Alice Alper-Rein        JEWELRY BY Y2A, Ltd.
Fine Contemporary Art Jewelry in Silver and Gold
           



PMC TIPS, TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES FOR: 
Dry Construction, Vessels and Hollow Forms
By: Alice Alper-Rein

DRY CONSTRUCTION

1.  When setting up your work space, place a piece of graph paper under a clear page protector work surface to make measuring, centering and cutting like parts easier and faster. Graph paper is available in many different grid sizes, for example, 4 boxes to the inch or 10 boxes to the inch.

2.  To avoid irregularities, use a long, rigid slicing blade, instead of a needle tool or craft knife when cutting out the walls of boxes or other straight sided components. Line up the ends of the blade along the graph paper grid before making the cut.  

3.  To avoid stretching, “dinging” or getting fingerprints on the freshly cut-out metal clay components when moving them from the work area to a heat source for drying, leave them right on the page protector and use a scissors to cut away the excess page protector around each component. Slide a playing card underneath the page protector for added support during the move.

4.  Choose your heat source carefully when working on dry construction projects to avoid warping and distortion of component parts. I favor the home-made hair blower drying box. Here’s how to set one up: Recycle a packing box. Push the flaps into the box or cut them off. Position the box so that the opening is to the side, like a diorama. Create a shelf that air can circulate through by placing a metal, mesh draw organizer http://tinyurl.com/2tz8bp  into the box, upside down. Leave additional room for the blower nozzle and some working space in which to place the pieces to be dried.  Cut a hole, slightly larger than the nozzle of the hair blower at the top of the box.  Set the pieces to be dried on top of the inverted mesh draw divider, leaving them on the page protector cut-outs. The air from the blower will circulate over and under the pieces, drying them without warping them. When the pieces are almost dry, flip them over. Discard the page protector cut-outs and continue drying them for a few additional minutes. When using a cup warmer or food dehydrator as a drying source, turn the pieces more frequently to avoid warping.

5.  Metal Clay won't stick to itself unless you apply pressure or add water or slip wherever MC touches MC. This can be an advantage if you need to create matching earrings, identical bracelet links, chain, bead halves, or small component parts. Roll out some MC to the desired thickness and apply a texture (optional) Now cut the rolled out and textured MC in half and lay one piece on top of the other (Stack up as many layers of clay as you need to cut identical components) Use a craft blade to cut a free-hand shape through the layers (or use a cookie cutter) Then, cut holes through the layers of your components with a straw or metal tube for placement of jump rings, ear wires, stringing or for design purposes. When you separate the layers of clay, all of the components and the holes you cut will be perfectly aligned.

6.  Since MC won’t stick to itself unless you apply pressure or add water or slip wherever MC touches MC, creating a chain with links made from MC is possible using dry construction techniques. Create several MC links and set them aside to dry. Cut a slit in a few of the links and join them with the uncut links to create a chain, being careful not to moisten anything but the join. Dry thoroughly. After the chain is fired, each link, while connected to the next, will move freely, even though they were touching during the firing cycle.

7. Create “tacky glue” out of MC slip to use when joining dry MC parts to each other. To create this thick slip, add an extra pinch of lump clay to factory made slip, or leave the top off of the slip jar so some of the water evaporates and the slip thickens.

8.  Create a special “extra tacky glue” out of MC slip to use when joining dry MC parts to each other or when combining unfired metal clay with already fired metal clay or when making repairs by adding lavender essential oil to factory made or homemade slip.  The glue will be so thick that a toothpick will stand up by itself when inserted into the slip jar. Similarly, parts that are being joined to each other will hold together without needing much outside support while drying. For those Metal Clayers (like me) who are allergic to lavender, substitute lemon essential oil or tangerine essential oil for the lavender oil.  I have successfully tested both lemon essential oil and tangerine essential oil.  Add between 25-35 drops of the essential oil and a few drops of distilled water to factory made slip or homemade slip until it is as thick as you want it to be. Allow several hours for the oils to absorb before using this “extra tacky glue.”

9.  Use the MC syringe as if it were a caulking gun to join dry mc pieces together or to reinforce mc joins. After extruding a line of syringe clay, use a rubber clay shaper or your fingertip and a little water to smooth the syringe clay into place.

10. “Spackle” tiny cracks or joins by pushing tiny bits of fresh lump clay into these areas to reinforce them. Use a water mister, a fingertip or a rubber tip to add some water to the area.

