"Looking for a sculpting material" Topic

Is there a sculpting material that stays workable until baked (or otherwise cured at leisure) like super sculpy, but can be vulcanised?

Milliput, Green stuff or Procreate putty all cure at room temperature. I prefer Procreate but Green Stuff is also popular.

Thanks, but they have a restricted work time.

I mean something that can be manipulated on and off indefinitely, until you purposely cure it. Like polymer clays, such as super sculpy.

Perhaps using part a or b of milliput, then thinning the other part to a liquid and giving it a soak once ready?? May work??

Or bake one part of epoxy to cure it. Milliput, or example often gets hard edges, so heat alone may harden it??

You could use pottery clay of porcelain.

Either can be kept workable by storing with sufficient humidity. Of coarse you would need a kiln to fire them, and they do distort and shrink a bit.

Or use RTV silicone (room temperature vulcanizing). It is two part and cures rather soft, but very stretchy.

I have vulcanized FIMO, but it does burn and crack, so one does loose the original in the process.

Super sculpy will remain workable until baked. However… It remains soft until you bake it, which means you might accidently mush up your detail if you mishandle your mini. Also, getting soft sculpy to stick to baked sculpy is problematic (for me anyway. YMMV…)

For a cheaper option of sculpting putty, go to your local auto/hardware store and look for "gas tank repair kit". It should have 2 ribbons of epoxy putty (it's the same as the "brown stuff" sold for sculpting.)

The key to sculpting is to do small parts of sculpting at a time, letting it set before continuing so's you don't mess up what you've already sculpted. You'll get better and faster with practice… ;-)

"I have vulcanized FIMO, but it does burn and crack, so one does loose the original in the process."

Ok. But do you get a perfect mould from it?

I was thinking super sculpy, baking it, is then cleaning it up and doing fine details with epoxy.

Perhaps, if I knew how to he super sculpy may break up, I could cut some channels and fill with epoxy to help hold it together. May act like a roll cage.

Also how different is Fimo to super sculpy once baked?

TMP link

Found this.

Still doesn't say if you get a mould out of it.

Hello "The H Man"

You fail to speak to what type object you want make a mold of.
If it is at all complex, like a figure, I suggest you strongly consider RTV. See a detail wright up here (I lost the link, but your find of an on TMP item gave it back to me).
link

I did get a fine mold using FIMO as the master and typical vulcanized rubber for the mold.
My objects were rather simple without limbs. I also use great care to prepare the molding rubber to carve out a close match to the size and shape of the masters. I suspect the FIMO will soften and potentially distort when heated to vulcanizing temperatures.

The various polymer clays should be very similar. So Sculpey should work the same as FIMO etc., avoid the translucent types or the flexible types.

Now, if you just use the polymer clay as the core of your sculp. (coat it all around in epoxy) I would think it would work like solid epoxy for the most part. Even full epoxy sculpts often crack and crumble when vulcanized. I do not suspect it would be very different with polymer clay inside.

If you really need the master back after the first mold, I suggest the old school way of brass and solder masters.

It's for figures.

I don't necessarily need it to survive, as long as the mould and is ok.

I was thinking of super sculpy with only fine details added in epoxy.

Back in the 90's, a friend made RTV molds using GW mini's made of hard plastic. He molded metal figures using his pirate molds, showing me the metal cast duplicates side by side with the originals: they were hard to tell apart, once painted.

Whatever material you make your mini's out of, RTV Silicone will not harm the original, as long as you split the mold properly, and apply a mold release agent.

It might be best to use RTV Silicone to make a mold of the master figure, first, then cast metal figures from that, to use in a rubber vulcanizing production mold. Cheers!

Thanks.

I guess the RTV mould could be a centrifuge circle.

Infact it could be cheaper by either getting an old mould to cut holes in for new RTV inserts, or fill with gutter silicon which may not even have to be solid.

It only needs to do so many casts.

Anyone done anything like that before?