Crafting Sustainably: How to Achieve Zero Waste in Silver Clay Jewellery
One of the brilliant things about silver clay is that there is zero waste. Here are 4 tips to ensure that you use ALL of your precious silver clay.
Tip 1: Collect Your Clay Dust
Every little bit of your clay can be reclaimed, including the dust when you are filing and sanding it. Make sure you sand over a mat or use one of these handy clear-away trays Once you've finished sanding simply tip the dust into a container for reconstituting later.
Important: When storing your clay, do so in a plastic container. Do not use a tin of any type. The metal of the tin can contaminate the metal clay, even if it is wrapped.
Tip 2: how to Reconstitute Silver Clay
Dry clay can easily be reconstituted and made back into usable clay again.
Collect together unfired pieces that you've made and the dust from filing in a plastic container and when you have enough, it's time to reconstitute it and make it back into clay.
You can find a full video showing how to do this below. In the video, a coffee grinder is used (not used for coffee, just for this purpose) but a mortar and pestle can also be used to grind up the clay. Put the particles through a fine strainer and then mix in tap water. Leave for the water to permeate the clay and then it's ready to use again.
Tip 3: Keeping Your Syringe Clay Fresh
Syringe clay is great for doing fine work like filigree and it's also really good for filling in small cracks and dinks. Syringe clay has more binder in than normal clay so is also good to act like a glue to stick dried clay together.
When you first use the syringe you open up the sealed package so it will be fresh. However, you will likely want to keep it fresh, sometimes for years! The best way to do this is to get a jam jar or similar (one teacher I knew used children's painting water pots for this), fill it with water and put the syringe in with the tip facing down. As long as the open tip of the syringe is in water, the clay will stay fresh.
I have had syringes last for years like this. Just ensure you keep topping up the water so they don't dry out.
Tip 4: What To Do With Unwanted Fired Pieces
If you have fired pieces of silver you do not want, these cannot be reconstituted back into clay. But they can be sold as scrap silver and you can use the money you get to buy more clay (or whatever you like!).
Search for scrap metal recycling service and your country to find a good option. You can also ask for recommendations in the Jewellers Academy Facebook group.
You will often need to split up your pieces e.g. if you have sterling and fine silver. It's also advisable to remove any gemstones as scrap prices may be lower the harder it is for the merchant to deal with.
Metal clay is such a versatile material and there's always a way to start again if you need to!
I hope you learnt something new here. If you love metal clay then why not join our Metal Clay Club? Every month I send out useful information for metal clayers via email so if you would like more free tips, click the button below to join.