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Now, we all know if you go to a games workshop, they have the stuff, the green stuff, the scenery, the miniatures, the glue, etc, but it can be a little more expensive than you had hoped.
Recently the only official GW store in my state closed shop and vanished, and I traveled a few hours to get there, hoping to get the rulebook (Which I had not gotten earlier as I was too busy painting and decorating my army, plus the things about 60 bucks anyways)

I had also hoped of getting green stuff there.

As always, with my limitless amount of art supply junk I decided to use generic brands of clay to mess with my miniatures, sure, it wouldn't harden, but with some glue and a carefully guided hand they wont fall apart. I did a relatively nice conversion of a carnifex and a few other models, but I soon ran out of THAT clay, so I went into my clay bin and got another kind from a drawer, all were unlabeled and not visually different from each other.

I made a hill out of the clay for ANOTHER carnifex model to stand on, stuck in a nice chunk of wood, some faux grass and pebbles, and it looked great.
Later I discovered something... inexplicable.

Someone mentioned the talon of my carnifex was dripping black blood and it had made a small rubbery puddle on the ground. I took little notice until later, when I moved him back to my new workshop to repaint him with my new paints. The parts of the baseplate and miniature that had made contact with the clay had become an entirely different substance, the paint was virtually gone and the plastic had become a putty, parts of the poor carnifex's leg spikes and the surrounding 'flesh' had become flexible and soft, and the baseplate was more than half melted. The substance was the same color as the underlying plastic, the baseplate goo was black, and parts of the miniature goo was greyish (paint being included)

Of course I peeled off the offending material and I still have a small globlet left. The sections tainted by the clay still seem to be a bit squishy, I can't simply peel it all off, semi solid pieces still remain, but the sheer strength of the reaction amazes me. I'll never know what brand of clay it was, but my real point here is that although some aspects of GW's product prices may seem a little silly, they are guaranteed to have no unwanted side effects, if you try and do any cheap work with unofficial gooey stuff, you might get more than you bargained for, or didn't bargain for... seeing as your being cheap... yeah.

On the other hand, if you had some sick twisted urge to turn parts of your miniatures flexible or flabby, and you magically found the right kind of clay, you could make some pretty wicked Chaos models, or maybe even the possibility of 'realistic' miniatures, c'mon, we all know it would be awesome if your mini's had real 'skin'.

You might not believe me, it doesn't make much sense to me either, but I know for a fact that there was some kind of chemical reaction with these two materials, and the goop is super flexible and retains quite a bit of heat, maybe I'll have developed some kind of new compound that I can use for a profit, or to help the world, or maybe have GW recall all it's products for safety hazards, maybe i'll keep this on the lowdown, but i'm not doing any more testing on this, I payed a lot of money for my minis!

I should post pictures, but to add to the mystique and my lack of ability to demonstrate the substance via photography, I won't, at least not anytime soon.

Haha, you should cut up sprue peices and stick them in a jar with this stuff and makes some kinda chemical plant scenery mixture

You should try randomly mixing other unlabelled chemical compounds and see what you get.
It might blow your mind.
[/sarcasm].

So your 'cautionary tale' is to 'be mindful of mixing random goop with other random goop as it might just turn into a puddle on you'?

I'll file that under "common sense".

Like most things in life, leaping without looking can often result in catastrophe.

I had something similar happen with some modeling product years ago, I think it was Fimo. Anyway, I threw some left over pieces into a bag that also contained plastic 1/72 scale soldiers. Much later I emptied the bag and noticed that some of the soldiers had adhered to the clay and had slightly melted where contact was made.

Looking at the net I see that these clays are not clays at all but synthetics and that they include compounds designed to keep the "clay" soft and flexible so that it can be worked. It is probably these compounds (pthhalates was the example used) that are responsible for the softening of the plastics they are coming into contact with under prolonged exposure.

Sure you should buy GW's stuff at that price http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470007a&prodId=prod1095494 when you can get the same thing, only multiple times longer, at that price http://trollforged.com/shelf_extras_Supplies.html.

Just saying.

Nothing new here.

A few years ago I discovered a couple of old 40mm bases merrily melting away from contact with some Fimo.

Tried some baked clay next some old sprue and nothing happened so I keep using Polymer clay when I am converting or scratchbuilding.

BTW the trade name of GS is Kneadite.
I get mine from Heresy models & it comes in 2 long lumps rather than 1 strip (so no anoying hard cured stripped down the middle).
It's also cheaper that way.
I also keep it in the freezer to keep it fresh - thanks to Andy from Heresy for that tip!
They do do international shipping but as it's a US product, you can probably find it on the net more locally.
Andy also sell Pro-create which is a similar putty but dries harder & keeps edges better.
Again it's originally from the US.
Here's a link to Andy's store for all you UK modellers -
http://www.heresyminiatures.com/

chromedog wrote:You should try randomly mixing other unlabelled chemical compounds and see what you get.
It might blow your mind.
[/sarcasm].

So your 'cautionary tale' is to 'be mindful of mixing random goop with other random goop as it might just turn into a puddle on you'?

I'll file that under "common sense".

Like most things in life, leaping without looking can often result in catastrophe.

The plastic wasn't goop to begin with, It became goop after it made contact with a clay substitute.