"How does Sculpy hold up for making props?" Topic

I was cleaning out some drawers the other day and found a whole set of Sculpy modeling clay. My wife bought it a while back and found she doesn't really like sculpting, so it wound up in a drawer.

Of course, that got me thinking… are there any little bric-a-brac or doohickies I could make to enhance my Wild West Towns or Pulp City? I mean, of course, just one-off props. I wouldn't be interested in castin or mass producing these.

Anyone know how durable and useful this stuff is for props and little things? Honestly, I have no idea what I'm thinking of making, but the stuff is just sitting there…

If Sculpey is like Fimo, then it's fairly useful for making props and other bits of detritus. I've used it in the past for making things like wardrobes, coffins and chest. One thing I've found is, once you've put it through the oven, you can sculpt on finer details using on it by using green stuff or milliput.

My advice is, experiment and have some fun! Hope this helps,

Viv

Sculpy is a lot like Fimo, from what I've heard. You also nailed it on the head — I'm thinking of making a few small pieces of furniture, and maybe even a safe for the bank and the saloon. I've got two adventures that call for a safe, and it's about high time I got one (instead of just using a black die).

I sculpt primarily in Sculpey. From what I have heard, it is less sticky than green stuff, but I know for a fact that is holds great detail.

Using a dental pick, I have sculpted wooden crates, rock formations, bones, bricks, bottles, boxes, etc., all in 28mm. The secret is working it to the right consistency (softer when worked with a lot, firms up if left standing a while). I have also sculpted buildings for 10mm in high detail. It will certainly hold fine features, and stand up to RTV silicon molds. My only warning is that thin sections do become brittle after breaking, especially if you are squeezing them out of molds.

Hi again,

Maybe you could make the safe with all it's incised lines (representing the gaps between the doors etc) in Sculpey ad then do the finer details such as the hinges and handles after firing using the green?

I've seen some 10mm Roman Milecastles on the web that someone had made out of Sculpey. He had made mutliple casts of them in resin and they did look good. Was that you, Yonderboy?

The plain white classic Sculpey is soft, crumbly, and doesn't hold small detail all that well.

Super Sculpey (the pinkish-flesh stuff) holds detail a lot better (especially if you leave it in the fridge for a while before taking tools to it), but it's brittle and isn't that great for small parts.

Sculpey III is sort of in the middle, somewhere between Classic and Super in terms of properties. It comes in a lot of colors as well.

Sculpey Premo is the best of the lot…it takes and holds small details better, is much tougher after baking, and is better for small parts than the other two types.

I don't have as much experience with Fimo, but I recall it being tougher and far less squishy with tools than Classic or Super Sculpey.

-Mel (a closet Sculpey fan since the early 1990s)

Sculpey II will hold up (after baking as per directions) to normal handling for small to medium items esp. if there are no fiddly bits. Try some and see.

For larger structures expect some shrinkage. Using a form of sculpting the parts separately may be advisable in that case.

The best sculpy is a product called Promat ( for professional material) You have to direct order it from the makers of Sculpy but it is worth it. It takes a bit more work to get it soft enough to start sculpting with but once it is ready the detail is fantastic. The Sea Dragon that Neotacha is so fond of that I made for Flagship Games was sculpted using Promat.

whitemanticore: "The best sculpy is a product called Promat ( for professional material) You have to direct order it from the makers of Sculpy but it is worth it. It takes a bit more work to get it soft enough to start sculpting with but once it is ready the detail is fantastic. The Sea Dragon that Neotacha is so fond of that I made for Flagship Games was sculpted using Promat."

How's Promat compare to Premo? I'm a big fan of Premo, but I'm still looking for something a bit stiffer than Premo, with even less give or squish when tooling. Would Promat fit that bill?

-Mel

I've never Sculpey Premo or Promat… how does the price compare with Super Sculpey (about $9 USD a box at Michaels)?

K

*seen or heard of* Sculpey Premo…

My thoughts on assorted polyclays are available here:

link

In general I'd stay away from plain sculpey for anything but terrain. It's very soft (bad for using tools due to stretching and tearing vice cutting) and requires serious armature work for anything vaguely 3-d. It can be rebaked, so 1 layer can be done as an armature and then fine detail can be added and baked again.

Kitchenwolf, I gotta take exception to some of your commentary on that page. I don't know where you learned to work with polymer clays, but the Super Sculpey and Premo commentary indicates user inexperience rather than a product fault.

Sculpey is composed of PVC particles and an oil-based binder. Greasiness is one indication that your Super Sculpey needs to be kneaded and conditioned in order to evenly redistribute the binder and particles throughout the lump. If it remains greasy after conditioning, leaving it out in open air for a few hours will sort it out.

Some people actually roll their Super Sculpey flat and sandwich it between sheets of paper to leach out excess binder, which is one way to make it stiffer. If Super Sculpey is dry and crumbly, a drop or two of Sculpey diluent kneaded into it will have the Super Sculpey as good as new in short order.

I don't know why you seem remarkably exercised over Premo being crumbly…you aren't supposed to just tear off a piece and start working it. You're supposed to knead and condition ALL polymer clays before working them, or the binder and particles won't be evenly distributed throughout the lump you're working.

