Making An Extruder Mod Cane Using Premo Souffle Clay
Video #675: This cool looking retro or vintage cane project, never seems to get old. And… it is so easy to do!
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IN THIS POST: — mod cane — extruder cane — canework — cane millefiori — polyform — souffle clay — czextruder — extruder — lucy clay tools — dies — cynthia tinapple — makins — walnut hollow — sculpey clay extruder tool — (Topics marked with an asterisk* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
Topics Covered In This Video:
In today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m going to show you how to do an Extruder Mod Cane.
We have been talking a lot about extruders lately, so I thought I would show you a neat cane you can make, using your extruder.
I am going to use my Lucy Clay CzeXtruder, but you can use any of the other extruders that are out there.
I haven’t done a mod cane for quite a while, so the examples I dug up are pretty lame.
Basically, a mod cane is a cane made up of long logs (square or round) that have the colors in rings. And depending on how you stack the colors of clay in the barrel of the extruder, will depend on how they come out.
You can actually extrude these mod ring logs in any shape.
I used the med-large square die from set #6 from the Lucy Clay Dies, but you could use whatever square die you would like from the other companies sets instead, if you wish.
You can even use this technique to make something as detailed as this little flower cane here, that I showed how to make in the Cynthia Tinapple Extruder Disks video.
I’m going to be using a square die because they stack nicely together into a square cane.
I’m going to be using several colors of Souffle clay. Pistachio, Turnip, Mai Tai, Robin’s Egg and Igloo.
I rolled it out at the thickest setting of my pasta machine, which is about a 6-7 playing card thickness.
Then cut out some circles using the end of my extruder barrel. Hold thumb over the end to create an airlock, so the clay doesn’t get stuck in the tube… or blow it out with your mouth if it does get stuck.
It is important to know how you are going to stack your clay… if you want a certain color to wrap around the outside of your extrusions, then you need to put it at the end closest to the die… adding a little more so that it can stretch the length of the cane. I used three circles of Igloo first, then stacked one of each color after that until I had enough to extrude.
Roll the stack a little smaller, so it can fit inside the barrel.
Place the die in the end and extrude the clay until you run out.
Trim the end of the extruded log until you can start seeing the colored rings. (I should have trimmed the end as well because the last little part was kind of messed up and not in rings.
Perhaps this was because of the largeness of the die, since I have never had that happen on the smaller dies I have used.).
Cut equal lengths and stack into a cane.
00:00:03 –> 00:00:08 Hi guys, this is Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor. In today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m going to show
00:00:08 –> 00:00:14 you how to do an Extruder Mod Cane. Now, we’ve been talking about extruders a lot
00:00:14 –> 00:00:18 lately and I thought I would show you these this neat little cane that you can
00:00:18 –> 00:00:23 make with it, it’s very simple to do and I’m going to happen to use the extruder by
00:00:23 –> 00:00:29 Lucy Clay but you could really use any of the extruders that are out there. Now,
00:00:29 –> 00:00:34 I’ll show you what a Mod Cane is, I haven’t done one for quite a while so my
00:00:34 –> 00:00:39 samples are a little on the lame side but it seems like a good time to do it
00:00:39 –> 00:00:45 again then. And I dug these out of one of my clay drawers there, and basically what
00:00:45 –> 00:00:54 a Mod Cane is, is a long… square tubes of clay that have the colors in
00:00:54 –> 00:00:59 rings in little circles like that, and depending on how you stack them in the
00:00:59 –> 00:01:04 barrel is… will depend on how they come out. Now, you can do them in any shape, I’m
00:01:04 –> 00:01:11 going to use a square die and this is one of the lucy clay dies, you…
00:01:11 –> 00:01:15 this is a fairly large one so… but you could use any of the different shapes.
00:01:15 –> 00:01:20 And in fact, you can even use this technique to make something as detailed
00:01:20 –> 00:01:28 as the little… like this of a flower cane here that actually did this demo of this
00:01:28 –> 00:01:33 in the Cynthia Tinapple Extruder Disc video.
00:01:33 –> 00:01:39 So what I’m saying is this technique with a stripy thing works with all kinds
00:01:39 –> 00:01:43 of different shapes but to make a good Mod Cane… a square is perfect because
00:01:43 –> 00:01:45 it fits together so nice.
00:01:45 –> 00:01:52 Now, I have rolled out several different colors of Soufflé clay, I used
00:01:52 –> 00:02:01 Pistachio, the green one there, Turnip is the purpley color, Mai Tai is this coral color.
