Ultracal 30 - Easy To Carve/Sculpt?

[JamesDFarrow]

I know a lot of people use it for molds but is Ultracal 30
O.K. to carve/sculpt with knives, files, rasps, that sort of thing?

I find "plaster of paris" to soft and it chips easily so I need
something harder and more chip resistant. But not something
I need a hammer and chisel for.

I was looking at hydrocal but that seems to be only a bit
better than plaster of paris so would Ultracal be a better
choice?

Thanks,

James :)

[Tristan]

Early in my career I used to do a lot of the final detail and smoothing work in my ultracal casts by carving/sculpting (check out "Joseph" and "Beast" sculpts in sculpture section on my website, www.Tristanschane.com). Smoothing worked fine. However, for the carving and detailing I found some sections would carve very nicely, while some sections would be very crumbly when trying to carve small details, making fine detail work difficult and frustrating. Why certain areas were more problematic I couldn't figure out. At first I had thought it was differences in mix ratios, but testing proved this was not the case.

I would finally get what I was after, but sometimes it was very unsatisfying for me.

Also, even when keeping mix ratios homogeneous, sometimes the cured color wouldn't be uniform, especially where I had to do some patching, giving it a marbled look. I used to airbrush gouache paint which I had colored to a neutral "ultracal" gray.

Hope this is of some help.

T

[JamesDFarrow]

Thanks!

I've decided to go with the Hydrocal White instead. A few people mentioned to me the same problem you had. Inconsistency with Ultracal. And a few people said they had pretty good results with Hydrocal so I will give it a try. If it's not what I want I can always try my hand and mixing my own.

James :)