Silver Clay Ring Tutorial: Make Your Own Fine Silver Ring

The first ring I made with silver clay was slightly too small, the join was visible if you knew where to look, and I'd rushed the drying. It held together fine. It was solid fine silver. I still have it.

This is the full process, start to finish. I'm going to tell you where things actually go wrong, because that's more useful than a tutorial that pretends nothing ever does.

What you'll need

The RingLab kit has everything except a butane canister, which you pick up separately at a hardware store for three or four dollars. Same canister as a kitchen torch. Don't buy the big one, the small camping size is fine.

From the kit you'll be using the clay itself, the ring sizer, the wooden mandrel (wooden specifically, not metal, it matters for heat later), the acrylic support, the sculpting knife, two grits of sandpaper, the wire brush, the polish tool, the ceramic burn board, and the burner attachment.

Two things to set out before you open the clay. A small dish of oil, for your fingers. And a small cup of water, for smoothing the join and rescuing clay that starts to dry. You will need both and you don't want to be hunting for them with clay already going off on your hands.

The size thing, before anything else

Silver clay shrinks about 12% when it fires. The ring you shape is not the ring you'll end up with. This is the single fact that causes the most first-timer problems, and it's not complicated once you know it.

Use the ring sizer to find your actual size. Then add three full sizes. That's the size you'll be working to on the mandrel. If your finger is a 7, you shape at 10. Write that number down somewhere you can see it. Mid-session is a bad time to try to remember it.

Shaping the band

Once the clay is out of the packaging, you have about 10 to 15 minutes before the surface starts drying. Work at a normal pace, not rushed, but don't stop to take photos until the ring is on the mandrel.

Oil your fingers first. Then roll about 4 grams into a log on the acrylic support. Turn it slowly, apply even pressure, and aim for something roughly the diameter of a thick pencil. If it starts cracking as you roll, a fingertip dipped in water and 30 seconds of working it back in fixes it. This happens to almost everyone at least once. It's not a sign you're doing it wrong.

When the log is long enough to wrap around the mandrel at your target size, lay it against the mandrel at that mark and overlap the ends by about 5mm. Cut through both layers at once with the sculpting knife, at a slight angle rather than straight across. The angle gives you a mitered join that sits flush when pressed together. Press the ends together firmly, then smooth the join with a wet fingertip until you can't feel where it is.

It doesn't need to be invisible right now. It needs to be solid. You'll sand it after drying.

If you want texture, this is the moment. Pressing into wet clay gives you a clean transfer. Pressing into clay that's started to dry gives you cracks. Whatever you're using, press it straight down and lift it cleanly. Coins work. Fabric works. The bottom of a ring you already own works and the result looks better than you'd expect. A woman in one of our early sessions pressed a piece of window screen mesh into her clay and the finished ring looked like something from a jewelry counter. It was her first one.

Leave the ring on the mandrel while it dries. Trying to slide it off while it's still wet just distorts the shape.

Drying is the step people rush

Moisture inside the clay when you fire it becomes steam. Steam cracks the piece. Every single time. Not sometimes. Every time. There's no recovering a ring that cracks during firing.

Air drying takes 30 to 60 minutes. A hair dryer on low cuts that to around 10 or 15. Keep the dryer moving so you're not blasting one spot. Both methods work equally well.

The spoon test: take a cold metal spoon and press it against the ring for three seconds. If condensation forms on the spoon when you lift it away, the clay has moisture in it and isn't ready. No condensation means you're good. This takes literally three seconds and has saved a lot of rings.

Before firing, slide the dry ring off the mandrel and sand the join and any rough spots. Coarse grit first to level things out, then fine grit to smooth. The join should disappear under your fingertip. If you can still feel a ridge, keep sanding.

Firing

Set the ceramic burn board on a stable surface and put the ring flat on it. The board is what takes the heat, so you do not need a tile or a firebrick under it. Keep the area around it clear of anything that can catch.

Light the torch and hold the flame about 1 to 1.5 inches from the ring. Move it in slow circles. In the first 20 or 30 seconds you'll see smoke. That's the binder burning off. It's normal and it passes quickly.

After the smoke, you're watching for an even orange-red glow across the whole surface. Not the orange-white that means too hot. Not yellow. Orange-red. When you have that evenly across the whole ring, keep the flame moving and count 90 seconds.

If one side glows before the other, slow down over the cooler side. Uneven glow usually just means the flame has been spending more time in one place. It's not a problem with the clay.

After 90 seconds, pull the flame away. Let the ring cool on the board for about 10 minutes. It holds heat much longer than it looks like it does. If you're impatient, dropping it into a bowl of cold water cools it in seconds and that's fine for a plain band. Skip the water if the ring is heavily textured or has a stone set in it, since the sudden temperature change can cause micro-cracks.

After the torch goes off

The ring is white.

This is the part nobody warns you about and it shocks people every time. It looks like something went wrong. Nothing went wrong. It's a thin layer of fine silver oxide that forms as the metal cools in air. The silver underneath is fine. The white layer comes off in about 30 seconds with the wire brush.

Brush with firm strokes. Silver comes through. Keep going until the white layer is gone across the whole surface. The ring won't look polished yet. It'll look like matte silver. That's right.

Polish

The polish tool has a curved burnishing tip. Hold the ring against something solid and press the tip into the surface, then push with short overlapping strokes. You're compressing the silver, not scrubbing it. Where you've burnished, the surface goes bright immediately. You can see the difference in real time.

Go over the whole band: the face, the sides, the inside. Five minutes for a passable finish. Ten for a mirror. For textured rings, work the raised surfaces only and leave the recessed areas matte. The contrast does more for the design than polishing everything flat.

What actually goes wrong

The join is the most common problem area. A crack at the join either during drying or after firing almost always comes from the same place: the ends weren't pressed together firmly enough, or you didn't work the join smooth with a wet fingertip. If you catch it before firing you can wet the join and press it closed again. After firing there's nothing to do.

The ring being too small is the most predictable mistake. Someone shapes at their actual size, the ring fires, it's three sizes small. The fix is knowing about the shrinkage before you start, which you do now. Add three sizes. Every time.

Dull finish after polishing usually means the wire brush step got skipped or rushed. If you burnish over the white oxide layer it won't come up bright. Go back to the wire brush, clear the surface properly, then burnish.

The surface looking rough or pitted after firing. Usually comes down to the drying step. Either the clay had a tiny air pocket, or there was more moisture in it than the spoon test caught because the test was done too early. Do the spoon test, wait five more minutes, do it again.

None of these problems waste the silver. Reconstituted clay is the same clay. The learning is fast. Most people who redo their first ring get the second one right, and the second one is noticeably better.