The Joy of Metal Clay - More Bronze

Last week during metal clay play day I worked some more with the Fast Fire Bronze. Is showed you the pictures of the pieces waiting to be fired. Here are the results. Overall, I would say there was more success!!!

If you look closely at this pendant the cubic zirconia in the piece have discoloured. The reason for this is that I hadn't cooled the piece naturally and quenched it before it had cooled enough. Oops....something I know not to do but hurried it. Learn from my mistakes.

This piece is not yet finished. My Dad has my dremel as I want to bring up a brighter finish on it. This will have to wait. One thing to note is this piece had to be fired twice. The first firing resulted in a crack on one of the leaves. I am unsure as to why...there may have been a small crack that I didn't notice before firing I am not sure. But the good news is that I managed to repair it.

Here is the crack in the leaf...I did not finish or polish the piece (I believe the more polish on a piece the harder to repair).

All I did was to add some fresh clay to the crack and smooth it over and dry. The I refired it.

Here it is no cracks!

A note about firing. I fired my Fast Fire Bronze Clay embedded in carbon using the recommended ramp speed of 1525F per hour and I fired at 1520F for one hour. The directions on the site state that the firing temperature is 1525F internally but that many kilns do not necessarily fire consistently. For my kiln 1520 seems to be the right temperature. Also it is important to not seal the container completely tight and that your lid should be askew in order to allow some oxygen flow. So far this has worked well.