I use the Sculpey product because it is very easy to use and doesn’t harden so I can work with it for hours or come back days later before I am satisfied. However to harden it needs heat to cure.
I need to put this in the oven for about 15 min to cure but the lowest temerature in my oven is 175 C. I was wondering if anyone knows if that will warp or melt the original plastic parts of the figure
I can use a hair dryer but it takes a very long time and still don’t get it hard enough for my liking.
Hi and welcome to the forums! Unlike a plastic figure we don’t melt in the heat!
I’d say 175c would start to melt a standard plastic figure. Maybe not into a puddle of plastic but it would very likely impact the crispness of a figure. The Sculpey instructions recommend 130c to bake Sculpey properly. When you say your oven only goes as low as 175c, maybe that’s Fahrenheit and it’s been mislabelled on your oven? 175c is very hot for a minimum oven temperature given that 180c is the standard cooking temperature for most oven baked items.
Sculpey can also melt certain plastics even before going in the oven so I’d recommend testing it on a junk figure or piece of sprue first.
I’d also suggest using epoxy air dry clays instead. Something like Milliput or one of the Greenstuff products might be easier to use for figure conversion. These clays air dry but give you a fair amount of working time. There’s also standard (non epoxy) air dry clays but they tend to contract on drying.
Lovely to have you aboard and looking forward to seeing your figure once you decide on how to proceed!
Styrene plastic melts around 250C for use in injection moulding machines, so an oven temp of 175C is going to soften and deform your figures! Sculpy isn’t really a good choice due to the need to bake it - go with Green Stuff or Milliput epoxy putty instead.
And welcome to the madhouse - er, I mean “community”!
Hi Jack, Welcome to the KitmakerNetwork. The heat needed to cure Sculpey will be enough to cause problems with the styrene plastic figure. As @barkingdigger mentions, epoxy putty products are best for this type of resculpt project and air cure spot putty for gap and pin hole filling.
I find A & B-type epoxy putty to be the best for filling in/sculpting figures. It is a two-part putty that you mix together to activate. It is about the consistency of modeling clay and can be sculpted and molded when soft. It cures in a few hours to rock hard and sands well.
I actualy have the epoxy stuff and various others. But in our modelling club a guy did a seminar on how to sculp and/or modifiey figures. He uses this stuff exclusively and I do find it easier to work with as I can mold and add smaller detail much easier.
I believe my oven is in celsius as I live in Canada…and looking at the conversion of F to C using the Canadian standard calculation of hockey pucks to moose tracks, I may have to recalculate.
They say I can boil Sculpey in water and that can cure it…well we will see…
