Metal clay tips and tricks

While I was working last night, I realized that I've come up with lots of little tricks for working with PMC. I'm always thinking I should do some tutorials, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon so I thought I'd share some of my little tricks from time to time and hopefully they will help someone else.

I have a lot of designs that use domed circles, and no matter what I do, there is always some distortion in going from the Teflon square I work on to the doming ball (wooden spheres with a flat bottom I get at Beverly Crafts). And as anyone who works with metal clay knows, a little distortion in the pre-fired stage turns into a lot of distortion post firing. Argh! So I finally figured that once my distorted domes are dry, I can use a circle template and draw a circle on them, which shows me where I need to sand. No more distorted circles!