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FINISHING Once you've fired your precious metal clay piece you will notice it has a fine white finish, and what you need to do now is flatten and smooth it out to close the surface, and get that beautiful silver shine. This is called finishing or burnishing, and there are several ways you can do this depending on the finish you are after. BRUSHING ~ Using a stainless steel or brass scratch brush and a little soapy water, start brushing and within a minute you'll see a shine start to come through, keep gently brushing until you achieve the finish you want. Brushing gives a soft satin look to the silver, you can either leave it like this, or continue with the options below. TUMBLING~ If you want a shinier finish you will have to keep polishing with something to remove the scratches that create the satin finish, and the easiest way is to use a tumbler with mixed shape steel shots, water and a burnishing fluid. Pop your piece (or pieces) in and tumble for anything between 30 minutes to 6 hours. Check your pieces every 30 minutes or so to see if you have reached the shine you are after. The tumbling will also harden your metal. HAND POLISH ~ You don't need a tumbler to achieve a brilliant shine, polishing by hand will give just as good a finish. You'll need a set of fine grit polishing paper (From 600 to 1200 or 2000 grit) or sanding pads, keep a small bowl of water next to you to keep the paper wet, and rinse the paper and the piece regularly to keep them clean. Start with the coarsest grit, probably something like a 600 grit, wet the paper or pad and rub the surface evenly in one direction, left to right for example. When the surface is evenly polished with this paper, and you can't see any sharp scratches or marks, repeat the process using the next grade of paper, but this time sand across the direction you used for the previous grit, in this example, up and down only. By using each grade of paper in a different direction you can see when you have removed all the marks of the previous grit. Keep polishing until the marks from the previous grit have disappeared. Then, using 1200 or 2000 grit paper or pad, sand the piece in small circles, keep sanding until the surface looks smooth, then rinse the piece well and dry it. To finish, put a small amount of silver polish on a polishing cloth and rub the piece, finishing with a clean, dry cloth and your piece should have a really professional and beautiful mirror finish. BURNISHING
~ Burnishing means to rub your piece with a very smooth metal or stone
burnisher, it could even be the back of a spoon or similar smooth
surface.. This will also harden the piece and really brings out the
shine, but it is important to keep your burnisher smooth as any scratches
on the surface will create scratches on your piece.
Only burnish on surfaces
which are smooth, with no scratches or marks, burnishing won't remove
scratches, it will only flatten them slightly, so file and sand the
surface first if needed.
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