I recently made a decision to spend some time in 2019 experimenting with enameling, and will see where it takes me. Come along for the ride!
Today I'm going to experiment with using Argentium Silver as my base metal. I've only used Fine Silver or Copper in the past, so we'll see what happens.
1. I used my jeweler's saw to cut out an oval shape out of 22 gauge Argentium and then domed it slightly on a doming block.
2. A Preval Sprayer (with a mix of 2/3 Distilled Water and 1/3 Klyr Fire) was used to spray the front of the disk before sifting with Ninomiya F3 Clear Enamel Flux, making sure there was an even amount of flux all over the top (no blank spaces). I placed the disc on a trivet to dry on top of the kiln, and when the flux was dry, I fired it for 1.30 minutes at 1400 degrees (some use 1450 degrees).
You must have a timer of some kind nearby so you don't over fire your piece!
As you can see, the base color of Argentium silver wasn't darkened or damaged in any way by a coat of clear flux and one firing! We're good to go forward!
3. After cooling, the back of the disc was sprayed again with the sprayer and sprinkled with a counter-enamel (see below), set to dry and then fired for 1.30 minutes. (You won't see the back, so it doesn't matter what color enamel you use, but you must counter-enamel the piece. It is is used to reduce stress exerted on the enamel by the metal after the piece is cool or during cooling. As metal cools, it cools faster than the enamel, so if a piece is not counter-enameled the enamel can crack and pop right off the piece (yes, this has happened to me).
Some people counter-enamel first, and then move to the front, but I prefer to enamel the front first.
I'm going to do this step twice with the counter enamel, just to make sure it's stable.
Now that I have 2 coats of counter enamel on the back and one coat of clear flux on the front, I'm ready to start placing my cloisonné wires. Wherever I plan to have red, yellow or orange colors I'll add some gold foil first so the colors (warm colors) will show up nicely. I also need to decide if I want to add some silver foil or thin textured silver pieces to the piece.
I purchase my Fine Silver Cloisonne wire from Hauser and Miller. The taller the wire, the more enamel you will use. The first thing I do with the wire is cut off a long piece (more than I think I'll need), wrap it into a nice little circle, and anneal it. This can be done two ways: 1) With a torch, or 2) In your kiln. About 20 seconds in my kiln at 1400 did the trick. Let it cool naturally (don't water quench).
An easy way to help with wire cutting and placing is to lay double sided tape on your drawing and then place the cloissone wires on top of the tape, all cut to the proper sizes, before then placing on your piece. I use either Blu Stic or Klyr-Fire (mixed with a little H2O) to place the wires in their proper places on the soon-to-be finished piece. The glue is wet, so let it dry before putting in the kiln. When it comes out from the kiln (approx 1.30 to 2 minutes later), some wires may still not have embedded themselves into the clear flux, so GENTLY take your tweezers and push them down a wee bit and they should "take" during the next firing. I actually dropped my piece on the way into the kiln, and didn't notice I was missing a couple of pieces of wire until it came out. No problem! I added the missing pieces and fired again.
Here I start laying the wires for my moth:
I've finished laying all the wires and it's been fired at 1400 for 1.30 minutes.
Now it's time to lay down some 24K gold and Silver foil (using Klyr-Fire) and fire again at 1400 for 1.30 minutes.
Little by little, I add more and more enamel, let dry and fire at 1400 for about 2 minutes. The thicker the enamel, the longer it might need to fire. Don't forget to wear a mask! I use leaded enamels, so it's very important not to breathe in any minuscule particles. I purchases most my enamels from Enamelartsupply.com. I've also purchased from E-namels.com and Thompsonenamel.com.
Note: One problem that came up was on the bottom left of the piece. The opalescent enamel "popped" off in a tiny area and I had to re-enamel about 3 times for it to stay put. Maybe this had something to do with using Silver Argentium instead of Fine Silver? Hard to say.
To finish this piece, I used 3m Diapads to get the surface as smooth as possible. I wish I knew where I purchased them, but I can't remember. I always start with the darkest color first (grittiest), and always file under water...then move onto the red, yellow and finish with white. After that I used a number of very fine sanding pads called Micro Mesh Regular. I started with 1500 grit and finished with 12000 grit. I then polished with Zam. Maybe someday I'll purchase a Jool Tool or something else to make the polishing part easier, but until then I'm content to do it all by hand.
This is the finished piece. I'm happy with the wire work, but definitely unhappy with the colors. Had my wires been taller, I would have been able to add more layers of color, which this piece needs.
"In tests at the Goldsmiths’ Hall of London, opaque enamels worked well. Transparent enamels appear as a different color than on traditional sterling or fine silver, but no other problems were reported. In some enamel tests, some colors shifted; Clear Flux enamel applied under the colored enamels stabilized the color. Enamels used on Argentium sterling that was sanded or abraded to remove any germanium-oxide coating showed the best results."
I'll keep on happily experimenting!
