Description
Learn basic Precious Metal Clay (PMC) skills, tips and tricks in a day. This beginner’s class introduces you to the world of PMC and the basic skills needed to create a silver clay piece to fire into silver metal. You will learn how to: roll out, texture, cut, prepare the clay for firing, fire (torch & kiln) and finish your project of “2 PMC charms”
- An introduction to the metal clay world will discuss the history, the development, the various clay types, metal clay resources and the clay’s strengths and weaknesses.
- The instructor will demonstrate the basic skills in several stages including:
- creating your clay piece
- refining your greenware
- firing your piece
- finishing your piece
- Students will hands-on create their pieces using the same very beginning basic skills while using PMC3 in stages (creating, refining, firing and finishing) to complete their projects to take home.
Working with PMC is similar to working with ceramic clay. It differs because it is a finer-textured clay, you work at a smaller scale, it is more expensive, you refine it in the greenware stage and it becomes a metal. It is similar because you begin with moist clay that you shape, texture, carve and/or add material to as you form your individual charm(s) and it is then dried becoming a brittle material called greenware. At this stage, you refine, (file, smooth, carve) and prepare your piece for firing. Each piece is fired at over 1200ºf, causing the organic material to burn out, and the silver material to sinter together and creates a unique silver metal piece that is white. Lastly, you will learn several methods to polishing your pieces to reveal the bright & shiny silver surface you are familiar with.
NOTE:
In this short course, we will only cover the basics of making flat charms so each student understands the importance of each stage. Unfortunately, we cannot cover other projects you may want to make because of time constraints and supplies on hand.
Material/kit fee is $40 ~ $45 and is payable in cash to the instructor on the first day of class. It includes a small take home kit, PMC3 clay (lump 5.0grams, paper, syringe and slip for your project), shipping fee and sales tax. Additional materials may be available from the instructor the day of class.
Once you have experience with PMC you can also consider our PMC 101 – LAB for your projects.
