I broke it in the process, but thanks to Art Clay oil paste I was able to repair it. (That was before I knew about making lavender paste.) Once again, I used CeCe's recommendation and used syringe to attach my posts.
My last pair of earrings was made at Arrowmont. Linda Kline had us solder sterling silver posts to the fired earrings. The earrings were decorated with a Photo Polymer plate and fired flat. They were bent around a ring mandrel to create the hoop after firing. As I said before, I was pretty nervous about soldering Metal clay is very porous and sucks up solder, so the area had to be burnished heavily to keep the solder from soaking into the clay. Also, since the posts were sterling, they had to be pickled after firing to remove the fire scale.
The posts in all three earrings look pretty much the same. The only difference I found was that the fine silver posts have a bigger pad area. This gives more area for the paste (or syringe) to adhere to. The sterling silver posts we used in class, had a rather small pad.
Now I know that the title is... soldering versus pasting. And I know that I didn't use paste to attach the posts,but syringe. But now I use lavender paste for all my pasting jobs and that will go for any future post earrings. I also would fire at 1470 degrees F for 30 minutes instead of the two hours. I don't feel that I'll have any problems with that.
