Every So Often,

I come across a product that I never thought possible,

a few days ago we posted a video of silly putty, but not the one we have all heard of, this one was different, it was magnetic silly putty, on to today, I had never seen or heard of art silver clay, I guess most of us have used clay at school or at least know about clay and firing it in kilns, but what is silver clay? Art Clay Silver is as some would say a magical clay consisting of finely ground pure silver mixed with non-toxic binders and water, when fired, the binders burn away leaving pure, 99.9% silver which can be sent to an Assay Office to be hallmarked, so you can create you own personal silver jewellery or any other objects you want to make in silver by first modelling the object in this magical clay and then firing it, 

 it might sound a but technical, the firing bit, but it can be done on a home gas burner, you can fire pieces of clay up to 30g in weight using this process, the clay is placed on a sheet of stainless steel firing mesh over the strongest part of the flame, first the clay will smoke as the binder begins to burn away and then it will glow a pale orange, within 5 minutes you will have a piece 99.9% pure silver,

or you can use a blow torch, the clay is placed on a fibre brick on a tile or in a heat proof pan, firing takes less than 3 minutes using the technique shown in the photograph,

 dried silver clay being shaped with a fine file prior to firing, any dust can be mixed with water to create silver clay paste for filing in cracks or for bonding, the shop that sells this product and where I have used their pictures and text is in the UK, it is the the George Weil art shop, there are other stockist, but I found this one first, if you fancy a try at home silver jewellery making have a look here for stockist in your country, but back to the product silver clay, what will they think of next? gold clay of course, wait a second there already is gold clay, but and it is a big but, gold clay must be kiln fired at 1813°F for one hour, it cannot be fired with a butane torch or a gas stove, but still the silver clay sounds like fun.