Art Clay Bronze

[crystalquartz]

Just completed and Art Clay Bronze course at the weekend and wondered if anyone here used it. It is very different from AC Silver - and not so expensive so good to experiment with.
It it is still in its early days and it is a bit of trial and error - believe it can be more tempremental to fire.
Does anyone on here use it
Any tips on its use would be welcome?

[MuranoSilver]

Bronze Clay is still a relatively new product. It's inventor Bill Struve only started developing it in early 2006, by late 2006 the product and company were born! It's available from Rio Grande in USA & if you have a kiln it would be fun to experiment
1) Product Cost: It's much cheaper as a product than ACS or PMC & it comes in 100g packs or bigger!
2) Selling Price: It's longer firing schedule (about 4.5 hours of kiln firing) and differing finishing methods means it probably works out about the same in a materials/time equation (so if selling priced about the same as a silver piece, but it's perceived value might be lower).
3) The patina and colours you can get are amazing but DO require experimentation. (Silver clay did too in the early 1990's)
4) Bronze clay contains high levels of copper, so you might also want to think about backing the piece with polymer clay or similar if you have acidic skin (unless you like green skin, lol )

Equipment: You need a kiln, a steel container & firing meduim (Bronze clay is container fired, enclosed in medium, to remove oxygen from the firing process). You also need to keep your bronze clay tools seperate from you silver clay tools

If you want to have a look at some finished pieces then Hadar Jacobson has some excellent pictures on her site which also include copper clay (as yet unreleased on the market). She does a very good book on it too http://store.artinsilver.com/higherend.html

Hope that helps
Nic x