11.   Instead of packing up that small lump of MC that's left at the end of a work session (especially if you don't know when you'll get back to it) use it to create the component parts you most often use and let them air dry until your next work session. At your next MC session, you'll have ready to use decorations and components to attach to your projects with slip or water. It beats risking that your leftover clay will dry into a hard lump between sessions. Purchase an inexpensive, daily medication organizer to separate and store the different components you create so they are easy to find when you need to add them to your work. Here are some of the components I create when I have a pinch or two of MC left over at the end of a work session:  jump rings, washers, casting grain size balls, MC paper cutouts using paper punches and decorative scissors, textured, tiny shapes like flowers, hearts and squares made using aspic sized shape cutters, bails, tiny tubes to use as hinges formed over an oiled cocktail straw or toothpick.

12.  It's easy and fun to make MC wire and MC Jump Rings of any thickness and size. Here's how: Shape the clay into a snake-like tube in your hands. Then use a plexi-glass (lucite) rectangle approximately 3 inches x 6 inches to roll the "snake" against a work surface that has not been oiled. Just apply pressure as you move the plexi-glass from side to side over the clay to achieve a uniform MC wire. Then, turn that wire into jump rings by wrapping it around an oiled straw. Dry it on the straw. Then, slide out the straw and use a craft knife, a wire cutter or a tissue blade to cut the coils into jump rings. Add the jump rings to your MC creations with “extra tacky  slip (paste)” Refer to Tip # 8

13.  Want to create perfect jump rings another way? With no tip on the end of a PMC Syringe, extrude about 3 inches of clay. Coil this line of extruded clay by wrapping it around an oiled straw of the desired size. Dry the clay on the straw, by poking the straw into a block of florist foam, styrofoam or a cup of marbles. Or balance the ends of the straw on cups to dry the coil without flattening it. When almost dry, slide the coil off the straw and use a scissors to cut the coil into jump rings. Continue drying until the jump rings are leather hard. Syringe made jump rings won’t crack during coiling the way “snake” made jump rings often do.


14.  Create some granules (tiny balls of clay) by simply rolling bits of lump clay between your thumb and forefinger. Set them aside to air dry. At your next work session or when you’ve accumulated enough granules, you’ll be able to pick them up with a tweezers to perfectly place them on your project, without risk of distorting them. To insure a perfect join, lightly sand the bottom of each granule to slightly flatten its curve (creating more surface area) before setting it in place with some thick slip. To create granules of the same size, roll out the clay and use a mini circle cutter or a straw to portion out the clay before rolling it into a ball.


15.  Here's a tip for creating MC hinges so that you can make a working MC locket, book or box that opens and closes. First you'll need to create a MC tube: Roll out MC lump clay to a 2-3 card thickness and wrap it around an oiled straw of the appropriate size for your design. Secure the joint with MC slip. When totally dry (leather hard), slide out the straw. Use a single edge razor blade, to cut the leather hard tube into 3 segments. The segments can be equal in size, but they don't have to be. I sometimes make two of the segments equal in size and the middle segment smaller. The important thing is that all the segments fit back together perfectly. Place a fine grit sandpaper on a level table and sand the segment edges slightly. Fit the segments back together on a toothpick or piece of wire. Using MC slip, join the 2 outer segments to one part of your design and the middle segment to the other design element. You might have to notch out a bit of MC with a small file to fit the hinge into place. Dry and remove the toothpick or wire and fire your creation on a support material like vermiculite or fiber blanket. After brushing and tumbling, fashion a hinge pin out of wire and ball the ends in a torch, rivet the wire into the hinge or curl the ends of the wire into loops that will accept a cord or chain.

16. Use a small clay extruder http://www.makinsclay.com fitted with any one of the several extruder shape disks and/or hollow core adapters to create an inventory of rods and tubes to have on hand when creativity strikes. By doing this, you’ll avoid having to take out (and clean out) the extruder each time just one rod or tube is needed for a project. Moisten and bend the tubes into shape or cut apart as needed.



17.  Use the hollow core adapter to extrude some tubes and let them dry. Cut them up as needed with a razor blade or jeweler’s saw to use as gemstone settings. Create a seat for a fire-in-place gemstone using the proper size setting bur. The stone should sit beneath the clay wall. Moisten the clay tube before dropping the gemstone in. Use slip to add the set gemstone to your project. As the tube fires, it will shrink around the stone, creating a tight bezel setting.

18. Sterling silver components can be kiln "soldered" to sterling silver or fine silver using PMC3 paste (slip) or PMC3 clay. Paint some PMC3 paste on the areas you wish to join, dry thoroughly and fire as low as 1110F. Hold for 45 minutes. Do not fire Sterling silver components to temperatures higher than 1400F or they will become brittle. Imagine constructing bead halves out of sterling silver and kiln joining them together with a beautiful textured band of PMC3. Or create a durable bangle or cuff bracelet out of sterling wire(s) or sheet and finish the ends with your one-of-a-kind PMC3 charms. Yes, the sterling will firescale (blacken) in the kiln. But, this is easily removed by pickling the piece in a mild solution of Sparex and water or PH down and water.


