Tom Sterling
Carving Netsuke
excess clay around the edges. Here's a trick for getting the PMC out of the polymer clay press mold: taking a small piece of newspaper, I laid it over the PMC and rolled it once more with the plastic rolling pin. The paper sticks to the clay, allowing you to easily peel the clay out of the polymer clay press mold without damaging it. I then use small tools to clean up any small problems, and place the PMC on an unglazed ceramic tile and place it into a 175 degrees (F) kitchen oven for several hours to dry. Incidentally, this is the original type of PMC, not PMCplus or PMC3.
Once it is dry, I peel the paper off and use my smallest diamond burrs to carve any extra details or cleanup into the hardened PMC. Above is the unfired PMC beetle, cleaned up, detailed and ready for firing. I fired the PMC in a small kiln (mine has a digital controller - highly recommended! Spend the extra money and make your life far more pleasant!) at 1650 degrees (F) for 2 hours.
Above is the fired (and cooled) PMC beetle just out of the kiln. Note how dull and gray-white it looks.
Copyright © 2006 Tom Sterling