My Procreate smells like whatever is in my refrigerator, it's a good place to prolong the shelf life of the two parters.

Here's a good site with some tool tips, and under the sculpting things topic on the left there's a whole tutorial. It's all about 28mm figures, but all the concepts are the same:

http://www.matakishi.com/bmbtools.htm

Suffice to say everything is a tool for sculpting, well, almost everything.

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Put me down for Milliput...I'm liking it alot since i picked up a package at Hobby Town USA.

I'll still use Sculpy every now and then...but not for much.

for sculpting tools...My mother is an art teacher...and asked our family dentist for some old dental tools for the kids to use in sculpting...needless to say I've appropriated a nice set of various teeth scrapers to sculpt on my joes.

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I also use a dentist pick. Got it as part of a set with a mirror for a $1 at Walgreens. That, an xacto, and my fingers is all I've ever needed.

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I mostly use my Xacto (I always have a dull blade handy for it), a nice pointy dental tool, and my fingers. But I've been known to use whatever I have lying around (hey...screen name is MacGyver! LOL), including the ends of paintbrushes, a credit card, an orange peeler, a swizzle stick, toothpicks...

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Melt a chunk of plastic to the size I need it and sculpt the details. Well that's what I do generally or I make a quick easy mold from something that's already what I want (say pouches for a harness), then I drop in a little resin. I like that Mighty Putty that's come out too.

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I use Sculpey, Sculpey III, Green-stuff. I bought some Might Putty, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet.

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That sounds interesting J man. Care to elaborate?

Melting plastic? I use a cheap frying pan and drop in pieces of plastic. I use one of those single cooking elements so I can take it outside. You don't want that plastic chemical release all in the house. I heat at low temperature and mush the parts together. The nonstick surface of the pan lets you move it around and shape it somewhat into what you need. Use tools of course to handle the plastic. After it cools, just use a dremel to carve it into what you want. Get the finer details with an exacto.

Making easy molds I use some liquid latex from the hobby store. Paint it on what you want to make a mold of and let it dry. When it's dry you just drop resin in it. Once that dries you pop it out, sand off any areas that might be there that you don't want, then glue it on the figure/vehicle.

If you use styrene or something like that, you can just stack it and glue it. You can sand the stacked plastic as needed. Here's a joint I made for an arm out of a block of plastic I melted:

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Wild - single element never heard of it. Learning something new every day around here I guess.

Is that like a hot plate? Those two burner little range things?

From what J_Man describes, sounds like a hot plate (sometimes I've seen them sold as single-element cookers rather than as hot plates). Before I moved into my apartment years back, I used to use one as a replacement after my stove conked out. Very handy for something like this, just wish I had the skillz to actually sculpt melted plastic (I'm mediocre at best with Green Stuff.)

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To tell you the truth J Mans thing kind of scares me. As often as I have drilled, cut, and or glued myself burning would be a new sensation while playing with toys.

Yeah it's pretty much just a hot plate. This one I bought was in the cmaping section as was sold as a varible heat cooker. It looks like the heating element from a stove, just without the stove or other three elements. It works very well for when you want to heat something toxic that you don't want to do in the house.

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You can always just buy some resin. If you're decent at carving, just build a simple square about the size you want out of silly putty or latex. Pour the resin in and it'll harden into whatever size you made the "mold". Don't even worry if any of the stuff you made the "mold" from sticks. You won't reuse it, so you can even use clay. Sand and sculpt that block of resin into what you want.

But of course it's even better to cast a mold then make the resin copy if you have that option. But assuming you don't, this will work.

For large areas, say a huge gap on a vehicle custom, just just sheets of styrene or another type of plastic. You don't have to melt it. Just cut pieces the size you need and stack them if you need it thicker. You can sand it down after it's glued in place to match the flow of the surface you were rebuilding. Using super glue will keep the bond between the layers.

There's tons of ways of doing it without having to rely on having a chunk of clay that might crumble. The epoxy is fine, but you gotta work fairly quick.

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I'm just beginnign sculpting, I brought some Apoxie scupt, and havent started because I was lookign for hte right tools, and I realized that for real fine detail I needed something with a round edge, which wouldnt scratch at the putty, So I finally brought what I needed today, which is a varing size embossing stylus set, basically they are like a pin, but have varying size ball points at the end, I think they will be exactly what i needed, So I should be starting my first custom this week I hope... I am working on making a self portrait Gi joe for my beggining one. Wish me luck.

I sculpt with a few things:

Plumber's epoxy. $3.50 at Ace Hardware for a stick about the size of a nickel role. Once it's mixed together, the sculpting time is a few minutes before it hardens.

Hot glue from a glue gun. Pretty much stopped doing this, but it's still good from time to time.

Acrylic paint. Not the kind from Michael's, but the much more condensed type from a professional art store.