After reading the various tutorials on http://sculptingtools.blogspot.it/ i try to create some sculpting tools by myself.
The idea is to create tools tiny enough for the 28mm, 54mm, 75mm and 1/20 scale, cause i’ve a lot of various sculpting tools, but they’re of the “standard size”, so a little too big to do a good job with the tiny figures.
The base material is 1.5mm inox wire. If you heat to red-hot temperature the inox wire (using a jet lighter like this) you can easily flatten the wire using an hammer, to obtain a blade or finger shaped tip. For needle or ball point i mount the wire into the rotary tool and shape it using a file or sandpaper.
It’s very important to give the tools a real polish finishing, to improve precision and to prevent marks and scratches on the clay. For the final polishing i applied a polish compound using the rotary tool.
For the handle i used a 1cm Delrin rod, cut at the length of 12cm. Delrin is a real good material, easy to cut, drill and sand. Good alternatives are also PVC, Plexyglass and of course Wood.
Once the handle and the tips are completed i glued them togheter and added a pair of rubber grip, taken from a set of cheap ball point pens (1.5€ for six).
To give a more “smooth” look i’ve also added to one of the tools a “black satin” finish, using a heatshrink tube
I think that this kind of “tiny” tools can be a great improvement in working with clay to realize small miniatures and figures.
Some pics of my work: