FREE 5 Fire Precious Metal Clay, Art Metal Clay, or Silver Clay for Making Jewelry Components Tips

Precious metal clay makes it easy for you, the untrained amateur jewelry maker, to construct your own beautiful handcrafted beads, charms, and pendants from real precious metals like silver and gold.

Precious metal clay (also known as PMC and ACS or Art Clay Silver) is is as simple to use as potter's clay. It's soft and moldable, and works very much like clay in many ways

Here's how you use this material to make your creations. You shape your pendants or beads from the clay, let them dry, then fire to burn away the binder. This works because fine metal particles are suspended in an organic binder that can be burnt off leaving the metal fused into the form you shape it.

There are many different methods to texture, shape, and mold the precious metal clay into charming and ornate forms, but these are beyond the scope of this article! This article will share different ways to fire your creations once they are formed and dried.

Metal Clay Firing Methods

These are the 3 most commonly used methods for firing precious metal clay. These are using a small torch, a pmc kiln or bead kiln, or something called a "Hot Pot" (or similar gas/metal screen setup).

1. Using a Hand torch

Only torch smaller pieces.. Also, it's best to make sure your piece is pretty even in thickness and relatively simple. Complicated and intricate pieces are more likely to fare best in a kiln.

Here's how to torch fire. Don't forget touse a a heat proof and fire proof surface like a soldering pad or a fire brick with a piece of aluminum sheet underneath. You'll want a well ventilated area. Using your butane torch (I use a Blazer torch), start aiming your flame on the dried precious metal clay piece. At first you'll see a little bit of smoke as the organic binder burns off. Then you just need to get your piece to become a nice pinky orange colour (you can see it quite clearly as long as you aren't working in too bright a light) Move the torch away a little bit and then back again if the glow fades. Just don't go really close with the torch once you have got up to temperature or you will melt the detail on your work.

2. Use a Kiln

A small kiln is ideal for firing metal clay. Even heat and higher temperatures will usually produce stronger pieces, and some types of PMC like bronze clay, original PMC, most copper and gold clay will only fire properly in a kiln.

Any kiln should work, but Precious Metal Clay kilns are available. These are table top kilns. They are very small as kilns go. They run on regular household electricity, but they do need a three prong outlet.

To use, just follow the directions from the kiln manufacturer.

3. Hot Pot or Other Gas Ring/ Metal Screen Setup

A specialized PMC firing product, called the "Hot Pot" that can be found at precious metal clay retailers. The Hot Pot makes it easy to fire pmc without a kiln and is ideal for people who don't like using a torch. The Hot Pot uses a sterno-like fuel to fire your jewelry projects. When the fuel burns out, your jewelry is done. It's a very simple, low tech and affordable option to create your own jewelry.

To use the Hot Pot, you fill the provided terra cotta pot with fuel, then place your dried metal clay project onto the wire grid. Finally, you light the fuel with a long match. Once your fuel burns out, your creation is fired and ready for polishing.

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