Polishing pieces

[Fire and Earth]

After longing for many months, I was able to recently take a silver clay class. Since I have worked extensively with porcelain, I knew how to roll out clay, add texture and cut out shapes. Unfortunately, this is about all we learned for our money in this class.

So, armed with my computer, I have found a wealth of knowledge but before embarking on my first solor piece, I still have a couple of questions about polishing my pieces after firing. I'd like to have a tumbler and my hubby has promised one for Christmas, but short of that, I figure I can use my Dremel.

Please excuse me if this sounds minor, but whatever is used for a final polishing to bring the piece to a mirror finish, whether is by hand with sand paper or using my Dremel with either the rubber polishing discs or flap wheel attachments, is this done dry, wet or with a polishing compound?

The information I have received from your forum is invaluable. I'll try to not make myself a pest but will be back to to ask questions I'm sure.

Thanks,
Carol

[RitaD]

I'll give you the best answer I can, and hopefully, Kurt will chime in when he has the chance.  
For a mirror finish, it will be easier to accomplish if you do some of the work before firing your piece.  Dry Sand your piece starting with 600 or 400 grit.  Brush off well and burnish. Then dry sand in a different direction with progressively finer grit, to remove the "scratches" you just made, brushing and burnishing in between each level, to about 1200 or 1500 grit.  
Then, after firing, you don't have to go back to the coarser grits, and you can wet sand, clean thoroughly, and burnish your piece, through a few fine grits.  After all that, a good rub with a polishing cloth should get you set.  
Kurt did suggest the rubber dremel bits to me, but I haven't located them yet, so I haven't been able to experiment with them.

[leezimmerley]

Three years ago, I expanded my silver clay jewelry sales to stores across the country - I make well over 2000 pieces a year - and because of that, I had to figure out a way to get a nice finish on my pieces with the least amount of time and energy.  

Here's what I do:  I use a Dremel tool (my first one just gave up yesterday after three years!) with a flex shaft attachment, and have an assortment of silicone polishing tips from Rio. I mostly use the black ones, and sand my hardened pieces with those.  Using the finer ones doesn't seem to make a difference in the long run.  Then I fire in a kiln, and tumble in rotary tumblers for at least 8 hours with Sunsheen and dish soap.  Oxidizing comes next, followed by a rinse off.  I use a balloon cloth wheel with my Dremel along with red rouge.  (You should have a dust collector for this as well - it gets all over!) That's followed by a quick scrub to get the rouge out of the cracks, and you should be good to go!  If there are still areas that aren't shiny enough for you for some reason, you can use a blue or green silicone tip to polish again, but I rarely need to do that.

Hope this helps you out!

[Metalman]

Every one's comments and details above are great so this is just to tweak some details.
The sequence Rita describes of working though successively finer grits of sand paper, and burnishing is the way to go. You need to do this before you fire and after you fire to get to a mirror finish. There are several things I use for final polishing.
A}-the 'Brilliant 'polishing cloth [R&T#  63-537] works great to give you a high polish after sanding your fired piece out. If you work really cleanly so no stray sanding grit gets into the cloth, you can get a high polish with this. I usually get a slightly less than mirror finish that I like a lot which I think of as a hand finish .
B}The are some polishing compounds you can buy - they all seem to come out of Germany; Simichrome and Wenol are 2 brand names. You can find these on the web/in auto finish stores and good model/paint/craft stores.  Sand out your piece and rub it down with one of these - works great [kind of stinky, may be materials shipping problems]
C} Using a Dremel/Ryobi/others hand tool, you can get rubber polishing wheels. Read the details - these usually come in sets with 4 grades of grit/polish. You again need to work through the sanding stages to the final polish. Your hand sanding will take care of the coarse grits in the wheels - then polish with the finer wheels. These are great for items with a lot of texture that you don't want to destroy with a lot of sanding.
D} traditional jewelers use 3 tools for polishing in addition to to the sanding sequencing we have discussed. A Flexshaft / a Wheel Buffer / a Tumbler.  You can sand out your work and put it in a tumbler with steel shot or a polishing medium and let it spin away while you do something else - great finish here especially if you have a lot of pieces. A wheel buffer is a large spinning motor that you put cotton/felt/leather buffs on and use polishing compounds like tripoli/rouge/etc to polish with.  A FlexShaft is a standard in the industry which the smaller dremel-type tools have tried to replicate. The main brand in the metalsmithing supply industry is Foredom - these are expensive. Try Harbor Freight for an inexpensive substitute
It will be important and helpful for you to work with and try out the methods and equipment you end up purchasing. It will take some effort/testing and experimenting to get your finishing methods down.
Questions - Bring them on