Quote Originally Posted by HannahJewelleryDesigns View Post
ok well, I had a go at the weekend and did two direct impression fingerprints. All went well with the carving, firing etc until I went to solder on a jump ring and the back of the print exploded! Is this normal??!?!?! The initial finring was fine- no problem at all. Should I not have pickled it afterwards? Did it soak some up maybe? Or do you think it was an air bubble that wasnt released until I heated the piece up to soldering temperature? I want to have another go but do NOT want to make the same mistake again- it really hurt!
This is probably a really silly question - but did you pickle the metal clay piece before you tried to solder? You don't need to pickle metal clay as is doesn't get firescale (no copper in the mixture). You might have got some pickle trapped in the metal cos it is slightly porous as Nic said and then it expanded with the torch heat and boom! Try it without pickle.