Victory !!!

Yesterday I took the challenge to fire two big and heavy rings made with FastFire BRONZclay.

Because of past experiences and testings with this clay, my firing schedule this time was different.

I programed my kiln for fast ramp up to 1550F and hold it there for 3 hours.

As you can see in the picture, the total firing time was 3:27.

I let the kiln cool down to 250F and took the pieces out of the pot.

I always do this part of the process very carefully because I do not want to break any pieces that may not have sintered. 

As I suspected, only the small pieces (faces) sintered perfectly and my two big rings did not. I noticed the difference in the shrinkage.

I was not disappointed because I was expecting this to happen. 

Sometimes when I put big pieces with smaller ones in the same pot, the bigger ones do not sinter. I always question why this was happening and Yesterday the wonderful artist Hadar Jacobson talked about this issue in her blog. I will do what she suggested and see how that works for me.

For the second firing of the rings I decided to change the holding time only for 2:30 instead of three hours. 

The firing time was 2:57 minutes in total.

This time the two rings were perfectly sintered, with no problems at all.

 This ring was the one that I thought will have a bigger risk of not being a successful firing, because the top part of the ring has a lot of clay and it is very heavy.  

 I am happy with this ring, but next time I will think of a better way to use less clay on the top.

It is a heavy ring to wear, but I can manage it !!! ;-)

 This ring was very fun to make and I love the way it ended up looking. 

The band is very wide but it is comfortable to wear.

One thing I noticed too is that I do not need to go 3 numbers up in the size of the ring. 

If I add only 2.5 sizes up it will be a good fit after the shrinkage.

 "The most essential factor is persistence- the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by discouragement that must inevitable come."  

~ James Whitcomb Riley