PMC class - report

yes I've been a slack girl this week!!!

I took the Level II PMC certification class at William Holland last week
with Ken Devos as the instructor. There were 8 students in the class- not
near the um- energy as my class at Wildacres

The class was awesome!!!
The 6 required projects we
Ring with inlaid brass wire - shined to a mirror finish
Pendant made with porcelain pieces
Piece made with enamels
A set of clasps
Pendant or earrings using the 24k gold paste as an accent
Pendant set with a natural stone (bezel set after the pieces was fired).

I loved learning all the new techniques. The only problem I had was with my
ring- I was sanding it before firing - a bit too assertively I guess - and
broke it into 4 pieces. After repairing and breaking it 2 or 3 more times !
I finally got it ready to fire. Shew. But as they say -with PMC there are
no broken pieces, no messed up pieces, just unfinished pieces

I know there were questions about the bezel settings - so here's how it is
done (very short version). You make a base using PMC + or 3, take the bezel
wire and get it to fit your stone, then place the bezel wire into the
un-fired PMC piece. Make sure the joint is nice (No soldering necessary -
we used tension to keep the joint together- although one guy who also does
silversmithing soldered his.) Fire. Check it out- if all is ok - set the
stone.

Lessons learned - don't push the bezel wire too far into the PMC- I did and
ended up with a hole that I needed to fill. I filled the hole and added a
layer of PMC sheet to the back of the base to really fill it out (2
additional firings). Some of the other students used really large stones
and had to do a tiny bit of stone grinding (dremel, fordam) to get the
stones to fit after firing. And one person made a huge bale on the back
that caused her piece to bow and the stone wouldn't sit flat.

Since the bezel wire is already metal it doesn't shrink. We used cabs in our
projects, but I'm sure if you are good at setting stones, you could probably
do something similar with faceted stones. I was very excited about doing
this project- I have NO experience with setting stones and I was able to do
it - and it looks pretty good.

I'm looking forward to playing with all these techniques. If you have
questions feel free to ask or email me.

Pictures can be seen on my webshots album - jewelry - under the PMC page. I
put all the new ones at the front. There are double pics of a couple of
pieces- I've got a new digital camera and I'm playing with it

http://community.webshots.com/user/sparklydiva

Kathy K