A question came up today when I was enameling a piece on copper. My
question is can you enamel on Argentium if you do guild depletion? I
said that it shouldn’t matter since the pure silver will still come
to the surface of the piece. Does anyone have any experience using
argentium in enameling?
Roxan O’Brien
www.designsbyroxan.com
I’m currently running tests for enameling on AS. I have been
satified so far with AS 970, no depletion guilding necessary.
jennifer friedman
http://www.jenniferfriedmanstudio.com
The commonly held wisdom is don’t. All the research I have seen is
that Argentium is not suitable for enamelling. Not sure of the alloy
components apart from copper & silver, but if there is an element
that vaporises at lower temperature, the enamel will ping off. Much
like it is most difficult to enamel on to 9 carat gold due to the
high zinc content - the zinc vaporises in the kiln and this plus
resulting porosity causes problems.
Similarly the Germanium silver is not suitable for enamelling.
However, if anyone has done the tests, I would love to hear the
results.
Seems like half of my working life is spent removing the firescale
caused by enamelling during the other half!
Tamizan, Bristol UK
About six months ago I accidently cloisonne enameled on argentium.
Anyway rather then chuck it I decided to keep going w/the enameling
process to see what happened. Mind you, they were small heart shaped
pieces that were going to be made into earrings. It was a simple
design w/just two colors. One was opaque, one opalescent. The result
came out okay, I’ve still got them, I decided not to set them and
just wait to see if over time any issues arise, so far nothing (I
keep waiting for a piece of enamel to suddenly fly across my studio).
I can’t say the color was as good as it would have been on fine
silver, although it wasn’t unpleasant. For what that’s worth…
Lisa Hawthorne
Thanks to everyone who has been giving on enameling on
argentium silver. I am going to experiment and see what happens. If
anyone has experimented using this silver please let us know.
Some of you have said that you need to guild deplete and some of you
have said that some argentium from Rio Grande can be used without
depletion.
Roxan O’Brien
www.designsbyroxan.com
I was in a workshop where someone tried to enamel on a piece of
Argentum. The glass cracked and went flying shortly after it came
out of the kiln.
I was in a workshop where someone tried to enamel on a piece of Argentum. The glass cracked and went flying shortly after it came out of the kiln.
But was it guild depleted first? That could have been the problem.
Roxan O’Brien