Wednesday, October 27, 2010

The materials we use.

I just did the math on the purchase of a rather interesting material. I do not work in this material. I have many friends that do. Here's a quote I found this morning from a friend on Face Book.
One mystery solved: PMC Pro, which will apparently be available next week, is 10% copper. At WLW, the launch price for a 25-g pack is $56. Looking forward to hearing what folks have to say about this metal clay.
Ok That means that the actual silver in this material is sold to the customer at a rate of $ 71.00 per troy ounce fine silver. The actual trading price of fine silver today is $23.50.   In other words the cost this material is almost 3 times the value of the metal.
I work in the metal using direct metal techniques.

5 comments:

  1. Pricey, but a lot of people use it and sell their work online. Perhaps for them, it's economical to pay more for the material than it is to invest in the metalsmithing equipment and education.

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  2. That's quite possible. I decided a long time ago to invest in my education and the tools necessary to work in an efficient manner. Thanks for your comment. I appreciate it.

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  3. There are some ideas that are easier to produce in silver clay, than in sheet.
    Now that I have been working with silver clay for a while, I am combining silver clay with fine silver, for best economy and effect..

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  4. What matters ultimately is the ability to transfer ideas into metal.

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  5. I'm thinking about giving it a whirl. Tim McCreight is giving a webinar on it over on Craftcast on Tuesday, Nov. 2nd. I am considering purchasing the download sometime next week.
    http://www.craftcast.com/pmc_pro.html
    I have never worked with PMC. It has never really appealed to me. However, this is supposed to be a much more versatile product, so we'll see. I can't attend the webinar because I have a cabbing workshop that night, and some chrysoprase that might need some attention ;-) Cheers!

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