Beginner's Silversmithing : Part VII - It's a wrap!

I'm wrapping things up before the year ends!

But before I do that, allow me to get this off my chest first. So here's the story. 2009 hasn't been a particularly good year for me. True enough, I got to go places, see new things and learn new things. That, I am very grateful for, given the 'predicament' that I'm now in.

At the same time, it was also the most heart aching moments I've ever experienced in my life. So heartaching that I even woke up in the middle of the night with an heartache. So painful that I still shudders at the thought of it. I think there was a short period of time in the UK, that I was experiencing some sort of a depression.

It was something personal. To others, it might seem like nothing but to me, it hurts a lot. All I can say is that lesson learnt although I would have appreciate it even more if it wasn't done in the way that it was done.

There are two sides to a coin, so many different branches from the same tree, so many different veins on the same leaf.

Anyway, I'm just glad to be back at home. No wonder they say there's no place like home!

I need to get this off my chest, to wrap things up, shove it behind the doors of 2009 and in the words of a friend, "lock it and throw the Keys into the Depths of Yesteryears and will look forward to the trials and challenges of 2010. It ain't gonna be a smooth ride, but then again, nothing ever is".

So, I'm ending all the stories of my UK adventure in this post, on the last day of 2009 and tomorrow onwards shall be a fresh start all over again.

Sorry, I've digressed too much along the way already... LOL.... just need to get it off my chest! Phew!

Okay, back to the story. The ring you see above was the one I remade out of the failed metal clay pieces. Remember this and this?

I was very amazed but at the same time very intrigued with metal clay.

I attended the silversmithing course right after the metal clay classes. The failed metal clay pieces merely gave me the perfect excuse to experiment further with the medium.

The particles of metal clay, once fired, goes through a sintering process and turns to metal. Hearing that and actually seeing it happening right before my eyes was a very different feel together. Yes, I'm in awe with metal clay.

Accordingly, you can do what you do to metal the same way to fired metal clay as well. I was very keen to test it out.

I brought the failed pieces to Yvonne and told her I want to have them melted and turned into a new ring using silversmithing techniques. Yvonne was just as interested to try it out although she did mentioned that she wasn't very impressed by it. Oh well, she's a purist, I reckon! LOL.....

But...... before we can go ahead and melt it. If you remember, the petals of the rose was set with some CZs (Cubic Zirconia) and we need to remove that first.

 It felt just like metal!


Okay, this part felt a 'lil funny. It just reminded me of tooth extraction at the dentist! LOL... XD

Don't ask me why. That thought just sprang to mind! :P


 All rotten teeth CZs are removed!

And now, we're all ready to melt!



It melts just like how sterling silver would!

 
Molten fine silver.

When cooled........

You get fine silver ingot!

Next up, to put it through a couple of tests. Well, I didn't actually had this in mind but Yvonne implicitly suggested it, so what the heck!

First and foremost was to put it through the rolling mill.


 If you're wondering what's up with the patterns, well that's because we did some stamping with it!
In other words, after turning it into metal sheet, we ran some other stuffs together with the sheet through the rolling mill. Some pretty obvious ones that you can see are like paper clips, chains and I think the netted effect was from some mesh I think.
Actually, the edges of the sheet cracked a little initially. You know, just like how flour dough cracks a 'lil when it is a 'lil dry. Then I think it was because we didn't anneal it enough or something because as we anneal it and run it through the rolling mill, it turns out alright in the end which led us to continue with the stamping.

Ouh, we also try out doming but doming wasn't exactly experimented with that metal clay piece. We just used some sterling silver scrap that Yvonne had but I believe it would work on that just as well because doming is just a very straightforward technique of turning metal sheet into dome.
You do this......



To get this......




Pretty straightforward, no? After we are satisfied with all the "guinea-pigging" work. We start getting down to business and that is the remelt it to make it into the second ring design.
 

We melted it again to turn it into square wire. The design for the second ring is predominantly made from wire with a circle disc thingy affixes at the top.





Erm, okay, I think it'll probably be clearer for you to see from the pictures.







