Fired Copper, First Try.

Hi guys!
As I promised, here are the pictures from my firing results. First, here's different pictures of the larger pendants with their sanding and carving completed before loading into the kiln. These have better lighting for you to see them than the ones I posted yesterday.


And here they are post firing:



Eek, yup, I had breakage. Both pieces looked fine when they came out. The leaf pendant felt a bit light to me, and I started to suspect it wasn't sintered so I tried polishing it a bit to see. The top leaves are fine and strong, but the other side broke off into powdery half sintered? messiness...there's also a small visible ring on the band where I had originally thought to put a stone in and changed my mind, and had refilled it. I had this blended and filled in well, and had checked it to be sure it...but I can notice it now post firing. Part of the inside of the ring is flaking too. The bails of the K are weak and one snapped, I also managed to get a granule of the carbon wedged into his snout (lol) and it caused a hole. I used the highest firing schedule recommended.

So come tomorrow or friday, I'll fire the repairs and see how they go. I think it will be just fine though.


Oh, and I didn't get to post pictures of the little wyvern coins yesterday; but I whipped up a few of these teeny guys to go with the test batch as well. I love how the shrinking really brought out their textures. They're cute! I can't wait to start assembling them. I see blues...greens....reds....heraldic looking colors. (okay, I see blue with anything...I'm biased!)

Once I have a working torch again (mine went wonky on me the other day, seriously...whoosh!), I'll try using it on them for testing out the rainbow patina. I'm really enjoying the color of the copper too.



I do recommend if you play with the copper, or bronze that you buy a scrubby nail brush and use it when you're cleaning your hands. Both clays are sticky-like and the copper leaves a slight black film that is a bit hard to remove otherwise. I've been using a brush and a pea sized amount of a hand scrub.