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Stone setting in metal clay

Prepared to set stones. Drill bits and stone setting bits alongside corresponding 3, 4, and 5 mm stones
Prepared to set stones. Drill bits and stone setting bits alongside corresponding 3, 4, and 5 mm stones

Recently all senior instructors for Art Clay World were asked to create 4 pieces showing their craftperson skills with Mitsubishi’s silver clay. The curriculum had changed since my certification as a senior instructor almost 2 years ago, and 4 new projects now replace some previous projects in the curriculum. Those 4 projects were thus a new requirement for all senior instructors who wished to retain their certification level.

One of the 4 pieces was required to be a hollow form brooch with faceted stones in three different sizes set into the clay after the clay dried. The piece also needed to have twice as many empty drilled holes as stone filled holes, 50 percent or greater of the surface area needed to be mirror finished, and there were more requirements…. Since this is a class demonstration piece which will sit in a box unworn, I used lab created faceted rubies and a lab created faceted amethyst.

stones set in skills test piece
Stones set in skills test piece: 3, 4, and 5 mm stones

I was happy to put my traditional stone setting workshop skills to work on metal clay. The skills for sizing and shaping a setting translate directly from cast or fabricated metal to dried metal clay.

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Copper and Bronze Pieces, and Auto White Balance

In January I posted a picture of bronze and copper metal clay pieces drying on a hot plate. The pieces were fired and this is how they looked before I began to patch the bronze pieces. Note that the bronze clay cracked much more than the same shapes would have in silver metal clay. The bronze clay was from the original batch handed out in mid-2008 by Rio Grande; many people report that it has improved since then.


 

 

In my previous post I mentioned that the copper clay was very moist and hard to work with. The results show that it kept it’s general shape very well, yet the weight of the clay itslef pushed some of the texture flat. The inside of the round part of the toggle illustrates this. Since I tried Hadar Jacobson’s copper clay, she has started selling the copper clay as a powder (and also bronze clay powder) which you can mix yourself to the consistency you desire. Note that the absence of drying/firing cracks in the copper clay. The bottom two pieces are made from copper clay, the top five pieces are made from bronze clay. 

As I took the above picture, I decided to play with the Auto White Balance (AWB) feature on my camera. There are many settings such as ‘daylight’, ‘tungsten’, and ‘fluorescent.’ The choice of which AWB to use made a big difference in the photos. The photo above was adjusted in Photoshop (TM) in order to match the white background a little more to what it would be with proper lighting. View the unedited photos of different AWB settings at this link to see the what a drastic difference the AWB choices make. The pictures were taken late in the afternoon with indirect natural light and overhead full-spectrum bulbs.

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Bronze & Copper Toggles

Last night I spent several hours with my good friends Pat and Kathleen playing with Bronze and Copper metal clay for the first time. They are prepping for a hands-on workshop on Feb 8th in Los Gatos for the local metal clay group (SFBASCG.) 


Both Pat and Kathleen had played with the new clays already; in fact Kathleen has made many many pieces with the bronze clay. As for me, well – I have now opened, and used, the free sample pack of bronze I received last summer!

One of the toggle clasps might look nice with a hand knit copper bracelet that’s been sitting on my bench without a clasp for quite a while….

As a bonus, I talked with Pat’s newly certified diving husband about his first dive trip. We also talked about places we’d like to go diving; our lists are both long. 🙂


Kathleen has kindly offered to fire my bronze and copper (product in development by Hadar Jacobsen) pieces for me in her charcoal setup. We’ll see if all the bronze flakes I managed to get on the copper make a difference.