It's just a long piece of wire folded into half , soldered at the ends and with a round silver disc soldered at the fold. Actually, what I had in mind was to have the disc soldered above the wire instead of below, so that the disc appears to be floating at the top instead of impressed down on the hollow. Oh, well......
Also, if you see from the picture below, the ring band is not a joined band, which was intentional. It wasn't supposed to be so close to the other end that it looks like it is almost joining already. Now, it looks  more like an unfinished piece rather than part of the design. o_O
The wires was too long already, which is why it ended up almost joining. It was supposed to be shorter. The ring ended up slightly loose at that time but ever since I returned to Malaysia, I think my fingers expanded or swollen or what, I'm not sure but it seems to fit alright.



Okay, now it's to put it through the soldering test.
Here's the thing, I've read before that metal clay is more porous compared to sterling silver. So, I was keen to see how it's going to survive the soldering test. It can be done but there are a couple of things to look out for.
The two wire ends were soldered together using easy solder paste. No problems with that but on hindsight, I wondered now why was it soldered when it could have been fused together. Fine silver can be fused together, remember?
But anyway, the problem came with the disc.

Sa Kor had to cut the disc out for me since we were running out of time. :P

What you do not know is that the disc was actually cut out from a sterling silver sheet. So what we are doing now is soldering sterling silver to fine silver.

What was said about fired metal clay is that is is more porous that it soaks up solder more that sterling. Therefore, burnishing is recommended on the area of metal clay where the solder will be. We of course, did not do this step because neither of us know or thought about it at that time. It was due to the experience at that time which led me to search up on this upon return.

I'm not sure exactly what is meant by soaking up solder but when we were soldeing the disc to the fold, the solder kept 'jumping' and spreading out onto the disc upon melting instead of 'flowing' through which is ordinarily the case. In other words, it was kinda 'messy'.

It took us I think 3 time until we finally get it but even then, the finishing was a bit messy I think! *shrugs*



Also, another thing is this. I'm not sure if it's due to the earlier 'abuse' or the aftermath but the finishing looked horrible at the moment. The earlier abuse is the earlier melting and remelting coupled with the 'torture' through the rolling mill that we did earlier on. The aftermath abuse is not polishing it and me throwing it around.

After being worked on in the manner that we did, I even find the shine not as good as the other metal clay pieces. This one ended up a some sort of a matte silver *shrugs*




When I was still wearing it 24/7 upon return, it was still doing alright. But then I can't stand wearing my jewellery pieces 24/7 and so, I took it off and just left it on the bedside. Now it tarnishes horribly. I compared it to the other fired metal clay pieces. The others haven't tarnish one bit.

Either way, I just felt the something's amiss in this trial effort. Like it was done haphazardly without the requisite information. *scraches the head*

Oh, boy..... maybe I'll try the appropriate polishing step and we'll see what happens. But I wasn't been told about polishing in silversmithing in the class due to lack of time........ hhhhmmm, trial and error lor I guess and ......aaah, Google to the rescue!

Alright folks, it's a wrap then! Happy 2010! Have a great year ahead!

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Metal Clay : In The Studio

While waiting for my camera to be fixed......share share with you some of the pictures that I manage to take on the day of the course at In The Studio (pun intended! lol.... :P).

I found In The Studio through some random searches online and just decided to join their PMC course since it was so near to Nottingham. It's in Kegworth, which is about an hour's drive or so from Nottingham.



Hhhmmm, I don't exactly know how I should classify the are. The studio is both a studio and a house. Thing is, I don't quite understand how houses in England are.

Unlike Malaysia, we either have a shophouse or a house. House is where one stays and a shophouse is where you do business and stay at the same time. A shophouse is normally a 2 storey dwellings with the family staying upstairs and conducting their business downstairs.

In The Studio feels somewhat like a mansion setup but yet not as big as a mansion. Erm, does that make any sense? I don't even know what I'm blabbing about already! LOL......

But the point is, they offer residential for students from outstation. Well, with the necessary B&B charges, of course!