19. Use this “fire twice” dry construction technique to create a bezel setting for an irregular stone that can’t be fired in place. The stone can be set in place after the work has been fired.  Wrap the bezel wire around your stone as if you were going to solder it in place using traditional methods. When it fits the stone properly, use a butane torch and a bit of PMC 3 paste to close the bezel wire. Prepare your piece as usual using a 4 card thickness (more cards if you plan a deep texture) Audition the bezel setting in place, but don’t join it to the piece. Make a mental note of the 12% shrinkage that will occur after firing and make sure you will have enough space for your bezel. Set aside the bezel. Dry and fire the PMC piece without the bezel setting. When the piece is cool, use thick PMC3 paste or a PMC3 syringe to join your bezel to the already fired work. Dry and fire again. When cool, set your stone in place using a bezel pusher or bezel rocker to push the fine silver setting up and around the stone.


20. Smoothing and sanding MC in the greenware stage, BEFORE FIRING will produce a professional, polished finished piece.  Methods include using progressively finer grits of wet-dry jewelry grade sandpapers, water-polishing using a generous amount of water on the tip of a natural hair paint brush, using baby wipes, cosmetic sponges and sponge tipped cosmetic applicators for smoothing greenware.

21. Consider sanding MC greenware components BEFORE JOINING THEM to other MC parts using the methods mentioned in tip # 20.This tip is especially useful for interior areas, tiny areas near joins or in and around bends that will be difficult to reach once the parts have been joined.



22. Did you know that you can pre-fire parts of your design when building a PMC piece? Why would you want to pre-fire? For added strength and to insure that a fragile part won’t break off as you complete the details on a larger structure. For example, a tiny PMC+ paper cut-out shape might be too flimsy to work with or might break down if too much water is applied to it. A thin “branch like” protrusion with lots of detail might be easier to work on if created separately and then attached to the main “trunk” How do you pre-fire? Any method from using a butane torch to kiln firing will work. How long do you need to pre-fire for? That depends on the project at hand. You can simply burn off the binder or fully sinter the fragile part. Wait until they have air-cooled and use thick PMC3 slip and lump clay to attach pre-fired parts to your main structure. Fire the finished work for as long and as hot as your inclusions will allow.


23. In a pinch, use masking tape or cellophane tape to hold dry parts together while the joins dry. Wrap the tape around the structure like binding wire. Cut the tape off when the structure is dry rather than risk dislodging the pieces by pulling the tape away.

 HOLLOW FORMS and VESSELS

1.  Turn an inexpensive, plastic water color palette upside-down (the kind that has 6-10 cups to hold paints) and use the convex cups as armatures to dry and shape flat, textured MC circle cutouts into domed semi-circles. When dry, lightly sand the edges and then join 2 domes together with “extra tacky slip” see Dry Construction tip # 8 to make a bead (Don't forget to make holes for stringing) Fire in a bed of vermiculite for support.

2.  Two inexpensive seasonal armatures for drying metal clay structures on are plastic Easter eggs and snap together Christmas ornaments. When broken apart, the halves sit flat on the work surface and won’t roll away. Since each egg half has a different dome (one side is round, the other side is oval) break apart two toy eggs and choose the halves that match if you want symmetrical beads. The eggs can also be used closed and turned on their sides as armatures. They can also be used as storage and carrying cases for clay, gemstones, etc...

 

3.  There’s a whole new set of metal clay tools hiding in your cookie cutter/shape cutter box. The same shapes that are used to make metal clay cut-outs can also be used as wall building armatures for interesting 3-D structures and beads. Thoroughly oil the side walls of the shape cutter or cut a strip of parchment paper or wax paper to fit around the walls of the shape cutter. Secure the top edge of the paper to the cutter with small bits of tape. Roll some metal clay into a snake and then flatten that snake to a 3 or 4 card thickness. Texture the clay. Cut an even strip of textured clay to the width of your choice and wrap it around the paper covered shape cutter as you would if you were forming a ring. Secure the join. Thoroughly dry the clay on the shape cutter. When dry, cut the tape to release the paper and carefully slide the clay and paper off of the armature. Remove the paper. Dry the inside of the wall structure. Secure the inside join with additional paste and dry again.  Level the wall structure by carefully sliding the top and then the bottom back and forth on sandpaper. Roll out and texture more clay to close the bead or to create additional 3-D walls. Attach all parts with thick slip or with syringe extruded clay. Think ovals, stars, squares, houses, etc… Be sure to plan holes for stringing if you project calls for that.


