Copper metal clay pieces by Pat Accorinti (right) and Sherry Cordova - before firing, alongside copper wire for color comparison
Friends Pat Accorinti, Kathleen Gordon, and I are going to be giving a demo to the local metal clay guild on Feb 21st. The demo will include a hands on session for members to use the new Art Clay World copper clay product.
We thought we should try it out first, and here are pics from our first session with the new copper product.
Copper end caps after firing, alongside unfinished copper wire bracelet. Notice the color difference and oxidation on the fired clay
Making a set of end caps for this bracelet was the idea I had in mind.
Hand knit copper wire bracelet in progress
Learning the properties of the new clay made the process take longer than constructing the piece from tubing and sheet; so I reminded myself that speed wasn’t the reason we were doing this. 
Texturing the clay would have been a good reason to choose this method over soldering. The person who the bracelet is being made for likes clean simple lines, so the copper clay end caps are simple and soon to be cleaned up.
Oven mitt with evidence of fire from kiln heat
The manufacturers suggested firing schedule for the clay is to heat the kiln up to 1778 deg F and put the pieces in the hot kiln for 30 minutes, then remove the pieces from the hot kiln and immediately quench. I need different gloves for this in the future, or I need to wet the gloves ahead of time so they don’t catch fire each time. After placing the items in the hot kiln, I decided to use casting flask tongs to remove the items from the kiln instead of my shorter copper tongs.
Copper oxidation knocked off during quench
Quenching the copper was dramatic: my gloved hand in a hot kiln, the usual sizzle of the hot metal hitting the water, and then I watched oxidation come off the outside of the pieces. The inside of the pieces was still coated with oxidation, so those pieces visited a pickle pot.
Copper pieces after kiln firing and quenching and before pickling (pieces by Sherry Cordova and Pat Accorinti)
Just got some of the copper clay. Looks like you had some fun. I wish I could make it to your presentation. Be careful with your oven mitts!
[...] Art Clay Copper! Well, there’s nothing like volunteering to do a demo for the San Francisco Bay Area Metal Clay Guild to get one going! Kathleen Gordon and I did a demo last year on bronze clay. It went rather well, so we decided we would do something together again this year. We couldn’t decide what to do. We played with resins but then Pat Evans did a great demo on resins a couple of months ago so we decided to demo the new Art Clay Copper, which can be torch fired. We roped Sherry Cordova into playing with us. We got together at Sherry’s house and broke open our first package of clay. The clay comes in 50 gram packages and the information pamphlet that came from Art Clay World said that any clay that was opened had to be used right away or sealed in a vacuum sealed package. We made a few simple pieces like some end caps and charms, basically using up our 50 grams. We decided to try firing them on an open shelf in the kiln. The kiln was preheated to 1780°. The pieces to be fired were placed on a shelf covered with a sheet of kiln paper to prevent sticking. The pieces were fired for 30 minutes, then removed and dropped into water. This removed most of the oxides. It took some time in the pickle to remove most of the oxides that were left. Sherry took some pictures and you can see them on her blog. [...]