White, gummy Wonder Bread isn’t just for peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. It’s a fun tool for making hollow forms in carving wax.
Just take some bread (Play-Doh works, too), mush it into shape,
pierce it with a toothpick, and use the toothpick to dip it into
molten carving wax (1). When you pull it out of the molten wax, spin
the bread to make the wax thickness even. After the wax cools, use a
hot wax pen to build up thin areas (2), and use a wax file and
carving tools to make the surface smooth. Pierce out the windows in
the bead with a carving tool (3). When the outside of the bead is
done, just put it in water to dissolve the bread and you have a
wonderful wax.
Thanks for posting that info about white bread cores (the only good
use for white bread, right?). We’ve been using white bread+wax cores
for making PMC beads. Sometimes the bread burns out and gets a wee
bit too hot for the PMC and distorts the bead. Washing out the bread
before coating the wax with PMC would solve that problem.
Could you use bread for hollow forms in PMC?..just a nice smell of
burnt toast when it burns away?
Yes, but.
The but is the PMC will leach the moisture out of the bread before
you even put it in the kiln, so you have to coat the bread in wax.
Why go to so much trouble when you could just use Cork Clay or it’s
new replacement, Wood Clay?
Or you can use plaster or Paper Clay if the form is open.