Have You Guys Seen This?

[magkelly]

This is interesting. The person who wrote this is curing polymer in a microwave!!!! This is fascinating to me because I hate using our oven. It has issues, and my toaster oven doesn't work nearly as well. I'm going to have to try this.

http://www.garieinternational.com.sg/cl ... rowave.htm

Here's a kid doing some on You Tube too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy4SqloZycI

[DollyKim]

All the polymer clays I have say don't use the microwave and I trust them. It could still make fumes in there too.

Honestly if you're serious in to polymer clay or Shrinky Dinks go to your craft store, sign up for coupons, use one on a craft oven. It's the same price as a good toaster oven but only goes up to 300 F to prevent burning.

[yarwel]

I agree; get the craft oven. You definitely do NOT want to be using a device you use for food preparation for polymer clay. Another alternative if you don't want to use the craft oven would be to pour boiling water over your pieces, but this only works when the clay is fairly thin.

[magkelly]

Our Micheal's and JoAnn's doesn't carry stuff like that actually. Only the clays and some tools and those are the only craft store here. They're also very expensive and even with coupons I don't spend much there. We don't have anything else except Walmart and they don't have clays at all. Casting stuff I had to order it online because neither store had it. JoAnn's is actually a major hike from here. Next town over almost. I will occasionally hit Micheal's for leather or brushes or clay if it's on sale but that's about it. I order a lot of my craft supplies off Amazon and via bead stores I like though lately I have found some stuff at Micheal's that I have liked. They have really improved there lately.

The new versions of their clays are supposedly low to no fume and non-toxic compared to a couple of years ago. I have our old toaster oven that I use just for that and it has very low heat settings actually but it does tend to scorch things once in a while. I like the idea of the microwave I can just cover the stuff with water and plastic wrap and not have to worry too much about that. Plus the micro is lots easier to clean. The clays don't brown in the micro according to this. It only takes 10 mins and they come out super hard besides. I can see how that might be an advantage for making beads or doll shoe bases and heels. Might be almost as good as resin and not nearly as hard to do if it works.

I'm going to wait for the next sale at Micheal's on clay and try it with some fresh clay. The only clay I have now is getting pretty old and might be old stock. It definitely has fumes. I have to work it in the screen room to use it otherwise it gives me a headache. I have both Sculpey and Fimo but there's another brand now of bake clay that has some interesting colors too. I want to get some of that too and try it.

I don't work big pieces so this sounds ideal for my needs and far less messy. If indeed this type of clay has gone non-toxic than using a micro is perfectly safe, if it works. I'm curious. I admit it. I just want to see if I can do it and if it really comes out like this. Super hard beads sounds good to me. Clay never bakes well here even in the big oven. It's humid and things always end up softer than I'd like and sometimes they even need rebakes. If a micro can do it in 10 minutes and it's rock hard? I will like this method.

[yarwel]

To prevent scorching, you just make a little "tent" of aluminum foil to put over the pieces in the oven; it helps distribute the heat more evenly and shields clay from temperature spikes that occur in small ovens.

[magkelly]

To prevent scorching, you just make a little "tent" of aluminum foil to put over the pieces in the oven; it helps distribute the heat more evenly and shields clay from temperature spikes that occur in small ovens.

It's not the oven so much as it is the climate. I live in the tropics. Cakes, pies, anything it all bakes funny. Resin apparently doesn't cure well either. I've done that tent thing. It does help some with scorching but overall things just don't bake evenly and FYI, that's been the same in 3 ovens. I've had two different toaster ovens and I've used the big oven. I'm just hoping for more consistently hard results with a micro.