Thanks for the reply.  I have the Linda Darty book and am using it for a lot of information.  Books are my first go to for just about any endeavor.  The Chris Hierholzer tutorials are wonderful - clear and inspirational both!

Managed a moderate degree of success today working on combining colors on a copper leaf shape.  Fairly large and I'm reasonably pleased.  Not great art, but a step towards some degree of enameling success.

I'm open to hear about anyone else's favorite tools, additions, toys, whatever.

Thanks again!

Hi Rina, 

Sounds like you are off to a good start.  Some of the suppliers offer deals on sample packs of colors, and if you get on the phone, the different suppliers are very helpful in recommending products for different techniques.    Thompson's enamels sells a handbook that is helpful.  My Initial frustrations included having one color bubble up through another --which works to your advantage when you expect it.  Not all medium enamels melt or flow at the same temp.   The booklet will give you the flow temps and other info, and I mark the containers so I don't have to always look it up or get surprised.    I also melted a lot of cloisonné wire into copper in the beginning. Grrr.   There are several wonderful teachers of cloisonné if that is your direction.   Ricky Frank is an instructor that cut my learning curve quite a bit.  He focuses on cloisonné and shared good info on clarity and how he works with those pesky pinks, purples and reds.  Lots of other techniques yet to explore though….

Enjoy the journey,

M  

Rina, I think that you have just set a record for most questions in one post. . . ..

I too am a metalsmith (but I also have been doing glass fusion for years.  I have tried depletion gilding and I have not been happy with the results, and like you depletion gilding is something I do every day in the studio.  What I have found that works for me is to buy some fine silver commemorative coins, you can usually get these at around spot at a Gold and Silver Exchange, and then roll the coins out into fine silver sheet.  The scraps I keep separated from my sterling and when I have enough, I place the FS scraps on a charcoal block and melt them into a freeform ingot, that I then forge and roll down into yet another piece of sheet.  I generally use about 22 g for cloisonné.  Right now I'm working on a FS butterfly that I am going to do plaque a jour with.  It is about 16 g or so.  Never actually measured it.  cloisonné wire resembles bezel wire, except it is thinner and shorter.  You could use some narrow FS silver bezel wire if you wanted to.  You could make your own, but I just buy mine.  Don't use sterling for this, it will tarnish too much and you loose the white/silver back color for your enamels.  AND finally, you can use FS wire for cloisonné but you need to be aware of a serious problem in doing so.  When you have fine silver (really any silver, but especially fine silver) in a prolonged direct contact with copper when heating, as in melting the glass for the enamel, the two metals form a third metal on their own this is called Eutectic metal.  This alloy of copper and silver has the lowest possible meting point of any alloy of the two metals.  And to be blunt, it 1) is ugly and 2) will actually consume your silver cloisonné wire from the bottom up.  So what you need to do is first flux your copper sheet with Thompson 2030 (clear for copper).  And be careful that you do not over heat your metal so that the silver comes into direct contact with the copper.

The rest of your questions I'll let someone else answer.

I've spent much of this day exploring this site - amazing amount of beautiful things combined with a lot of information.

Although I'm a fairly experienced metalsmith I'm pretty new to enameling.  Have successfully done a few very basic things.  This is a huge stretch for me, as I've only come to anything at all artistic in more recent years and color is still a little terrifying.

  I have an assortment of enamels, both opaque and transparent, as well as clear, klyr fire, sifters, lots of copper shapes to work with, trivets, a stone, and probably a few other things as well. I'm torch firing since I have no kiln but have several torches.

Given that, I come to you with a couple primary questions.

 I'm going to want to use silver at some point.  I know I can depletion gild (I do it already for keum boo and reticulation), but having some fine silver on hand to work with makes sense too.  What gauge?  Fairly small pieces and I know about doming, fold forming or something to provide structure to thin metal, but am thinking that likely those layers of glass do a lot of that by themselves.  True?

Likewise, cloisonne wire.  Is it merely very thin flattened fine silver?  Would I just take regular fine silver wire and run it through the rolling mill?  Or better to simply buy some?  I've seen copper cloisonne wire - doesn't it oxidize like mad?  I'm figuring to use silver wire on copper base.  Any reason not to?

I also see among your gallery pictures (amazing!) that some folks are using what looks to me like filigree wire as dividers.  Filigree wire would be sterling and have issues with oxidation, so perhaps it's twisted fine silver that's been rolled???

Last question for this moment - if I want to play, and have fun, and not make myself too crazy, what else do I want in the way of toys?  Frankly the websites such as Thompson don't tell a lot about what the auxiliary supplies do or how to use them.  Since I'm color phobic to begin with, I want to be able to just play with stuff.  But I'd also appreciate suggestions of any basic supplies you think I likely don't have.  

Thanks so much!

Rina