I bought Bronze Clay some time ago. After reading a basket full of experiences online and conflicting instructions, I never got around to opening the packages. This weekend I got brave and set aside plenty of time to work with it.
My first attempt to condition the clay was a mess even though it was on a well oiled plastic (former) page cover. I pressed on. The glob went in the fridge to cool while the moisture content evened out. It was time to clean up my hands! And my work area. Then I got out the other tools. (If you’d rather skip the rest you can check out the photos.)
Formed Bronze Clay
To my surprise about a half hour later, the glob came out of the fridge without an attitude. Now I could work with it. This was not so bad after all. The texture and consistency was pretty good.
I decided to do a variety of shapes, all about 3mm (7 cards) thick. The concoction in the middle is “mud” to fill any cracks before firing. Somewhere I read that using a magnifying glass would be a better way to spot those cracks that tend to show up after drying and greatly expand during firing. I got out my magnifying glass that is used mostly for reading pottery markings. That would come in handy later.
I added a couple bronze jump rings and a copper wire to 3 pieces to test the results. Who wants holes shrinking leaving no way to connect magnificent new pieces? All the pieces sat out at room temperature to dry over night. No warping was noticed. A few small cracks were filled. Bumps were smoothed. After checking (one more time) a series of charts and instructions for bronze clay in a Paragon Firefly kiln, I was ready to start. I decided to go with the fast ramp up, and to try to keep the temperature at 1490 F for 2 hours. A bit of a chore because my kiln is not programmable. But not nearly as big a chore as trying to control the ramp up time.
I thought two hours left me plenty of time to do a few other things. Then the temperature starting going up, reaching 1550F and even a few degrees more before I convinced it to return to the 1490F range.
Burnished and Refired with glass
My kiln is outside on an enclosed stand that has a cover. Despite the threat of rain, probably a bad idea to lower the cover. The temperature stabilized, with the readings fluctuating between 1488F and 1508F. No more incidents. The 2 hours passed. I unplugged the kiln. When it reached about 500F, out came the stainless steel container. Fishing around in the carbon particles with the required slotted spoon didn’t take too long to find all the pieces. But I can see why it would be important to keep in mind how many pieces you were firing.
Here are 2 of the pieces after being burnished. They went back in the kiln to see if I can get glass frit to stick to them. That’s a story for another day. More photos