Conditioned pieces also fire better and retain the intended properties far better than unconditioned pieces.

Also, Premo doesn't cure into a rubbery vinyl-like stuff…Superflex does. Premo bakes very hard, and is more resistant to bending stress than Sculpey Classic, Super Sculpey, and Sculpey III. So you've either confused Premo with Superflex in your commentary, or you're not properly conditioning your Premo, or you're underbaking your Premo.

The pasta roller thing also isn't some sleazebag marketing trick either…that trick has been around for ages, and is used by those "middle aged women who would otherwise do macrame" for that exact purpose. You can also do all kinds of interesting things with a pasta roller beyond just conditioning the clay.

-Mel (a not-so-middle-aged man who would otherwise do macrame)

venusboys: "I've never Sculpey Premo or Promat… how does the price compare with Super Sculpey (about $9 USD USD a box at Michaels)?

K"

Premo and Promat are quite a bit more expensive than the other kinds of Sculpey. As far as I can tell, Promat's really hard to find and Premo is supposedly a replacement for it, according to the manufacturer (Polyform).

Here's a link for Premo, courtesy of Dick Blick:

dickblick.com/zz323/34

-Mel

MelEbbles I've not had a chance to work with Premo and from what you have stated Polyform may be deciding to drop Promat. Which I hope they do not. I have not ordered any in a long time having gotten two cases many years ago when I thought I was going to be doing a vast amount of sculpting. So I still have a good many bricks. I do not even know how the shelf life is on the stuff. But so far no problems. You do need to knead the promat quite a bit before it is soft enough to work with. But I have found that it works very well and holds detail. It is best to knead small amounts about the size of a golf ball ( and will save on hand cramps) then combind the balls of promat as you build up to doing larger pieces.

One warning after you have baked your sculpture and if you are not planning on making a mold of it that once you have painted it do not seal it with any kind of spray sealer. Brush on a matt, satin, or gloss acrylic medium to protect your miniature. The chemicals in the promat or any of the sculpey products react to the chemicals in spray airesol sealers. Bascially the figure will develop a sticky tacky layer that will ruin the sculpt.

Turns out I've got Sculpy III. A 12-pack in multicolors, including a large brick of white. It also has a two plastic sculpting tools.

As I said, my wife bought these a while back and hardly used them, so no they're mine to adapt for gaming. Now, I just need to get some ideas…

Probably tables, the safe, and stuff like that. As far as the safe goes, I doubt I'll actually go into a huge amount of detail on the hinges and stuff. My biggest concern is the handle, dial, and I would love to make curved feet, but am pretty sure they'll just be plain.

whitemanticore: Thanks for the warnings about the sealants.

MelEbbles: Thanks for the tip about Sculpy Conditioner. Very useful info. The stuff I have has been stored in a cool, dark drawer for about two years. But most of it is still in th original, unopened platic wrap and it has some "give" when I press on it. Nevertheless, I suspect I may need some conditioner. Also, thanks for the info about the importance of kneading and mixing it all together.

Gracias to all!

mmitchell: "Turns out I've got Sculpy III. A 12-pack in multicolors, including a large brick of white. It also has a two plastic sculpting tools."

That stuff's fun-I used to make my own nonscale Star Wars minis out of it. They were roughly 1/32 scale, I think, and I built them over a wire armature using different colors of Sculpey III. (Did 'em to go with the WEG RPG I bought back in the 90s.)

mmitchell: "Probably tables, the safe, and stuff like that. As far as the safe goes, I doubt I'll actually go into a huge amount of detail on the hinges and stuff. My biggest concern is the handle, dial, and I would love to make curved feet, but am pretty sure they'll just be plain."

Get some dowels and a brayer or small rolling pin. The dowels are *very* useful for making slabs of uniform thickness. If you find dowels in the desired thickness for the table, lay two of them to the left and right of a small lump of Sculpey III, and roll the brayer along the dowels so that the Sculpey is flattened between the dowels. You'll end up with an uniformly thick slab. Do this on top of a small square of aluminum foil…this way, you can bake the slab immediately without having to peel it off the work surface.

If you need to do detailed texture work, you may want to leave the preshaped Sculpey III in the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then do any texturing when it's nice and firm. Toothpicks, needles, and other things are useful for texturing Sculpey.

Also, whenever I need to add small details like hinges and stuff, I bake in stages. Do the largest shape first, then bake it. Add smaller details one at a time, then bake again. Keeps the dreaded Finger of Doom from obliterating detail!

If you need precise mechanical shapes, all you have to do is make the rough shape first. Bake that, then gently sand, carve, or file it down to the correct dimensions. This is how I get sharp mechanical edges.

I also recommend using a dedicated oven. I bought one of these from Dick Blick a month or so ago, and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen:

dickblick.com/zz742/39

I bought it because I don't have room in my "office" for the dedicated toaster oven I normally use, and my wife hates the smell of baking Sculpey in the kitchen. This glorified Easy-Bake oven can be used in the office room since it has a small footprint.

