Metal Clay for Jewellers

 Working with Metal clay feels like a little bit of alchemy.

You start with a material that looks like clay, but is actually a mixture of micron sized pieces of Fine (pure) Silver suspended in an organic binder.

This binder burns away at a high temperature (using a simple Creme Brûlée torch) leaving a pure silver object. Silver Clay is a magic material and is a good substitute for casting, it is much quicker to do and requires far less equipment. In fact, some shapes would take an enormous amount of work if you wanted to cast them.

• You can work with silver clay while its soft, just like you would with clay. Shaping, modelling, stamping and impressing patterns or textures are done at this time as well as drilling holes.

• At the soft or dry stage you can also set heatproof stones like Cubic Zirconia or Sapphires etc.
  This will also be explored in this workshop

• After drying you can file and sand your piece to refine the form
  filling of any imperfections can be done at this stage as well

• Firing silver clay is easy, we will use a simple Creme Brûlée torch in this workshop.
  This is the way I fire all my silver clay, even though I have access to a kiln.
  It is easy and super fast!

• The magic that happens in firing is not readily apparent, it shows up when we start the finishing process
  All of a sudden the dull grey thing is gone and has been replaced by shiny silver... Amazing!

• At the metal stage the object can be worked the same as you would any silver.
  You can file it, sand it, drill it, solder to it and do whatever you would do if it was a cast piece of jewellery (minus the casting cleanup!)