Magic-Sculpt

The material that I use to cover my armatures (in this case the styrofoam) is called Magic-Sculpt. it is a two part epoxy similar to JB Water Weld that some may be familiar with.

This material however is not quite as stiff and sets up in about three hours and gets rock hard in 24 hours. It also does not have a memory so after allowing it to set up for awhile you can still shape it and it will hold the new shape. Once it is dry you can sand it, drill it, even machine it. It takes all kinds of paints and is very user friendly. I am however allergic to it and need to use gloves to work with it.



To use it, take equal parts by volume and knead it together until there are no more streaks in it, about 7-8 minutes.

After kneading it is fairly soft and pliable and very easy to apply, but on warm days will start to set up and get stiffer as your working with it.

I use a variety of tools to apply texture to the clay, the texture in my gloves, crumpled aluminum foil, paint sticks, you can even embed sand and gravel in the material. Magic-Sculpt can even be used in press molds to duplicate a multiple of small items such as rivits and any small repeating pattern.




Here I used foil for the bark and a wire brush for the edges of the bark.

I buy my Magic-Sculpt at Kit Kraft in 100 lb kits, but they offer smaller quantities if you want to try it out first.