Baking Sculpey clay in a sauna?

[Roystar]

I'm about to start making my first sculpture with clay (my 100th or so if you count when I was in kindergarden) and I will be working with Sculpey Original.
I was wondering how I should be able to heat my sculp when it's finished. The oven that I got will most likely be too small to fit my sculpt so I might have to find a industrial oven but then it hit me that I got a sauna. I have read that you can also boil your sculpt to get it to harden so the moisture in the sauna should ruin your sculpt. I was hoping that there is some crazy person out there who has tried taking a sauna with their sculp and what the result ended up like.

If anyone havn't taken a sauna with their sculpt then I would like to know if it's a good idea and what temperatures would we be talking, I could probably crank up the sauna to 90° Celsius but that might be a bit over board if a lower temperature can be compensated with alot more water being trown on the rocks.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome.

 

[JPolacchi]

How big is the sculpt going to be?What kind of sculpt is it?It might benefit you to "split" the sculpture up into smaller assemblies,as if you were making a kit from it. Torso,head,arms,legs etc.You could possibly even split the arms&legs into two seperate assemblies/components to make the parts smaller.This would also depend upon how dynamic a pose you have in mind?Additional parts/components could also be made seperately. I don't think a sauna could get hot enough to bake super sculpy thoroughly.Sculpy baking temperatures are not acurate on the package, you want to slow cook it at a slightly lower temperature(175 deg.) for a few hours. I f.orget.I'll have to look up the thread in Amazing Figure Modeler. DO NOT BOIL SUPER SCULPY IN WATER. I have NEVER heard of anyone doing that, not even from one of the pros out there.You might want to look into epoxy clays such as Apoxie Sculpt.There are a number of different brand names to choose from.This also depends on your sculpting skills and how fast you can finish a piece?You might also want to consider doing your sculpt in a medium hard (sulfer free)Chavant oil based clay, then making a silicone mold from it.Then you can cast in urethane resin(or whatever you want).I for one wouldn't attempt curing super sculpy in a sauna,I just don't see it working and the humidity will not go well with super sculpy.You need constant/consistant temperatures to cure super sculpy to full hardness.

 

[Roystar]

I will be trying to make a Jaffa blast staff and I have divided it into 3 pieces (a full length staff is 210 cm) so even a divided won't fit in to oven.

I googled on ways to bake super sculpy and one of them was boiling so I wanted to ask before I do something stupid.

When you say 175 degrees. do you mean Celsius or Farenheit? If it's 175 Farenheit then I can do it in the sauna without any humidity in there.

The last time I sculpted something was in kindergarden so my skill arn't that good, hence why I chose to use a clay that will let me have time to make errors and correct them.

 

[JPolacchi]

I'm uncertain about baking anything in a sauna.I wouldn't be able to guarantee you good results,so I urge you to consider the other alternatives. You'd be better off sculpting with an epoxy clay, or a non sulfer oil based clay and making silicone molds and casting in resin.Yes, I was speaking in Farenheit.I would not boil it in water, that sounds like a really bad idea.I've never heard of anyone curing super sculpy in hot water.Its a polymer clay,I don't think it will work.You should go to the Amazing Figure Modeler web site(register) and ask in one of the forums.

 

[Wes R]

Yeah when i boil my figures that have super sculpty on it i need it at a rolling boil and after i know they're done i put it aside and let it keep curing. I've had the pot stay warm for about 15 hours with the lid on it, i figure the slow cure doesn't hurt.

 

[Roystar]

It seems that I will ave to try and make a small sculpt of a piece of clay and see how good it handles the sauna since there is now mixed results. If I manage to find a industrial oven within a resonable distance and a price that fits my wallet I will se it but the sauna is a basically a last resort that sounded like a good idea.

Edit: is I have baked the sculpt correctly. Will it be so hard the if I hit it with a hammer it will shatter? I will do a small test sculpt to see if it is possible and I would like to know how the concistancy will be when it is corractly baked.

 

[Maelstrom]

Get yourself a heat gun and use that. As long as you keep moving it your sculpt will be fine and you wil be able to cure the entire thing.

And no the sculpey I've used is not extremely fragile after cured. As for hitting it with a hammer...a lot of things will shatter when hit with a hammer. Shatter? No. Break? Probably.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

For something as large as a Stargate staff I really think Super Sculpey is absolutely the wrong medium. You need to switch to magic sculpt or aves apoxie sculpt, which are 2-part self-hardening resin. Sure, it is more expensive, but you should try make a wireframe skeleton of the shape to sculpt on top of to minimize the amount of material used.

I always assumed that moisture wasn't good for the sculpey and that it would actually take longer to cure it, when exposed to it, and that it would be more brittle than if cured in an oven.

I've never really heard of industrial ovens that work on such low temperatures that Sculpey require, but if you find one... please post about it here.

 

[Maelstrom]

Another thing to watch out for is that in my experience Sculpey shrinks/contracts while curing so if you sculpted this over a rigid form you may experience some cracking.

 

[JPolacchi]

I'm still not certain of curing in boiling water.You want to get a "full cure" and the directions on the package for setting super sculpy does not guarantee that. A heat gun can work, but you'll be curing the sculpt for hours. Super scuply is brittle when cured, but very hard.So don't drop it. Thin areas on the sculpt can/will crack when heat curing. I still think you should sculpt with an epoxy clay,then you don't have to worry about an oven.You do have limited time to work, but the beauty is you can rough out your sculpt and after it cures continue to add on more.If you don't like an area,you can add more to it and build on it, or dremel the spot off and re-sculpt again.