4.  Want to create a light weight, 3-D hollow form or vessel using MC slip or MC slabs? Try using CORK CLAY or WOOD CLAY as a fire in place, burnable core. CORK CLAY is available from MC suppliers. It looks like ultra-fine, ground cork, moistened with a white glue-like product. It can be shaped like regular modeling clay, using your hands, small amounts of water and clay tools. Dry it overnight or longer or dry in a food dehydrator for 4-5 hours Sand to smooth the cork clay, if necessary. Paint 8+ even coats of PMC slip on the cork clay form or work pinches of MC lump clay over the form. When the MC is dry, it can be sanded if necessary. Start the firing in a cold kiln and fire slowly to the temperature needed to sinter the type of MC used (low fire MC recommended) Store any unused clay in an airtight bag. WOOD CLAY is a very pliable material made from ground wood. It is easy to sculpt and can be carved when dry. In contrast to cork clay, wood clay dries to a smooth finish, requiring very little sanding. It burns out completely. It is non-toxic, but, like cork clay, firing the wood clay does produce some smoke, so fire MC pieces using wood clay components in a well ventilated room or outside. Store any unused wood clay in an airtight bag.

5. Poke a wooden barbeque skewer or a toothpick into the cork clay or wood clay structure before setting it aside to dry. Instead of placing the skewer at the bottom of the structure, place it where you might want to drill a hole in the structure for stringing, or at the top of an amphora (where a lid might fit). When the piece is fired, the stick will burn away, leaving an opening.  When painting MC slip onto the structure, use the skewer as a handle, to avoid having to disturb the wet slip with your hands. Stand the skewer in a cup of marbles to free up your hands while the MC layers are drying. The weight of the marbles keeps the project from tipping over and marring the even coat of freshly painted slip.

6.  Afraid of a possible silver melt down, blow out or excessive smoke during kiln firing caused by the internal heat generated when burning off a large amount of cork clay or other burnable core material needed to build a large amphora? Reduce the amount of burnable core material by building your cork clay structure over a removable armature. For example, to create an amphora, oil up a ping pong ball and smooth a thin layer of cork clay over it. Form the neck of the amphora as usual. Dry the cork clay overnight (or longer) or in a dehydrator for 4-5 hours. When dry, carefully slice open the structure, remove the ping pong ball and use additional cork clay to piece the now hollow cork structure back together. When the patch is dry, sand it lightly and paint it with many layers of slip or cover the cork with rolled out clay. Dry, refine and fire as usual. I recently used a small, fresh pear in this way. When the cork layer was dry, I sliced right through the cork and the pear and scooped out the fruit. I used additional cork clay to patch things back together, dried and sanded the patch and proceeded to create a hollow table-top pear kaleidoscope sculpture using metal clay.

7.  Want to eliminate the cork clay or wood clay armature altogether?  Apply low fire metal clay slabs to completely cover a small structure, like a rock, a jar, a bead, a baked polymer clay shape, or even a cardboard created structure, etc… that has first been oiled or wrapped in plastic. When the MC is completely dry, make a cut down the center of the project and remove the core structure. Sand the MC parts and join them back together with thick slip. When dry and refined, fire the hollow form in a support material like vermiculite, alumina hydrate or on fiber blanket.
 

8.  Want to add a surprise element to your MC hollow forms, like lentil beads or lacy beads, amphorae and boxes? Consider enameling the INSIDE of these forms. Here’s how: Drizzle or use a paint brush to add a holding agent like Klyr Fire to the inside of your fired and burnished MC form. Sift or spoon enamel powder inside the form and swish it around. Pour off the excess. Allow the enamel powder to dry by placing the piece onto a sheet of mica and resting it on top of a warm kiln. When the enamel powder has dried, transfer the piece onto a kiln shelf (still on the mica.) Place the shelf into the kiln. Fire for 3 minutes at 1500F. Repeat to add more enamel as necessary.

9. Want to create a MC amphora to hold perfume? Consider building the structure to fit around a tiny glass or plastic perfume sample bottle. Create an investment plug placeholder by wrapping a piece of paper loosely around the sample bottle. Place pieces of tape over the bottom of the paper sleeve.  Mix up some casting investment or a non-shrinking plaster and pour it into the paper sleeve. Let it set up. Use the form as a place holder when building your amphora.

10. Make a set of hollow drum beads by cutting out an equal number circles using a cookie cutter. Dry the circles. Use a sharp comb or a vegetable mincer to cut several of the same sized strips from rolled out and textured MC. Using thick slip, attach one of the strips to the perimeter one of the circles. When dry, attach another circle with thick slip to close the drum bead. Dry and refine. Drill holes for stringing. Repeat to form additional drum beads. This method can be adapted to make beads of many different shapes.