So, it could be like a weekend break thingy as well. Instead of sightseeing or whatever, you make jewellery.

If you see from the site, they call themselves a jewellery making school and offer loads of jewellery making related courses and they have even got branches in London and Spain.

I didn't get to take too many pictures on that day cuz I was already running out of time to finish all my pieces already, so clicking on the camera was pretty much the last thing I had on my mind.

All I was thinking about throughout the two days was, 'hurry, hurry.....you need to get at least SOMETHING ready for the kiln!"

Which was how and why I ended up with so little pictures of the course. Anyway.....




This is my work station. There were in total 6 work stations at the work area. So, yeah, every session can only accomodate 6 people which I thought was a very decent amount of students. Anything more than that is probably a bit too crowded already although personally, when it comes to me teaching, I think 4 would be the ideal.





The work area. You can see evryone's concentrating on their work!





This is in another room adjacent to the work area. This is where the explanation and demonstration goes on before we return to the work area to work. All the pieces you see on the table are samples made from Art Clay.





My 'goodies pack'! =D





Work in progress......



And this.......

For some strage reason, my face looked so swollen here and my hair so flat..... -_-

Is Theresa Spears, who everyone fondly calls Terry, the instructor and owner of In The Studio. She has been making jewellery for at least the past 20 years and teaches I think almost 85% of the courses offered there.

This was the course that I had most fun! Well, apart from metal clay being a fun thing to work with, Terry was a super fun instructor! It's such a joy to be learning from her cuz she made the whole learning experience so much fun!

During lunch break, we walked over to a pub nearby for lunch and Terry was so nice to wait for me to walk with me since she knows that I have some walking disabilities. She'll always say to me 'Let's go, goldilocks!' before grabbing onto my arms and walk together.

And when I asked to take this picture with her, she went and grab her black cardigan just so to match with mine.

Ok, irrelevant info here but she's been such a warm person to be around with which makes the whole experience so heartwarming especially in the cold England weather!

Terry coincidently has been to Malaysia before. Well, Langkawi Island to be exact. Talking of which even I myself have yet to go there! But Langkawi is such a beautiful place which I've been wanting to go!


Langkawi Island


Ok, I'm going to digress a little to tell you a little more about Langkawi Island, particularly if you are non-Malaysian. As a matter of fact, I think some Malaysian may not even aware of this story.

This is a story I had already been told about since primary school. It's about the Legend of Mahsuri. I don't really remember the story in detail but it neverthless left a huge impression on me back then that I still remember it till this day.

Briefly, Mahsuri was a lady (princess?) who has been accused of adultery. She pleaded innocense but was convicted nevertheless. When she was about to be executed, she said that her blood will be white in colour to signify her innocence. True enough, the blood flowing from the wound thereafter was white and with her dying breath she cursed the island to have seven generatiions of bad luck.

Back then, white blood just sounded too fascinating to a kid! :P

But people somehow agreed that the legend might be a real story afterall because the island took a long time before it was finally developed into a tourist attraction in the 90s if I'm not mistaken.

I know Malaysia was still considered a developing country back then but as compared to other parts of Malaysia, the island was kinda slow.

Well, it's just bits and pieces of info I remembered vaguely lah.

Anyway, that was about Langkawi Island.

Back to Terry. Her words of wisdom that she gave me before I left. Roughly, this was what she said.....

'While others learn what one should do, you learn what one should not do and you'll know what mistakes to avoid in future."

LOL.......

If you've been following my posts on metal clay, you probably heard me talking about all the mistakes that I've made and how some of my pieces did not survived the kiln lor. :P

My of advice when it comes to attending courses like this is:

1. Read up on whatever it is that you intend to learn. When I said read up, I'm not talking about just briefly knowing what the media is about but if possible go into more details like the tools, technique or method of working with it would be very helpful.

2. Don't be too ambitious when working on something that you have only seen for the first time. Stick to the probably boring module projects suggested by the instructor. Bear in mind that time is limited here. You aim should be to pick up on the technique and not creating a masterpiece. I think this was my biggest mistakes in coming up with all those unsatisfactory and failed pieces.

