Journal entry for September 24, 2001

Today's summary: Gold luster and enamel for PMC silver.

I got some cool stuff to play with. It's 24 karat gold luster. (Ouch, expensive.) Have you ever seen gold edges on fancy china? This is the same liquid they use to make that effect. So, I can paint it on my silver PMC jewelry, and basically gold-plate it right there in the kiln, without any funky electrochemical baths... *IF* this works out the way I expect. I'm testing it tonight, and I'll post the results in my journal tomorrow.

And with that gold luster, I could theoretically paint a design on silver (like say... a fossil fish), and then fire it, and then dunk it in acid so the silver goes black. But the gold should stay gold. Muaahahah.

I'm also going to try something new -- cut a hole in the middle of a piece of silver clay, fill it with frit (glass bits slightly larger than salt grains), and then see if I can fire it so the glass sinters and fills the hole. If it works, then I can make "stained glass" type effects, with silver as the leading. This would be IDEAL for insect wings.

I also picked up some blue and black enamel, I'll slap some of that on there too and see how it all turns out.

The main issue that I anticipate is this: in contact with silver, glass tends to yellow. That's actually how they make yellow stained glass, by exposing it to silver nitrate. As I understand it... for medieval stained glass windows, the yellow glass was especially expensive as a result. I'm doing my test with blue glass and blue enamel, so, we'll see just how green it gets.

The only other issue that I imagine might come into play is that PMC is naturally porous. It might suck up all these enamels and lusters and leave me with nothing obvious on the surface. Only time and testing will tell.