From the picture above you can see I had a little trouble today. I was annealing a piece of Argentium to prepare it for hammering. I was working in fairly strong light and thought the piece had cooled sufficiently to allow me to quench it in water….Wrong! As you can see, the results were disastrous. Oh well, another piece to be used in casting or fusing. The next piece I tried to anneal I allowed to cool a bit more and had no problems. Working in dim light, and waiting for the red glow to almost go away is a much safer approach to the problem. The picture of the Argentium above was taken right after it was quenched. Note the lack of tarnish or firescale that you would see on standard Sterling.
My wife wore the pendant shown in my last posting to the Tombstone, AZ Gem and Mineral show Tombstone's Gem & Mineral Show this weekend. The piece attracted a lot of attention. There was quite a bit of interest shown, not only in the piece, but also in Argentium.
1 comment:
Hi Marty, Trevor here again. Quick suggestion regarding annealing. Try dimming your studio lights. When I'm heating Argentium Sterling I turn the lights way down, just enough light so I can see where things are and no more. At that light level you can see much better how hot your metal is. Let it cool until the red is gone --or, if you like it really soft, until the red is almost gone-- and then quench. Doing this I've never stress fractured a piece because of quenching too soon. I know the dim-light thing sounds a bit hokey but it really does help a lot. Good luck with it and keep up the great work on the blog. Best, Trevor.
Post a Comment