Silver Clay Q&A - This week's question is about playing cards!

A standard playing card is approximately 0.25 mm thick — and that makes it incredibly useful when we’re rolling out metal clay.

Place an equal number of cards on either side of your clay, then roll across the top.

The cards act as spacers, stopping your roller from going any further and giving you a wonderfully simple way to achieve a consistent thickness.

So:

1 card = approximately 0.25 mm

2 cards = approximately 0.5 mm

3 cards = approximately 0.75 mm

4 cards = approximately 1 mm

And so on. It’s one of those wonderfully low-tech solutions that does exactly what you need it to do.

There’s a lovely story that has been passed around the metal-clay community for years.

Back in the 1990’s when silver metal clay was still a relatively new material, specialist rolling frames and precision spacer sets weren’t nearly as readily available as they are today.

So what could you use to create a consistent thickness?

Playing cards.

They were inexpensive, easy to find, remarkably consistent in thickness, and — crucially — you could simply add or remove cards to change the thickness you were rolling to.

And somewhere along the way, this became one of those wonderfully ingenious metal clay studio traditions.

There is something very satisfying about taking an everyday object and discovering that it makes a surprisingly precise jewellery-making tool.