Well, with the supplies coming in fast and furious (a box of Reaper figs just showed up!!!!), I can finally get into a lot of the prep work for all the videos.
This big old box came in, courtesy of Amazon. Very nice price on it, and free shipping, which was pretty amazing given how heavy this was!
This is the original white sculpey that you see me using for almost all the bases. You get a whole lot in this giant box! Best to keep it wrapped up when you are not using it, as it will go 'stale' and crumbly otherwise.
The set up. Some ceramic tiles, a roller (even a piece of PVC pipe will do) and a 'clay extruder'... AKA pasta maker!
You have to work the sculpey a bit so that you get the air bubbles out as much as possible. Here I am making one of the thicker sheets of sculpey, which I use as chunks of concrete.
Instead of the clay extruder, I use the roller, since the extruder only has a maximum thickness far thinner than what I wanted.
For the more typical sheets, I put the worked sculpey through the extruder...
Back to the thick sheets. I let this 'cool down' a little bit before I started rolling it, as the heat from your hands and the friction of kneading it makes it very smushy.
You can see me rolling that sheet, and the extruded pieces on the other tile.
More extruding!
You will want to keep the crank rolling without stopping, to avoid any uneven results. You also should keep your hand under the stuff coming out, as it will simply pile up at the bottom, and get messed up!
Since sculpey has a bit of a 'fragrance' when baking, I tend to use the toaster over these days. The disadvantage is that it is pretty small, but the advantage is that I can bake the stuff anywhere there is electricity, and I won't turn the house into a furnace in the summertime.
That is a lesson learned the hard way!
And the final result after a few rounds of baking! Sculpey sheets ready to turn into bases, tiles, walls, concrete, wood planks, doors, and so much more!!!!
Have you found Sculpey to react with rattle can primers?
ReplyDeleteI used sculpey long ago in converting some all metal Minotaurs, baked on the minis after sculpting and then I found after sprayed some primer and finished painted it became a bit tacky like the primer or something in the paints was reacting with the sculpey. I don't think it was the waterbased acrylic reacting. I haven't used it since then, switched to apoxie sculp.
I never bake the sculpey onto miniatures. I think you are probably having a chemical reaction between the metal and the sculpey.
DeleteIf it is not baked all the way, it can also be a little tacky. We have never had any issues with painting sculpey. We almost never have to prime it, as it is usually very absorbent.
Is this the same sculpey you use for your bases? I tried to "snap" some of the original last night, but found that it bent more than doing any sort of great snapping motion!
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I had to score the spot I wanted snapped with a hobby knife, and then snap, but then it had a bit of a smooth edge that I didn't want.
If you are using the same white original sculpey that I am using, it could be that it was over baked. This seems to be much more common that I thought it would be. You have to bake it according to the instructions, but you also have to test it out with your oven, since each one is different.
DeleteI learned that the hard way!