PMC Pendant Part 2

This was the pendant before it was fired in the kiln. See Aug 11 post.
After is was fired, it looked about the same except it was hard.

The next step is to remove the white look. It was explained that by brushing with a bronze brush, "You make the silver molecules stand up" Seems weird to me but it makes the piece shiner. You do remove some of the filler in the clay and with lots of elbow grease you can start to get a shine.



Taking pictures of shiny things is a loosing battle. But you can see the difference. To get more of a shine you can tumble the piece. If there are any marks you can now sand them out. Cool Tools has some great tutorials for all of this. Since the resulting piece is now 99.9% silver, it oxidizes much less than Sterling Silver which is 92.5% silver. The addition of other metals, mostly copper, is what makes Sterling Silver tarnish. (Just think of a shiny penny after awhile)

My next step is to Patina the piece which oxidizes the piece. That always seems a bit wrong. Getting rid of tarnish is the goal usually but the results of a Patina (doesn't that just sound better?) is highlighting the valleys because after the Patina process you polish the high points and get dimension in the piece.

So, stay tuned tomorrow for the next step. I hope a picture can show the difference.


B



www.bevsjewelry.com and www.bevsjewelry.1000markets.com