Cheap and Easy Putty Oven

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I've mentioned it several times in my Thread of Stuff but never got around to going into any detail on how I made my little putty oven to speed up the curing time of greenstuff (or other epoxy putties), and there's really not much to it.

 

http://i.imgur.com/5rlK0Yd.png

 

You will need:

 

1) Empty paint can with lid - Because you will be using heat to cure the putty, it's worth shelling out the $3-4 dollars I spent on a brand new, unused paint can with a lid at my local hardwarehouse store instead of using one from your garage that's covered in dried paint.

 

2) Workshop lamp - the one I bought came with an arm that let you clip it onto stuff and I removed it. It helped that I picked up the can and the lamp at the same time to test the fit and make sure the lamp was wide enough not to fall down into the can. 

 

3) Duct tape

 

4) A 40 watt bulb

 

5) A can opener

 

Assembly:

 

1) I used the can opener to remove the bottom of the paint can and disposed of it, then cleaned up the edges with a file. 

 

2) I used duct tape to secure the lamp to the top of the can as shown above, and also lined the bottom edge of the can with duct tape. 

 

That's about it, short of putting the light bulb in the lamp and plugging it in. The lid of the paint can becomes the new bottom and that's what I set my figures on while they're in the oven (the tape around the bottom edge helps make a better seal with the lid). With the 40 watt bulb I'll let the figure sit in there for about 45 minutes before I check on it unless the greenstuff I'm trying to cure faster is really thin. Not only does this give me a faster turnaround time for working on a figure with a lot of conversion work, it also seems to make the greenstuff cure harder, which is better if I need to scrape or sand it for a nicer finish. 

 

I'd also suggest getting some kind of timer to keep nearby because if you let it go for too long bad things can happen: I once forgot about having something in there for about 4 hours and when I finally remembered to take it out, the greenstuff had expanded and gotten a really rough, grainy texture to it. Not cool. 

 

Even though a 40 watt bulb doesn't put off too much heat, I'm still going to suggest that you not use it around anything that might be flammable, and I'd test the temperature of the bulb with some sprue or something before putting a figure in it just in case your bulb runs hotter than the one I got. 

Edited July 6, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Jackalwolf]

That is actually fantastic. Have you ever had problems with the heat melting resin or plastic?

[AndrewChristlieb]

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing, now... do I actually own a light bulb that isn't led? Might have to head to the store to try this one.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

That is actually fantastic. Have you ever had problems with the heat melting resin or plastic?

 

No, I've been using this for several years now and even the time I left something in there for hours it didn't damage it. However, bulbs may differ from one mfgr to another so I would definitely test it out on some extra sprue runners or something like that before putting a figure in it.