Silver Clay Side By Side Comparison. Metal Clay Discount Supply

Side By Side Comparison Of Silver Metal Clay Brands

As you may know Mitsubishi Materials intends to discontinue the PMC product line March 2023. PMC has been an instrumental part of what we know today as metal clay. Thankfully there are many alternatives on the market and in our store today. With that in mind we decided to test ,side by side, our offerings of silver clays. It also serves to bring up to date stated shrinkages on FYI and MetalMagic silver clays as formulas have evolved and improved. While shrinkage is an obvious comparison, we designed test pieces to allow us to examine contraction accuracy, detail and finishes as well.

Each test piece was stamped with the same design and corresponding clay brand created by our custom stamp service

The same cutter was used to cut designs from 4 cards thick (2mm) rolled clay. Cutter was also created through our custom cookie cutter service.

There was no sanding done to face of pieces as to insure accurate comparison.

After firing all pieces together for 1.5 hrs @1650f

Each piece is compared to size chart and matched with its corresponding shrinkage rate.

	Yielding unexpected surprises...
	Type	Shrinkage
	Art Clay Silver	10%
	MetalMagic 960	10%
	PMC3	13%
	FYI	14%
	MetalMagic 999	15%

In summary
As far as branding goes Art Clay Silver and PMC have been the leaders. They have exhibited both reliability and ease of use making them the bar to reach for. Having said that I must declare that what was once off-brand clays like FYI and MetalMagic have really caught up. In fact ,as far as quality, finish and workability, they are indistinguishable these days from these more known brand leaders and in fact outperform in certain cases. With PMC on its way out way out it really comes down to a matter of shrinkage, price and time. If you are looking for minimum shrinkage in fine silver ACS is great choice. If you need to torch fire ACS and PMC (for now) are the way to go. For everything else the 30% less expensive route of FYI or MetalMagic is hard to resist. In addition to pricing the reconstitutability of FYI and MetalMagic is far superior and leads to significantly less waste. In any case we are proud to work with, carry and recommend all these clays. Enjoy!