Question about the oven bake clay

[msellers]

All,
I have been reading the posts Tim made about using oven bake clay for forming dams to do pewter work and repair on horns and hawks.
Which got me thinking about if it would be possible to make a mold from it to pour some pewter buttons. I am finding myself in need of some PC buttons for a couple projects I have going, but don't have a lathe or lots of expendable income to buy what I want.
Do you guys that have experience using this stuff think that it would work for limited use mold to accomplish this? I have been wanting to try this stuff for sometime, but wasn't willing to pay what Joann's and the art supply houses wanted for it. I just found a pound for about $6 at Walmart so decided it was time.  And now I am thinking of other uses for the stuff.
Thanks,
Mike

[Tim Crosby]

 See if this helps, you can make any size or shape you want with a little modification.

       http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=49583.0


     Tim

[msellers]

Did you see my post on making Pewter buttons?

       http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=49583.msg491384#msg491384

   Tim

Thank you Tim. I had forgotten about that post.

Mike

[Clark Badgett]

When it comes to buttons, there are many choices that are probably way more historically common than pewter, at least for civil usage with bone being the most common. Porcelain and nacre(shell) are also quite HC. Thin iron buttons came into common usage at some point and by the 1850s rubber as well. While I won't go so far as to rule out pewter as some examples are extant, I'm just not sure how common they were outside of some military usage.

[msellers]

When it comes to buttons, there are many choices that are probably way more historically common than pewter, at least for civil usage with bone being the most common. Porcelain and nacre(shell) are also quite HC. Thin iron buttons came into common usage at some point and by the 1850s rubber as well. While I won't go so far as to rule out pewter as some examples are extant, I'm just not sure how common they were outside of some military usage.

Thanks, I fully need to research buttons further it has become clear. I was going to make some bone buttons, but don't have a lathe so was going to be interesting.  Will probably make a couple rolled leather style for the one bag.
Mike

[Clark Badgett]

Rolled leather is an option for bags. Early cartridge boxes used that method it seems. Horn and wood are also options, but wood can be easily broken.