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| Using a Pasta Maker with Polymer Clay |
| The machine's settings limit the thickness of the sheets it can produce. If you need sheets that are thicker, make several and stack them. You can even vary the thickness of the stacked sheets by changing the settings on your machine. Rolling really thin sheets of clay can be hard, even in a pasta machine, because the sheets tear easily. Try rolling a sheet of paper through with the clay, or even sandwiching the clay between two sheets of paper. Not only will the clay sheet be really thin, but the paper will stabilize the sheet and keep it from tearing. |
| The machine won't keep the edges of your sheets even; it may also distort patterns on the sheets run through it. This can be used for some very interesting effects. If your clay has inclusions mixed in it is careful about putting it through a pasta machine. Hard inclusions, like chopped crayons, pieces of already-cured clay, and sand, could scratch the rollers. To be safe, roll these sheets by hand. Repeated passes through the machine will warm up the clay. If the clay was already soft to begin with it could stick to the rollers or other parts of the machine. To prevent this, start out with cooled clay and limit the number of passes you make at a time. If the clay gets too warm you can always let it rest a little and then do more passes later. |
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