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.
Making a set of end caps for this bracelet was the idea I had in mind.
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.
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.
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.
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!