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Metal Clay : Paste

Luckily, these pictures were taken prior to my camera went bust on me. Else, I think I'll be having problems blogging already..... o_O

Wanted to borrow my sis in law's camera but turns out she misplaced the USB cable and I won't be able to transfer the pictures into my pc. Memory card won't do because it's a Sony's camera i.e. exclusive memory stick. I call it the stuck up camera. :P Neither did she see the need to get the external storage when the camera comes with in-built 4G memory.

Meantime, I'm pretty stucked....between the cost of repair and getting a new one.

I can't work with no camera....... *sigh* ......... o_O

Anyway, that's not today's story.

What can you do with metal clay paste? Lots! But like I mentioned earlier, it's normally used with a combustible material where it will help to give shape and form to the paste once the material burns off during firing.






This leaf pendant was made from painting layer and layers of paste onto a piece of real leaf which I later oxidised. I wanted to oxidised this piece to give it a more antiqued look and also to make the veins of the leaf appear more prominent.

We were actually supposed to make a bail for the pendant but I meantioned before that I ran out of material. My leaf pendant ended up with a drilled hole instead for me to later attach a jump ring as the bail.

Honestly, I think a proper bail would have look much nicer. Oh, well....

One thing to take note when using paste is that the layer has to be thick enough. Otherwise, it won't survive the firing an cracked like what happen to this piece. Why this is important is due to the shrinkage. If the layers are not thick enough, when it shrinks, and there's not enough substance to hold on to, it just tears apart.








It's a rose ring set with a few CZ stones around it. I saw a pre-baked piece of rose form cork clay and immediately fell for it but I didn't know what to do with it. Nevertheless I went on and painted it with the paste. It was at the eleventh hour that I decided to turn it into a ring.






I thought I've painted enough layers already but obviously, I haven't! My instructor told me she knew that that piece wouldn't make it because she can tell that the layers wasn't thick enough but hasn't got the heart to tell me.

I thought it was thick enough already because I just kept painting and painting and covering the rose form with layers and layers of paste. But of course, I though wrong..... it cracked........

I reckon I could figure why she hasn't got the heart to tell me because the only way to salvage it was probably to get more paste......and these stuffs are blardy expensive and I would have need to fork out extra $$, over and above what I've already paid.

If you look at the ring shank, see how it's neater than the previous one? Well, this was the earlier ring piece I made which took up so much of my time that I had to make the second ring in a rush to be able to get them to fire in time before the class ended.

You should be wondering about the white cast over this piece. Well, that's how metal clay looks like after firing. You need to polish them to remove the white cast (no idea what it is or how it ended up there o_O) and bring out the shine. All the other pieces were polished in a tumbler except this one.

Thinking back, I don't think this is the best way to make a rose ring. I should have used clay instead. Because it was a hollow rose, a relatively heavy one at that, it just did felt right. The weight of it as a ring I mean.

This piece could not be put into the tumbler for polishing because due to the cracks, it will just get smashed knocking against the other pieces and the stainless steel shots.

Well, I was told the only way to salvage the ring is this.

Cover the crack with oil paste and then add on more layers of on that area and send it inside the kiln for firing.

I of course did not go for this method. I did something more interesting with it. And that, you would need to check back to learn about it. ;)

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Metal Clay : Hollow bead

I also made a hollow bead during the course.


Well, okay.... mine didn't quite end up as a bead but more of a hollow ball pendant. :P





We were supposed to make a bead but I somehow got carried away squirting from the syringe that turning it into a pendant was the only way for me to salvage it. :P I even ran out of the syringe..... erm, not exactly the syringe but the silver paste in the syringe.






Don't think you can just make your own paste and shove it into the syringe to use because I was told that the consistency are different. Syringe type paste has got more silver particles and less binder which makes it of a thicker consistency than the paste in the jar.

