How to cure SculpeyIII clay?

Question

I do not have an oven, but I wish to cure my clay. What could I do to cure the clay up to 130 degree celsius? I had tried boiling it but boiling would only give up to 100 degree celsius so it was not cured completely and breaks easily.

Answer 1

Your clay needs to be baked in order to cure. If you live in

a warm climate try putting it outside for a while in the full sun

and see what that does. Otherwise, borrow someone's

oven.

Answer 2

There are actually various ways to successfully cure polymer clays, even without an oven.

And by the way, Sculpey III is just one brand and line of "polymer clay" --it's acutally one of the weakest after baking in any areas which are THIN though (and also darkens more easily), so Sculpey III will never be as unbreakable as other brands** and lines of polymer clay would, and that may or may not have been some of your problem.

**The stronger brands/lines of polymer clay are Kato Polyclay, FimoClassic, Premo, Cernit, and some of the other Polyform clays --and to some extent FimoSoft too.

The other lines of polymer clay put out by Sculpey-Polyform *are* strong after baking but at least some of those do have quite different feels before and/or after baking... those would be Bake and Bend, SuperSculpey-Firm (gray only), Ultralight (white only), Studio by Sculpey, and technically also Premo.

Just now, however, Premo is undergoing a correction to its formula so no telling which you'll get on the shelves, but the older or the newest stuff should not have the problems of excess stickiness that it had for that 6 months or so.

Baking *longer* will also cure the clay even at a lower temperature because of the type of plastic that polymer clay is... the chemistry rule for that ratio is:

"for every 10 degree C (18 F) loss in temperature, a reaction will proceed half as fast --or in reverse, for every 10° C or 18° increase, the polymerization rate will double" (...it's an exponential change)

There are also various other ways to cure polymer clays not using an oven.  If you're interested in those (or in all the ways to use ovens to bake polymer clay successfully), check out the Baking page of my online polymer clay "encyclopedia":

http://glassattic.com/polymer/baking.htm

(...click at least on the category called "Other Ways to Cure")

P.S.  If you're interested in loads more polymer clay info and lessons and examples of finished items, check out the rest of my site too... this is the Table of Contents page for the whole site:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/contents.h...

...scroll all the way down to browse (or do a Ctrl + f search for a word or phrase)... when you find a topic you're interested in reading about, click on that page's name from inside the alphabetical navigation bar on the left side

HTH,

Diane B.

Answer 3

Call an electrick...

Answer 4

Oh gosh, boiling won't do it. Do you have an electric skillet? It can be used in place of an oven. Just make sure you put foil under it before you bake it.