I haven't used it yet, though-I still need to buy the light bulb for it. A toaster oven (and an oven thermometer that will fit into it) is the usual solution.

mmitchell: "MelEbbles: Thanks for the tip about Sculpy Conditioner. Very useful info. The stuff I have has been stored in a cool, dark drawer for about two years. But most of it is still in th original, unopened platic wrap and it has some "give" when I press on it. Nevertheless, I suspect I may need some conditioner. Also, thanks for the info about the importance of kneading and mixing it all together."

Sounds like it's still fresh to me. Hope you have as much fun with it as I do!

-Mel

MelEbbles – it's generally considered impolite to attack as incompetent someone that you happen to disagree with. I'm quite capable of working an oven, and my Premo was certainly cured. It's a hard vinyl, identical in properties to cured Fimo (which it's intended to compete with) or cured Kato. It bends before it breaks (tears, actually, and a fair amount of force is required to do either) and has a fairly good "memory", returning to its original shape if it doesn't tear. It doesn't stretch. Destructive testing is the one of the first things one should do with a new sculpting medium because it saves you a LOT of frustration later on. Plus it's fun. As to my dislike of its difficulty of conditioning: both competing products, which yield identical results, require a great deal less in the way of being beaten into submission before actual sculpting starts.

whitemanticore – I'll second that bit about spray sealers. The sculpts aren't permanently ruined though – a coat of thinned PVA (I use Ceramcoat matte sealer, just so I know the proportions are in the "dries clear" zone) will eliminate the stickiness.

mmitchell – best way to get legs on that safe will be to sculpt it lying on its top with the legs in the air like a dead beetle – use a wooden block or a die or something as a square armature. I'd recommend against tables or any other long shape with less than a 1/4" cross section (the legs will snap right off), but a bar would work fine, as would horse troughs, barrels, or a player piano. Aluminum foil is good for armatures – it's not just about saving material, there are even-curing issues when the stuff gets too thick. I second the importance of sculpting on your baking surface – I often turn my baking dish (I have one reserved for polyclay) upside down so that the sides don't interfere with my tools.

Kitchenwolf: "MelEbbles – it's generally considered impolite to attack as incompetent someone that you happen to disagree with."

You said "incompetent", I said "inexperienced".

Disagree with? I'm sorry, but we're talking about stuff that has consistent and predictable physical properties in both its baked and unbaked states, and what you said in the reviews simply doesn't jive with my experience. If I said milk was purple with orange marbled whorls, tasted like fermented onions, and was the consistency of sweaty Jell-O, I'm sure someone else would beg to differ.

It's all in how you worded the reviews-they read the same to me as a review that complains that blue-yellow Kneadatite sucks because the yellow component on its own is worthless for sculpting, and which then calls the manufacturer lying dirtbags for having the temerity to suggest that the yellow should be kneaded with the blue before sculpting.

I know it's a stupid example, yes, but I'm trying to illustrate how silly the review sounded to me.

Kitchenwolf: "I'm quite capable of working an oven, and my Premo was certainly cured. It's a hard vinyl, identical in properties to cured Fimo (which it's intended to compete with) or cured Kato."

Sure, but that's not what you said in the review. You said it was crumbly and baked into a rubbery vinyl like that used for prepainted plastic miniatures, which is pretty damned soft. That has never been my experience with Premo…Sculpey III is much closer to that description after baking.

Kitchenwolf: "It bends before it breaks (tears, actually, and a fair amount of force is required to do either) and has a fairly good "memory", returning to its original shape if it doesn't tear. It doesn't stretch. Destructive testing is the one of the first things one should do with a new sculpting medium because it saves you a LOT of frustration later on. Plus it's fun."

Again, you didn't say that in your review. This is what you said:

"Sculpey Premo: The sculpey website claims that this is easy to work with no crumbling. Yeah, right. And a robot is "your plastic pal who's fun to be with". This is the only polyclay that I've encountered that actually is crumbly. Even the lying dirtbags in the sculpey marketing department admit that it's best to run this stuff through an industrial pasta maker to make it workable. The good news is that you can really improve your grip strength and get lots of practice with steel sculpting tools (it actually cuts instead of smooshing) when you do use it. This cures into a rubbery vinyl substance not unlike the material used for WizKids Clix figures."

There you go. Complaining about it being crumbly is just plain odd-it's not crumbly after conditioning. So if you're basing your review solely on its pre-sculpting properties, that's like dissing hot cocoa because it's a powder.

On the flip side, if you're basing your allegations of crumbliness on its properties during sculpting, then your Premo hasn't been conditioned or needs a drop of diluent to reconstitute the binder and PVC mix.

And, furthermore, if it's soft and rubbery like a Clix figure after baking, then it's underbaked, pure and simple. Get an oven thermometer and adjust the baking time for altitude if necessary.

Kitchenwolf: "As to my dislike of its difficulty of conditioning: both competing products, which yield identical results, require a great deal less in the way of being beaten into submission before actual sculpting starts."

I don't find Premo all that hard to condition. I've run into plasticine that was initially just as hard, and sometimes even harder to knead and shape when making two-part molds. I find it helps to work with smaller cubes of the stuff, rather than trying to squish the whole block at once.

-Mel