Anyway, I was running out of the syringe already to complete the bail and my instructor was kind enough to 'sponsor' me some. Heheh....very kind of her indeed! =)

Please don't think that one is being stingy for not sparing some because these stuffs are so expensive that it just doesn't seem like a common practise to spare each other some. My option at that time was either to get a whole new syringe or have an unfinished piece. Getting a new syringe just doesn't seem like what I would want to do. For one, it's expensive and secondly. I only need a little bit more for completion. And so, my instructor came to the rescue! :P

On to the how-tos. To make this hollow ball pendant, the most important material is this!

What's this? This is cork clay.




Erm...a cork clay is a type of clay which look like cork or a cork-looking type of clay. Hhhmm...... o_O

Well, anyway, the interesting thing about cork clay is that it burns off during the firing process. Yes, burns off as in g.o.n.e. I think the proper term is what they call a combustible material?

However, I was told that you can only use a kiln to fire anything made with cork clay. A torch cannot do.

So, basically you make a ball from the clay. Let it dry thoroughly (very important!) and then bake it to harden it.


Sorry, not my hand. We didn't go through this process. Instead, we were merely chose from a selection of pre-prepared cork clay form to work with.



Once it's done, use the syringe to squirt the paste out convering the ball, like this.



Sorry, not my hands either. I was working with both my hands and did not bring my tripod along and I was too 'paiseh' (i.e. embarass) to bother disturb the other students in the class who were similarly engrossed in their work for taking the photos for me. :P But I found this exact picture of how I actually was working on the piece!



Cork clay is exclusively from Art Clay and PMC also has a similar version but it's wood clay. A wood clay is a type of clay which look like wood or a wood-looking type of clay? *shrugs*

It functions the same but it feels different between the two. Erm, one cork and the other wood? :P

Now, one thing to be very careful is to make sure that the 'wormy' strands are continuous and very important that they should overlap one another.

Otherwise?

You've probably hear this many times by now and some of you could probably even guessed it. The same 'ol story lar..... it won't survive the kiln lor.

One of the student's piece did not survive the kiln. What I meant by not surviving the kiln is whereby the final piece cracked. I couldn't show you a picture of it because I was 'paiseh' to ask her permission to photograph that piece since she was a little upset about it.

Well, I've got one other piece which did not survived the kiln as well i.e. it cracked. But I'll show it to you next time.

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Metal Clay : Firing Pt. III

When you fire flat pieces, not only do they shrink in size but they also tend to warp a little as seen in the pendant I've made below.




It's a flat rectangular piece which I've textured it a little, stuck a flower motif from the previous mould onto the bottom corner and then embed a rhinestone at the centre.

Frontal view doesn't show anything amiss. But well, there is.........

Let me show you the side view.




Notice how the piece is slightly concave?

This, if I'm not mistaken, seems to be a common so-called 'problem' when you fire flat pieces of metal clay. It's a so-called problem only because it's not exactly a problem since it can be easily rectified and hence has somehow become an acceptable feature of metal clay? *shrugs*

Here is where I'm going to introduce you to this little fella.




Everybody, meet mallet. =D

I was introduced to mallet in the Beginners' Silversmithing course. The important feature I've learned about mallet is that unlike the chasing hammer whose head is made of stainless steel (I think!) ....




A mallet's head is made from cowhide.

Why does it matter from what the head of the hammer is made from?

I'll tell you why and for this I shall use a piece of wire for explanation purposes.




As you can see, I've had the two ends of this piece of wire bended. We are going to use each hammer on each end to hammer them straight.

Okay, let's give mallet a go first.





And the result?





Next, it's the chasing hammer turn.




The result?




So, can you see the difference between the two?

What the chasing hammer does to the wire is while shaping the metal, it spreads the metal at the same time, giving it a textured look; a method some artist used as part of the design for their pieces. A mallet to the contrary, while shaping the metal, does not affect the texture of the metal.

Basically, a mallet is normally used in conventional silversmithing to remove dent or shape metal. Well, at least that was what I've come to understand lar.

Anyway, time to put it to practical use. Reshape the earlier piece of pendant!




Tadah!

At the same time......




Front and back of the pendant remains unharmed, despite all the hammering.





Well, that's all for today, folks! ;)

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