Betionol Moldable Plastic Clay, 2Lb/32oz White Modeling Clay Thermoplastic Beads for DIY Modeling Making Creative Activity, Good Creating Teaching Kits for Adults or Kids

This thermoplastic is just as good as any others I have used and it is of very high quality. It melts at a low enough temperature that it won't melt when you want it to take stay intact, but you can make it malleable with some very common household items and tools. I personally believe that it is likely that those claiming that this stuff is not durable either do not have much experience using thermoplastics and/or don't know how to most efficiently utilize them. I have tried many two other brands besides this. Instamorph, and formitcrafts ( the second of the two being the one I had the better experience with ), and this stuff is just as durable and moldable as any of the others I have used. You also get a larger amount at a much more affordable price.Some tips for people having difficulty efficiently using this plastic :1. Rather than using boiling water to heat the plastic, I would recommend a heat gun.2. Heat up and soften the plastic on a heat safe/resistant material, such as silicone. A soldering pad is perfect for this.3.Let the stuff cool down for at least 1 minute before beginning to mold it. After it cools down a bit, it gets to a point where it will still stick to itself, and can be molded and shaped easily, but has much less adhesion to other materials. This will make it easier to not get it stuck to stuff you don't want it sticking to ( including your fingers )4. DO NOT immediately start molding it as soon as it is scorching hot and completely transparent. I have done this and have ended up burning my fingers ( not severely, but enough for it to be painful ). It DOES have the potential to cause serious burns if you are not careful and mindful of letting it cool down a bit.5. For bigger, or more complex projects, create them in different parts/pieces, and then mold those pieces together. This works much more efficiently than trying to take one BIG piece and meticulously mold it into something very specific.This is good stuff. And with proper usage you can make a lot of amazing and useful things. I am currently crafting a self watering plant pot. I will be ordering more of this thermoplastic as I have many more ideas of things I can use it for.

They can be shaped into anything which is very handy when you want to make something that doesn't exist. It does not come out smooth though and ends of very bumpy. You cannot sand it to make it smoother. It sticks to the pot you use to heat them up but once cool it can be peeled off the pot. They are great to use as long as you don't care about look or smoothness. It is nice that if it does work the first time you can just re-melt them.

I purchased InstaMold and this product at almost the same time at the end of last year and the beginning of this year to be used in a project. Their use happened in the last couple of weeks. I've used InstaMold in the past, and have always had really good results. Since both are thermoplastic polyester, I figured they were pretty much identical products.That was a mistake.This Betionol moldable plastic is much less dense, and much less strong. The biggest issue is that it can't take heat like InstaMold can. It says not to use it above 170 F, but I routinely used InstaMold with freshly boiled water, nearly 210 degrees. I did the same with this stuff.It took forever for it to solidify, and while it was soft, it wouldn't keep a shape. It kept oozing out of the molds I had made for it, or just spreading out and refusing to stay in the shape I molded it to. I had to stay on top of that until it began to solidify, and the solidification process was FAST once it finally started. So fast, I couldn't get the slumping out of it fast enough before it refused to move manually.The only saving grace I found is that it cuts much easier than InstaMold when solid, so I ended up mostly carving the shape I needed with some Exacto-style #11 blades and a few small wood carving chisels.Another thing is that when over warmed, it sticks to EVERYTHING, including my no-stick work surface. Once solidified, it released easily enough, but the working time was greatly reduced.I had used the InstaMold all up, which is why I had this in reserve. I'm rather glad I didn't have to use this for more than a few parts, because it would have not been able to be used in the other parts I shaped with the InstaMold. Those all were hand-shaped, rather than put into a mold.While I liked the easier ability to shave off the bits i didn't want to keep and reshape it once it was solid, it's clearly not as hard as InstaMold, which depending on your use may work for you, or may not. Had I used this on the hand-shaped parts, it wouldn't have worked, since they are relatively thin and need to be hard and sturdy, rather than pliable. The shapes I made out of this stuff are pretty thick and solid, so the Betionol will work for them.But it took twice as long to shape the same pieces I had done with the InstaMold earlier in the day. mostly because it kept sticking to things. I found it wouldn't stick to a thick eraser-style rubber carving pad, though, so managed to get the parts done.As I said, it might work for your application, or InstaMold might be a better option. If you're fast and patient, and use the lower recommended temperature (which is often hard to monitor in a tea kettle), then the Betionol might be what you want to get.I won't be getting it again, though. I find the higher temperatures, greater hardness, more firmness in shaping (it takes and keeps a shape better) and longer shaping cure time to get it "just right" with the InstaMold to be faster and better overall. Although I finally got it to do what I needed it to do, it took much longer and required a lot more effort to do that.If Betionol is all you ever use, you may not know the difference. But since I know the difference, I'll go back and get more InstaMorph, since it's faster and easier to work with. If you do use this Betionol, don't use boiling water (which makes for more work to monitor the water temperature, and lowers your work time because the water cools relatively quickly) and find some rubber eraser carving pads (used to create rubber stamps or lithographic carvings), since it doesn't seem to stick to that when soft.Three stars means 1 star removed for its inability to maintain a shape during molding until it's almost solid. 1 star removed for sticking to work surfaces it shouldn't be sticking to.

I recently watched a video on YouTube about making silicone mold inserts, I didn't know what it was, but through searches I stumbled on to plastic that was moldable and worked with resin. This stuff is amazing all you have to do is put it in hot water and take out what you would need and squish what you need into a mold, once you feel that you have filled the mold completely, wait for it to cool down and you will have a perfect mild insert, instead of having to measure and pour silicone, no mess at all. Also the beauty of this product is if you get tired of the mold insert all you need to do is put it in hot water and mold it into a different mold.

My little wonderful puppy decided he needed to chew on the arms of my glasses and chew the piece that goes around your ear to hold them on your head. I was not able to wear them the way he had destroyed them. First I used the kind of tape that you use that doesn't stick to hair. That worked until this came in. When this came in, I got some of the beads and dropped them into the water and then took it out before it became clear. Had to stick it back in the water and when it got clear, I molded it around the earpiece part of the glasses. It worked!