Smoothing clay

[Pram Maven]

Thanks, Supafly.

I think one of the problems featuring here is that I don't know how to distinguish between the different bristle widths of synthetic brushes. For example, there's nylon and taklon in several colors ranging from white, to gold, amber, and red. They appear to be different somehow, but I'm not sure which is supposed to be the stiffest, and I don't want to buy four sets of brushes to find the one that works best for this application.

Another problem, which I kind of created for myself, was that because there is no ventilation getting to the room and the lights heat it up like a glove box, I have to add wax to the clay in order to firm it up enough so that the mineral oil won't reduce it to peanut butter-like consistency. Most of the time it's just fingerprints that I want to wipe out, and that makes the surface softer every time. The wax made it really sticky, causing even the tools that were soaked in mineral oil to tear the model up. Clay is weird because you can smooth it with spit, but not tap water...and spit is kind of gross, so I'd like to use a chemical with a PH composition close to it.

Edit: If you smooth oil clay with a brush, you can use a baby wipe to clean it off. That doesn't solve the problem at its root cause, but it's a start and maybe useful to you.