Advice with copper and bronze clay

Dear all,
Im a beginner on this site. Advice please about Copper and Bronze clays. I currently work with pmc silver and kiln fire. I have been asked to produce an item in the copper or bronze. Do I need any special equipment to fire these mediums? or can I just use my kiln? Do they need any special finishing processes?? How do you find working in them??
Many thanks
Lucy.

Thanks for all your support.

Hi Lucy

I have a pack of copper and bronze clay but as yet have not had a chance to play with them. I dont have a kiln so will torch fire it and hot quench in a pickle.

I've got some Pickclean stuff, it looked oddly familiar to me and a couple of granules on my tounge confirmed it was citric acid the same stuff I de-scale my Nespresso machine with and Notherners put on thier chips ! (Non-Brewed Condiment).

Some of the copper and Bronze clays require activated charcoal, some don't, it's cheap enought to buy a pack or two and have a play. All I will say is keep your silver clay tools, files,burnishers,abrasive pads and polishing sundries seperate from bronze/copper at all times, infact get cheap toolbox from Wilko's and make up a bronze/copper set of finishing tools. This will avoid contaminaion.

I'm guessing the usual pre-fire refining and sanding is the same as silver clay as soon as I've had a go with it I'll let you know.

Regards

Pedro

You can work with copper and bronze clays in a very similar way to silver, and use the same type of tools, but it's best to keep tools used for silver separate (any contamination from one type of metal to the other may cause it not to sinter properly). There are slight variations between brands. One or two of them (not sure which as I haven't tried them) you can get away with torch firing small pieces. Others do require Kiln firing and the use of activated coconut carbon. As you already have a kiln then you should be okay (and it's preferable I think to torch firing).

Once fired, as Pedro mentions, you can use Picklean to remove firescale (or just sand off with elbow grease!) and then polish as you might silver i.e. use a tumbler or sand with sanding pads/paper/electric tool like a Dremel. Some clays are premade, like the silver PMC type ones are, others come in powder from which you mix with water to get your clay (I make that type).
Prices vary too. You may need to try one or two different brands to find the one you get along with best.