Blog posts of '2010' 'August'

A new metal clay product from Mitsubishi is about to hit the shelves in October. A 90% silver alloy mixture with superior strength to PMC3. Great for rings but needs to be fired in carbon.

Enough with the marketing horns. What does it mean to us as artists. At first glance it answers for me so many problems that have plagued us personally as artists. Liad  my wife and partner has worn her PMC3 rings for years without damage. Granted she removes them when cleaning and doing dishes but for the most part wears them at all times. They look good and they exhibit fairly little signs of wear. On the other hand much to our horror we have had requests to refinish rings that we have sold. As a policy we offer refinishing for free. In any case the condition and shape they have come back in leaves little doubt for the need of a stronger base metal.

So at first glance we were overjoyed at the headlines. As we researched though our community has brought many issues to light. One is how do you mark the silver .90 purity when it doesn’t truly fall into any recognized current day jewelry standard. While it would seem to me the customer might get a better product, in terms of wear, I think it would in deed be a harder sell.

This new PMC Pro also boasts superior flexibility for bending after firing. I must admit for us this not an issue as we have mastered creating our rings while in wet clay form. No doubt though this is a tangible benefit for various crafting scenarios.

Another issue that comes to light is the need to fire in carbon, which poses health risks. PMC has always boasted a safe working platform when compared to other platforms in jewelry fabrication. It is my experience though as an artist delves deep into this craft and related experimentation you are going to test this line anyway. For us once we took our polishing beyond the tumbler a respirator became necessary. Black Max is very detrimental to your health so on and so forth.

We also question the “alloy”. Fine silver as always carried the benefit of low allergic reaction. Customer’s allergies to silver are mostly the secondary material the silver is mixed with. I am very curious as to what this product will present if any in terms of adverse reactions.

When it comes to market we will carry it and we will play with it. As with any craft as the community of artists gets more sophisticated so goes the materials and techniques. The true measure of success will rest upon the community and its willingness to adopt this metal clay.

For technical specifications click here.

Let us know your thoughts, as we will tailor our offering of this metal clay with user input in mind.

It has happen to the best of us. We spent hours pouring all of our love into and upon removal of ring from kiln its too small. Even worse it was sent to customer and it is wrong size. Well there is a solution in most cases to adjust 1/2 to 1 full ring size. This technique will work for resizing, re-rounding, and sometimes correcting un-even shrinkage.All you need is a metal mandrel, something hard to tap against and physics does the rest.

The following video demonstrates a easy technique to re-size or re-round a metal clay or silver pmc ring.

Please take note as this video demonstration assumes the following

1.The ring must have a strong seam.
2.It only works within 1/2 to 1 ring size.
3.Better to repeat the technique many times over gently to achieve size then to try to accomplish in one pass such as in video.
4. For wide(and even not wide) band rings always repeat technique equally on both sides of ring.
5.This will only enlarge a ring that is too small.
6.Use only your hand or a rag inside your hand to hold ring. This prevents marring of outside and helps soften the impact and shock to ring.