My SWMBO is trying her hand at making some workers for my RR. She’s working on her 2nd one now and has a question. She’s already baked this figure but would like to add a hat to him. Can she do this and bake it again?
Yep, you can keep baking Sculpey, though I use a hand-held heat gun when I’m adding to an existing project. Gives me more control.
When I used Sculpey, I would typically bake multiple times. If you don’t, you risk the chance of damaging some details while you’re working on another section of the character. I bought a cheap toaster oven from e-bay and would just pop it in for 15 minutes, let it cool, and then work on the next section. Pop it back in, and repeat. It wasn’t uncommon to bake 3 or 4 times.
Since then, I’ve found that Sculpey is too fragile for my needs - I typically leave my figures out all year. So, I’ve switched to using Magic Sculpt, which takes a day to set up, but is a lot stronger.
Thanks guys for the info. She painted this figure this morning with acrylics before she got me to ask this question though. So she might be out of luck on re-baking.
She could bake the hat by itself, and then glue it in place and paint it.
I have on occasion, added more clay to a figure which had already been painted with craft acrylics. Seemed to work ok.
I have many times baked figures that were already painted with sculpty. In fact I some times back the paint so that I can work on the next layer of paint. Also, some sculpty doesn’t take well to multiple backs. The pink super scupty tends to burn at the tip on multiple sculpts the hard white and black sculpt mixedmake an excellent first layer and so far don’t burn or crack no matter how many times you bake them. I consistently bake figures 8 times easily and some more.
On very extended poses, with arms and legs out wide or bent in a seated stance I like to start the firs layer (defining the armature) with the milliput or plumbers puddy that is rated at 250 F. Those two are very very ridgid and you can build up a lot of layers of sculpty and back many times with no fear that the limbs will deform. If you just have sculpty as your base layer, the weight of the limbs will distort and some times crack because of the heat.
Thanks…All, for the tips, sculpty, rebaking etc…too much fun…!
Bon SWMBO
Tis fun.
I find I like the brand “Premo” better than Sculpy. Easier to get fine details that don’t break off. I haven’t tried using a heat gun to bake it. Bob T has a recipe where he mixes x parts of this brand and y parts of that. Seems hard to me.
Ray Dunakin said:Good tip thanks.
I have on occasion, added more clay to a figure which had already been painted with craft acrylics. Seemed to work ok.
Twisted aluminum foil makes a good armature. I’ll have to check out Magic Sculpt, thanks, Bruce. Good info from Richard also. Thanks everyone for yr input, and thanks, Randy & wife for starting this. Tom, since you’re somewhere nearby: I’ve been meaning to tell ya’ - I love your avatar. Sweet-looking young troublemaker… 
Yeah, Premo is my clay of choice too. Doesn’t get as brittle as regular Sculpey.
Haven’t tried Magic Sculpt yet, may have to look into it someday.
I’ve gotten hooked on digital clay now. You don’t have to bake it, you don’t need magnifying glasses to get close detail and you never have to worry about damaging one part while working on another. Plus, any figure you make can be reposed over and over again so that you don’t need to keep using up a lot of clay and cutting things up to have a new pose for the same figure 
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/rkapuaala/_forumfiles/drunkv1sm.jpg)
Oh and the very best part, you don’t need to sculpt a new one if you want him another scale, just resize the figure in a 3D modeling ap. I have this figure in 1:20.32 (the figure above) 1:13.7142, 1:12 and 1:8 scales, plus I’m already working on a new pose.