Previewing Art Clay 950
A couple of weeks ago LJS received a parcel from Metal Clay Ltd with a preview packet of the not yet available to buy Art Clay 950. Metal clay tutor Anna Campbell was very excited to have a go with it!
Art Clay 950 is a new formula of clay that is also being called sterling silver clay. I have written more here about what Art Clay 950 is in a previous blog post so do have a look back at this before reading the results of my testing.
With the preview packet we received I wanted to test out the following features of the clay and compare them to original Art Clay
- Strength – both in the dry form and once fired
- Ability to carve the clay in the dry form stage
- Shrinkage (particularly important for rings)
- Setting a fireable stone
- Enamelling
I was able to make three projects with the clay:
Ring shank with holes
I wouldn’t even try this in original Art Clay! I wanted to test the shrinkage and strength when I hammer it around once fired. It was 5 cards thick before firing.
Results
This shows why it is important to do a test of your kiln before you start firing a new clay. My ring shank broke very easily suggesting that my kiln is underfiring (is firing at a lower temperature than it says it is). It should have been strong enough to hammer around into a ring band.
When trying out a new clay for the first time I suggest you make one or two test strips of the clay that are 5 cards thick and about 6cm long. Fire them to the manufacturer’s guidelines and test them carefully when they come out of the kiln. Can you bend them without breaking? If they break it suggests that there may be a problem with your kiln firing and you might need to adjust your temperatures or length of firing. If that is the case I suggest contacted the clay manufacturer for advice.
Ring
With the ring I wanted to test the shrinkage, ability to set a fireable stone and carving.
I made the ring and dried it. I made a paste with 950 and tap water and was easily able to stick the dried set stone to the dried ring. Carving was a dream! I really love that having tried to carve original Art Clay and found it was easy to break it!
Finished stone set ring
Results
The piece fired well with very little warping. The stone did change colour but this does sometimes happen with cubic zirconia stones in the blue colours. I was advised to re-fire the piece in carbon as this sometimes changes the stone back to the original colour but did not in this case.
I am really pleased with this ring. I will be using this clay for all my rings in the future because it is so much stronger than the fine silver of the original Art Clay.
Enamelled pendant
I used a Quick Art template and the Quick Art stylus from Metal Clay to make this pendant.
I rolled the stencilled section out at 3 cards thick. It was easy to cut out the stencil using the stylus which has a really fine tip. My previous needle tool made that quite difficult because the needle was thick so it was difficult to get a neat line.
I dried and filed the stencilled section. I then added it to a 2 card thick layer of wet clay. Once dried I cleaned the edges with baby wipes to ensure no join was visible.
Results
The piece had bowed slightly after firing, nothing that I was not expecting.
Enamelling
Original Art Clay is excellent for enamelling because it is fine silver and therefore does not require depletion guilding to counteract the effect of the copper. I was interested to see how different this would be to enamel.
I went about enamelling this piece in the same way as I would enamel fine silver (by this I mean I did no depletion guilding).
I cleaned the metal with pumice and dried it carefully. I used the wet packing technique to fill the cells that I had created with opaque enamels. I had already tested my chosen enamel colours on scrap silver to ensure the colours would work well.
I did two firings of the enamelling for about 1 minute 30 seconds each time. On the second firing I added more blue and red enamel as the cells didn’t look quite full.
Coming out of the kiln the piece looked like this. There were some brown spots and some enamel on the silver (next to the top left blue cell)
I used a medium diagrit (a diamond impregnated mesh that is used like sandpaper to remove excess enamel from metal surfaces) and was easily able to clean the marks off the silver. I then used a fine diagrit, wet and dry papers and 3M polishing papers to finish the piece.
I’m really pleased with the result. It was much better than I expected as I had expected to see more of an effect because I didn’t depletion guild.
Finished Enamelled Pendant using Art Clay 950 by Anna Campbell
Conclusions
I am very impressed with this clay. I certainly plan to use it for my own pieces because of the strength, ability to hallmark as 925 sterling silver (which is popular with customers) and the price.
At LJS we have been discussing whether to create a class in Art Clay 950. I certainly think that an intermediate class would be popular and different from our current classes but the long kiln firing makes it difficult to fit this into our usual one day class format. We will certainly let you know if/when we launch an Art Clay 950 class and would love to hear from you about what you would like to learn to make with it. Please let us know in the comments below.
Art Clay 950 is available to buy now from Metal Clay Ltd and currently you also receive 10% extra free!
I’d like to thank Metal Clay for the opportunity to test out this clay before general release.
Come along for a demonstration
I will be demonstrating Art Clay 950 and showing all the samples of pieces I have made at the free Studio Warming at London Jewellery School in our new studios on 29th September 2016 from 6.30pm. There will also be demos of water casting and stacking rings.
RSVP by 20th September to info@londonjewelleryschool.co.uk
Studio address: London Jewellery School, Rear Ground Floor Studios, NEW HOUSE, 67-68 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8JY.
I’d love to see you there and chat to you about this new clay!
Author: Anna Campbell
