Creating flower buds in artclay silver with a wood clay core
I want to make some buds for an apple blossom necklace, basically a ball. It seemed a good idea to make a wood clay core to reduce the weight and save silver. The wood clay will burn out leaving the silver bud (I’ll leave an opening for escaping gases).
I’m worried about the shrinkage rate. I usually fire at about 850 for 2 hours and I think artclay silver 999 shrinks at about 10%. Wood clay doesn’t shrink I don’t think. What happens to the shape with the two forces acting on it?
At what temperature will the wood clay burn out? maybe it’s quite early in the firing cycle?
I don’t know anything about wood clay, but if it is made up of wood and clay, the wood may burn quickly, but wouldn’t the clay remain? I took a quick look at the Cool Tools website and it indicated that fine silver (999) clay sinters in the 1,600 range. Keep us posted on your project…Rob
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as a person who has worked with silver clay for decades, for heaven’s sake don’t use wood or wood clay! the answer, very simply is to carve out your core using Styrofoam. you can use large cell or dense cell. It will burnout quickly and cleanly–no need to do anything during or after firing. It burns out early in the firing schedule specific to the kind and brand of clay in the directions on the packaging, no need to adjust the schedule. Just settle the buds in some vermiculite and fire. Here’s an example of some of my hollow beads that were formed over Styrofoam balls from the craft store.
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