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Clay Pmc
Three Ways to Fire Your Precious Metal Clay
Precious metal clay allows you, a non-silversmith type, to construct your very own handcrafted beads, charms, and pendants from honest to goodness real precious metals like pure silver and real gold.
Precious metal clay (also known as PMC and ACS or Art Clay Silver) is very simple to use, and is similar to working with plasticine or pottery clay. {It's soft, moldable and in the case of newer clays like BronzeClay and CopperClay, increasingly affordable even for those on a budget.
Here's how it works. You form your pieces from the clay, then burn away the binder. This works because fine metal particles are suspended in an organic binder that can be burnt away leaving the metal fused into the form you shape it.
You can use umpteen different methods to shape, texture, and mold the precious metal clay into attractive and detailed designs, but you'll have to read one of my other articles for those! This article will share various methods to fire your creations once they are formed and dried.
Metal Clay Firing Methods
You'll find there are 3 different ways to fire precious metal clay. You can use a small torch, a pmc kiln or bead kiln, or with a Hot Pot (or similar gas/metal screen setup).
1. Using a Torch
Smaller pieces (less than 25 g) can be hand torch fired. For best results, make sure your piece is fairly even in thickness and fairly simple. Complicated pieces commonly fare best in a kiln.
Here's how to torch fire. Be sure youuse a a fire proof and heat retardant like a soldering pad or a fire brick with a piece of aluminum sheet underneath. You'll want a well ventilated area. Using your butane torch (I use a Blazer torch), start aiming your flame on the dried precious metal clay piece. At first you'll see a little bit of smoke as the organic binder burns away. Then you just need to get your piece to become a nice pinky orange colour (you can see it quite clearly as long as your light isn't too bright) Move the torch away slightly and then back if the glow fades. Just don't go really close with the torch once you have got up to temperature or you will melt the detail on your work.
2. Using a Kiln
A small kiln is ideal for firing metal clay. You'll get strong pieces becuase of the even sustained heat, and some types of PMC like bronze clay, original PMC, most copper and gold clay will only fire properly in a kiln.
What type of kiln is best? Any kiln will work, but if you are shopping now, Precious Metal Clay kilns are available. These are table top kilns. They are very small as kilns go. They run on regular household electricity, but they do need a three prong outlet.
To use, just follow the guidelines from the kiln manufacturer.
3. Hot Pot or Other Gas Ring/ Metal Screen Setup
You can now get something called the "Hot Pot" that can be found at precious metal clay stockists. The Hot Pot makes it easy to fire pmc without a kiln and is ideal for people who are fearful of the torch. The Hot Pot uses a sterno-like fuel to fire your jewelry projects. When the fuel burns out, your jewelry is done. It's a very simple, low tech and affordable option to create your own jewelry.
To use the Hot Pot, you fill the provided terra cotta pot with fuel, then place your dried metal clay project onto the wire grid. Finally, you light the fuel with a long match. Once your fuel burns out, your creation is fired and ready for polishing.
About the Author
Looking for precious metal clay, torches, firing tools, and other related supplies? Take a look at my PMC Supply and Tool pages and posts. You'll discover metal clay materials and links for several different suppliers and stockists worldwide. http://shop.how-to-make-jewelry.com/metal-clay-supplies/
is there anywhere to buy the speedfire cone system for pmc and art clay in the uk or that ships to the uk?
You can actually order from Art Clay World USA and use a parcel forwarder to get it to you in the UK.
http://www.artclayworld.com/cartgenie/prod-920.htm
From time to time I've used a US Address I set up with http://www.BongoUS.com. Once you have a US Address you can shop any website, whether they ship outside the states or not.
Pmc Fine Silver Clay Tutorial Part 1
Tags: art, clay, clay pmc, clay pmc kiln, clay pmc pro, clay pmc supplies, clay pmc3, crafts, jewelry, pmc