Modeling clay question

General_Grievous · Post by **General_Grievous** » Tue May 17, 2005 6:55 pm

Hey all,

What kind of clay or material do professionals modelers use when working on figure prototypes? Do these materials cure rock solid?

Thanks,

GG

philp · Post by **philp** » Tue May 17, 2005 7:05 pm

Most of the sculpters I have read use a product called Sculpey or Super Sculpey. You sculpt it and then fire it in your oven. You can keep adding to it and refire it.
Another product I have heard of is DAS Pronto. This one air dries but you don't get as long to work the piece.

General_Grievous · Post by **General_Grievous** » Tue May 17, 2005 9:49 pm

philp wrote:Most of the sculpters I have read use a product called Sculpey or Super Sculpey. You sculpt it and then fire it in your oven. You can keep adding to it and refire it.
Another product I have heard of is DAS Pronto. This one air dries but you don't get as long to work the piece.

Thank you!

GG

Joseph C. Brown · Post by **Joseph C. Brown** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:19 pm

Several of us on this board are addicted to Magic Sculpt:

http://www.magicsculp.com

The working time various with thickness of the material mixed (thinner, slower cure, thick, cures faster), and your environment (hot, faster, cold, slower). But the average time for me is 4 or so hours.... which is darned long. Total curing time averages 10-12 hours for me... air cures, no heating in oven.

Give it a try; or Aves Apoxie Sculpt, almost identical properties.
http://www.avesstudio.com/Products/Apox ... culpt.html

TB2 · Post by **TB2** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 12:22 pm

Anyone tried Kneadatite? How's it compare to Magicsculp?

haywire · Post by **haywire** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:29 pm

I have heard used...

magicscupt
sculpey
aves
kneaditite
"green stuff" which I believe is GW remarketted kneaditite
milliput

d_coombes · Post by **d_coombes** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 3:11 pm

I use green stuff (kneadatite) and milliput. They are very different.
Green stuff is a bit like chewing gum. Its quite stiff and rubbery to work with. It can be very sticky initally. If so letting it rest for 5 minutes before working with it can help. Use water to keep your tools wet. Its quite expensive and its best for small organic jobs... its what most sculptors use to make the original sculpts for 30mm wargames figures.

Milliput is grainier and can also be quite sticky at first. However it can be thinned and smoothed with water and its much harder when set so its better if you want to sand and file afterwards. In England milliput is dirt cheap, but in the States its horribly expensive.

The cool thing about both these materials ( and magicsculpt I would think) its that as they harden their characteristics change.. this means you can refine the details you've added as they harden. This does mean you have to work to their schedule and not the other way around...

Both these materials take a bit of getting to know before you can achieve good results...

With things like fimo and sculpey... it has one consistency and doesn't change much over time until you fire it... which you may or may not like...
Having to fire fimo/sculpy is a big disadvantage is you want to do mixed media with anything that will melt... ie styrene... so milliput and green stuff are better for modifying model figures generally.

Dave

DaveJames · Post by **DaveJames** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 3:35 pm

I'll have to try that Magicsculpt. I've been sculpting all my life with regular old clay, and when I tried Sculpey it was just too slick and sticky and weird. I like to work fast, and it's hard to work fast with that stuff (you have to knead it to death first, for one thing). Or maybe I just need more practice. lol

d_coombes · Post by **d_coombes** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 5:20 pm

You need a pasta machine.... its a couple of rollers and crank.
You feed sculpy in one end and sheets of sculpy come out the other end...
If you feed the sculpy through a couple of times its ready for use...
You can also use the machine to make thin sheets of sculpy.
Daev

Shinnentai · Post by **Shinnentai** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:28 am

DaveJames wrote:I'll have to try that Magicsculpt. I've been sculpting all my life with regular old clay, and when I tried Sculpey it was just too slick and sticky and weird. I like to work fast, and it's hard to work fast with that stuff (you have to knead it to death first, for one thing). Or maybe I just need more practice. lol

More practice. If you want to. I use sculpy a lot, though like you I was weaned on water clays and plastaline. It requires some adaptation in ones technique, but the very properties you lament offer neat advantages once you know how to work with it instead of against it. It's a lateral transition: it's not any more difficult to work with, it just requres a different technique in places. Some people consider the learning curve thing a disadvantage, I don't: I figure it's always prefferable to have a broader range of skills.

Sculpy's biggest advantage is that you can choose when it cures. A big thing for me because I can rarely afford to do the whole job in one sitting. 20 minutes here, 10 minutes there is the best I usually get, and so it pays for me to have a medium that'll stay workable untill I decide otherwise.

D_coombs is right on about the pasta maker. That'll reduce your kneading time to less than it actually takes to mix epoxy putty. Another great tool to have is a butane pen torch, which can be played like an airbrush to spot cure very specific areas of a sculpt.

In difference to d-coombs though, mixed media work w/ sculpy is not a problem. Resin and metal do fine at the "normal" curing temps. Sculpy CAN be used with styrene by baking for longer times at a much lower temperature (lower than will soften the styrene). I actually use leftover sprue as armature material these days, as it bonds to the clay better than wire, and does not differ significantly in its flexiblty from cured sculpy. Metal wire is strong, but it flexes too much, and so doesn't protect the cured sculpy from breakadge as effectively as one would expect.

The idea that sculpy does not have a range of working consistancies (like epoxy putty as it cures) is untrue also. Sculpy responds to teperature and to being worked. When working in a warm room, for instance, the sculpy will exhibit a softer consistancy. If one desires something firmer, a short stay in the fridge will harden it up. Put it in the freezer for five minutes, and the result is like epoxy putty on the very last legs of it's working time. The advantage here is that the change is not permanent, so you can go back and forth to work on seperate areas, or in stage progressions not possible with epoxy.

Sculpy's biggest real disadvantage is that it is significantly less durable than epoxy putty when cured. To be honest, I have a bit of a durabilty fetish, and so if it weren't for the epoxy putties' set window of workability, I'd probably preffer them too.