Silver Clay Sea Turtle Pendant in Progress Update Post Firing

      This is the second post of an in-progress report on a new silver clay Sea Turtle pendant that I am making.  Please see yesterday's blog post to see how it all began.

     The Sea Turtle pendant fired beautifully.  I wire brushed it after firing, and it is now in the tumbler being tumbled to work harden the metal.  I took photos after each step.  The way it looks might surprise those of you who have never seen silver jewelry in this stage of construction.  It comes out of the kiln almost white.  It takes a lot of work to get it to the silvery shiney state that you see it in when it's ready for purchase.  And, this small in-progress writeup that I'm doing here doesn't show a lot of the work and steps that most of my pieces require.  Most of the time there is a lot of sanding and polishing before, during, and after.  And, it takes many grits of sand paper, polishing papers, and/or power tools. 

The first photo below shows the pendant fresh out of the kiln after firing.

And the next photo below shows the pendant after it has been wire brushed.  This is done before it is put into the tumbler.  The tumbler will work harden the metal and give it an initial polishing.

And here it is in the tumbler.  I will tumble it for an hour or two and then begin polishing.  After it is polished, I will use some liver of sulpher (LOS) to give it a patina.  And then finally, I'll give it a final hand polishing. 

I hope you'll feel free to leave any comments or questions here for me.  I'm happy to answer any questions about my processes.  I will post back here with a final photo once the pendant is out of the tumbler and I have completely finished it's patina and polish.  Hopefully I'll be able to have it finished by this afternoon.

Have a great day!

Janie