fando s New fando Anyone using? Haha... I had some questions, like dry time? Reconstituted with water, it's seems. Which is cool, because you can make slip.
I've been using New Fando for my recent larger sculpts. In the summer thin layers dry fairly fast (overnight), but in winter I speed it up with some kind of heater. Best to work on a few things at once or it's going to get frustrating. Self-adhesion is weak once it starts to dry. I just have a pot of pva handy,. apply that first and it sticks fine. I find sculpey (normal/firm mixed) way better for detail so use that for my mini sculpts. With Fando I save the final fine details for the wax stage, it's just way easier.
I just use the stuff the factory gives me. I asked them about using a harder jewelers wax, but the temperatures required for the melt/burn out stage would have to be too high, so a no-go. I thought that the conductive layer was sprayed or painted onto the wax, but I'm not sure if that's something I heard or made up in my head!
I asked a friend about the electroforming of wax, he said it could be one of two options, but most likely it gets sprayed on. I'm running Grey Sculpy, GreenStuff, and fando. All three seem to work together pretty well. Mind you, I doubt it's archival. I am glad to have the board as a resource!
If that's the case do you even need to use wax? You could sculpt in anything that can be melted out, CX5, monster clay, Chavant.
I brought a brick a long time ago to mess with. I think one criticism I heard when it came out, really more from like pro grade action figure sculptors who pretty much just use casteline firm was that it didn't hold detail as well. And I would agree with that, I found it hard to detail with. But it's very cool you can hear it up and rough forms very quickly, but I also found it cooled down very quickly and to me it took a lot of work trying to keep the surface at the temp and firmness I wanted. It didn't sway me to make the switch, but if I was doing a really smooth figure with not a lot of detail I would use it. Maybe I just needed to get more used to it. Maybe they've improved the formula since then too. I bought it when it was brand spankin new. I would say it's fun to buy a brick and at least mess around with it.
I suppose so, theoretically, but the factory usually does the joints and I'd imagine they'd want to do those in the material they are used to.
@JoeMan What kind of wax are you sending to Japan for them to electroplate? Just trying to figure what I should cast this project in. feels like its takin 3 years too get this far.
I'm not doing the wax work, having that done by the factory or my producer, though you could. You just have to have someone there send you the wax the factory uses, I'm not sure what exactly it is.
