Everything sintered just fine, so in that way it was successful. The problem was with the shrinkage. It seems that shrinkage in sterling clay isn't quite as simple as I thought. In the last post, I said that the clay didn't shrink as much as the package said it would. I would like to rephrase that. The ring shanks don't seem to shrink 25 percent. The settings for the stones, however, do. The settings shrunk enough to pop out the stones on two of the rings. One was pretty simple to fix, but the other took a bit more work. In the end I did get both stones set.
The second set, with the small stones was a bit easier knowing what to expect as far as the shrinkage went.
All six came
out of the carbon with a small bit of yellowish coating that was easy
to remove with a scratch brush. About an hour in the tumbler was enough to brighten them up. They seem to be much stronger than the same rings in fine silver would be. I cannot bend the bands.
I loved making these rings. My favorite setting is the one with just the four corners, with the channel on just two sides running a close second. I will continue to work with sterling clay, and I want to explore the shrinkage issues a bit more.
