There's the rub. I'm finally considering making my own custom jobbies so it's come down to this. Go with Milliput, the good old standby at about $10-15 for 4 ounces or try Magic Sculp at $30 or so for a 5 pound bucket?

The only reason I bring up Magic Sculp is because it appears as though Wayne Johnson may have endorsed the stuff. I'm wondering if that endorsement still holds true because bang for buck it's definitely superior.

I've never heard of the stuff. I have a small cylinder of putty stuff at home that I was once given but I've never used it. It might be milliput but I really have no idea. Carter is the man for this.

I was also wondering about the two-part epoxy wood putty that Minwax sells. Because it's two-part, large sections can be successfully filled and cured unlike traditional wood putty which must be applied in thin layers and allowed to dry before adding another layer. It's supposed to be sandable, drillable, etc. I'm thinking that it might not stick well to plastics though.

There is another two-part putty material which is advertised as being as strong as steel that I've seen in hardware stores. It also claims that you can sand, file, drill, etc. The working time, however, is only about 5 minutes though.

Has anyone tried either of these materials in the place of Milliput or Magic Sculp?

Someone named "Wayne C Johnson" wrote a positive note in their guestbook is why.

I'm Wayne B Johnson, so definately not me. Where was this site? Might be worth reading up un this milliput as I really don't know anything about it, ie. it's plastic properties or anything.

I have used milliput (see http://www.milliput.com ) a little bit, but there are also still a few questions I would like answered from anyone who has more experience with it than I have. First a quick description of the stuff.

It is two-component epoxy putty. It comes in several varieties, but I have only used the standard greenish one (it also comes in white, or terra cotta)
A box has two bars (green and grey) of putty. After kneading together equal amounts of each, the stuff begins to harden. This process takes a couple of hours at room temperature. After 4 hours it can only just be scratched with a fingernail, and a few more hours and it is rock solid. You can put a mixed batch in the freezer to suspend the hardening process.

Once hardened, it can be filed and sanded down to whatever shape you want. The material has no elasticity to it, so it may not be suitable for the mechanical parts of a twisty puzzle, except for prototyping, or unless there are some springs in it as well. I don't know how quickly it will wear. On the other hand, it is certainly very good for building different exterior shapes on top of existing puzzles.

You could certainly use it to build prototype puzzle pieces, from which you can then make moulds. On the milliput website there are actually reports of people making the moulds from milliput, in order to make copies again in milliput.

Anyway, questions I would like answered are:
How suitable is it for a puzzle's internal mechanism? Has anyone tried this?
If it is suitable, how quickly does it wear down, and how much stress can it take?

Jaap

While I'm not specifically familiar with Milliput or Magic Sculp (hence the start of this thread), I can say that I find 2 part epoxies unsuitable in situations where they can experience a lot of torsional stresses. Metal epoxies are too brittle and I'd guess that plastic-like filler epoxies are the same way. I would say that putties are definitely unsuitable.