Made some of the Mokume canes and put together some small pieces then today put together a couple of pieces I really liked.
In a nutshell Hadar has made playing with base metal an easier task. With the cost of silver everyone can now afford Copper, Bronze and Steel clays to work with.
We made canes from the Copper, Bronze and Steel
put them together into pieces
She has also made it easier to fire.
More of a two step process that speeds up the firing schedule
1. You burn off the binder on what is basically a camp stove
Using a stainless steel bowl (dog bowl) half filled with activated charcoal you sit your items on the charcoal and fire.
it smokes as the binder burns off and changes colour. When the binder has burned off it stops smoking and the pieces are a dark colour
the bowl moves to the kiln where you fire for two hours for the piece to sinter
There obviously is more to this but those are the basics.
The best pieces I made today - I took my face mold and made bronze face and then thinned out my pattern to make the scarf
Here is the unfired piece
Face with patterned scarf
Lentil There was not enough time to fire so I brought them home
I set up my little camp stove and fired my pieces to burn off the binder
then I fired in the kiln for 2 hours (by the time it ramped up it was more like 3 hours)
I only cleaned - have not sanded but I found a few cracks on the back and a burnout spot on the front - the neat thing is I can fill in and re-fire the pieces
The pattern will show more on the scarf when I use the Baldwins Patina
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