Smiley face enamels

[afmetalsmith]

Here are pictures of the current state of the pieces I am working on for the Smiley Face show.

Cloisonne smiley The finished cloisonne smiley face, not in setting.

Plique Smiley: process My Plique-a-jour smiley face, during the enameling process.

Comments

[medvssa.livejournal.com]

Hey they look great! Really watching the pictures make a great difference, I had imagined them all wrong :)
The top one looks great, you say it is not set yet, but I see silver around it, did you make a raised field there? (I don't know how to call it)

And the plique is awesome! very nice wire work, it will look great once finished. And you did solder it? wow. I think the eyes would look great with a bit of "wax drop", like a little dome, do you know how to do this?

[afmetalsmith.livejournal.com]

Glad you like them! I'm sure my descriptions weren't a whole lof of help in allowing you to visualize them. :)

For the top one, I used a piece of 20ga. (0.8mm) square wire and soldered that onto a piece of sheet for the border. I've been experimenting with that lately, since sometimes when I set pieces without that the edges crack a bit during the setting. However, the solder flowing where I don't want it to is a problem for this technique, at least when I want to use transparents by the edge- they're a different color over the solder than over the fine silver, depletion gilded though they are. Sigh. I will probably start experimenting with solder flow blocks and see where that leads me. Or maybe just do the rim on the back; that would add strength to the edge without getting solder on the front... Hmm. :) The rim thing works great when there's an opaque or opalescent right next to the rim, though!

The basic technique for the plique is to do the wirework and glue it with cyanocacrylate down to a titanium plate (22 ga- maybe 0.6mm?). You can either do the whole thing that way or do it in pieces- for this one, I did the border circles- the 2 plain ones and the zig-zag between then- and soldered those, then laid out the interior. For the soldering, one files a hunk of eutectic silver-copper alloy (72% silver, the rest copper, if I recall correctly- it's the lowest-melting alloy of the 2) with a really coarse file, and then you can either dust the solder over the piece- which is fast but I haven't had a lot of luck with- or use a brush and place filings everywhere 2 wires join. Then solder with a big bushy flame until the solder melts, check for connections that didn't solder, and repeat. It is very important to have good ventilation, to keep one's face away from the piece, AND to keep the flame on the piece while the glue burns away- else it's pretty toxic.

Domed eyes sound like a great idea! The way I learned was to do all the finishing, and then before the fire-polish firing to heap enamel very very carefully just inside the metal. Is that how you do it? Or did I misunderstand what you meant- always possible! :)

[medvssa.livejournal.com]

Hmh, yes I understand why making this rim would make the enamel more resistant to pressure, but yeah solder leftovers are a pain in the ass. That setting I told you once is nice because you really don't put much pressure on the enamel, but I guess making it is also a pain in the ass. I have also read in an enamelling community that some people leave a couple of millimeters on the border of the base not enamelled, so that the setting almost touches the enamel, so that the pressure doesn't affect it. I am not sure how good this would look though.

Hmh, cyanocacrylate is super-glue right? Interesting. I wonder if a non toxic glue would work. I use tragacanth (?) for cloissoné and it holds well until it burns, perhaps it would work too? that would be cool. Does the solder affect the color of the enamel?
I want to try the PMC plique technique with PMC paper, sounds great, can you imagine, a fine silver plique?!

Yes you understood right. You can work in adding a little more enamel than the rest before the final firing, but this depends on the way you clean the wires, if you stone it, then you would have to do it afterwards. I used to clean it with hydrofluoric (when the piece is still warm and with a wooden stick dipped in pure acid, you have to work under a "bell" and with extractor, because of the fumes) wich is nice since it doesn't spoil the metal and if the metal is textured or so, the only way I see to clean it without damage.
In any case, this is how I do the domes, in the final fire (polish fire you call it?) you add a little dome of enamel carefully not to stain the wires. It doesn't have to get to the very edges. Fire upside down, or the dome will go a bit downwards. For this you probably have to take the piece to the oven when it is not completely dry (I don't know if you dry before, I don't, I evaporate in the oven: in and out) or else it can fall. Maybe one layer in not enough for a nice dome, so it may be necessary to repeat.