Turritella Designs

Last month, I had the pleasure of trying out Bill Struve’s new metal clay, EZ-960 Sterling, now available from Cool Tools. I thought I would share my thoughts on the clay, and some photos of the pieces I made.

Blooming London Blue Topaz Pendant made with EZ-960 Sterling clay

Workability of clay and body ‘feel’

The clay feels very dense, but not sticky. The clay has a good, smooth texture, and is not grainy, or elastic.

Ability to take texture impressions

The clay takes texture with excellent clarity. It does not distort or stretch when removed from a mold. It is not prone to tearing.

Working time until dry

I found that in Toronto’s humid, warm early summer, I needed to rehydrate the clay after around 11 minutes of open working time. The clay re-hydrated well, and came back to its original consistency after the first re-hydration. After four re-hydrations, the clay binder began to break down, and the clay became almost foamy in texture.

Carving and refining

The dry clay was not brittle, and was very easy to file and carve.

Enamel

The first firing of transparent enamel directly on the metal yielded a bright finish, though this dimmed in subsequent firings in reaction to the copper content of the fired EZ-960 clay. Thompson 2020 flux for silver became progressively more yellow-green in each firing as it absorbed copper oxides from the metal base.

If using transparent enamel on EZ-960 sterling, it is best to do colour tests, because the transparent Thompson enamel colours do not behave as they would on a fine silver base, or as they would on a copper base. When the slight colour shift is taken into account, transparent colours can be used effectively on the alloy, if care is taken to keep the maximum number of firings between three and five, to reduce the colour shift.

Opaque Thompson enamel can be used effectively on EZ-960 sterling. Opaque enamel often discolours around the edges when it is applied to fine silver, but I found that this discolouration was very minimal or even non-existent over EZ-960. I would always recommend that people do colour tests for each enamel colour and metal base type they intend to use, but in my experience, the opaque enamel that I used worked very successfully on this fired clay.

Polishing

The metal takes a fantastic polish.

Half-moon Blooming Peridot Pendant made with EZ-960 Sterling clay

Due to the slight colour shift, I think I will continue to use fine silver for enamelling purposes, but I will definitely keep EZ-960 Sterling in mind when making projects that require a little more strength than fine silver. Overall, this clay was lovely to work with, and I am very grateful to have had a chance to try it out!