00:02:01 –> 00:02:07 Robin’s Egg here and Igloo is the white. And you could use any of this…
00:02:07 –> 00:02:12 clays that you, like it just needs to be soft enough. I rolled it out at the thickest
00:02:12 –> 00:02:16 setting which is about a six or seven playing cards on this particular machine
00:02:16 –> 00:02:24 thick, and then I cut it out using the end of my extruder and I’ll just show
00:02:24 –> 00:02:29 you that here. You can pop them out if you put your thumb over the end, it
00:02:29 –> 00:02:34 causes a bit of a section, and it usually won’t stick in there but if it does
00:02:34 –> 00:02:39 stick, you can usually just blow on the end and pop them out.
00:02:39 –> 00:02:43 So that’s a great way to cut out a bunch of little circles that will fit nicely
00:02:43 –> 00:02:50 inside. Now, when we put the… it’s important to know how you’re going to
00:02:50 –> 00:02:56 stack your clay. If you want a color like… So I’ve got white that this kind of
00:02:56 –> 00:03:03 surrounding, it’s on the outside edges of most of these blocks here. If I want a
00:03:03 –> 00:03:05 color to be on the outside edge,
00:03:05 –> 00:03:08 what you have to do is you have to stack your little circles, and we’re going to
00:03:08 –> 00:03:13 start making a log here but you want to put the color that you want wrapped
00:03:13 –> 00:03:20 around, you want to stack that one first, and you want a little bit more of it
00:03:20 –> 00:03:26 then you would want of the other colors. So I usually put about two or three or
00:03:26 –> 00:03:33 so of the outside color first and then you can just start stacking your other
00:03:33 –> 00:03:40 colors and I’ll explain why you want to have that thicker amount next.
00:03:40 –> 00:03:46 Anyways, OK, so I’m going to just stack them together and put a white every once
00:03:46 –> 00:03:49 in a while but I don’t want them… the order to be exactly the same every time.
00:03:49 –> 00:03:54 I think it is more interesting if you just put them in different order
00:03:54 –> 00:04:01 so I’m putting basically one of each color, but I’m just stacking it in a different order
00:04:01 –> 00:04:04 each time so that it’s different.
00:04:04 –> 00:04:07 Did that one the same.
00:04:07 –> 00:04:12 Alright, do that and you keep going,
00:04:12 –> 00:04:20 usually until you fill up the whole barrel and we’ll just go a little bit longer here.
00:04:20 –> 00:04:25 Maybe I won’t use them all up. OK, so that’s what you do and you see you make
00:04:25 –> 00:04:29 them into a log. I’m gonna stick them together, I’ll do one more row so I have a decent
00:04:29 –> 00:04:40 amount of clay here and then what we’re going to do is put this into the barrel
00:04:40 –> 00:04:42 of the extruder.
00:04:42 –> 00:04:45 OK, so I’m going to just… I’ve stacked it all together,
00:04:45 –> 00:04:48 try to keep them straight, I’m going to roll the edges a little bit just so
00:04:48 –> 00:04:54 that’s a little bit smaller than it was when we went… when we cut them out with
00:04:54 –> 00:04:56 the barrel, that will fit in.
00:04:56 –> 00:05:01 Now, the reason why you have more of the color here is as it gets pushed through
00:05:01 –> 00:05:06 the extruder, so we have the die here, the clay kind of gets stuck on this outside
00:05:06 –> 00:05:11 edge and pushes around the outside so the white will stretch around and wrap
00:05:11 –> 00:05:15 the whole thing. If you did it that way, you would have very little white,
00:05:15 –> 00:05:20 so you put a little bit more there. Alright, so we’re going to put this all together.
00:05:20 –> 00:05:27 I’m going to put the die into the end, you could use a round die, square die,
00:05:27 –> 00:05:29 whatever you want.
00:05:29 –> 00:05:35 I’m going to do that then I’m going to slip the clay in with my thicker white end down inside.
00:05:35 –> 00:05:44 Let’s make it a little bit skinnier, like that. And then we’re going to put the plunger
00:05:44 –> 00:05:48 in this style works this way, each of the different extruders work a little bit
00:05:48 –> 00:05:55 differently. And then we’re going to just cinch on the little handle. This extruder
00:05:55 –> 00:06:00 also has that… you can hook it up to a power drill
00:06:00 –> 00:06:06 so that you can really crank it out fast which is a really cool option.
00:06:06 –> 00:06:11 I’m just going to use a hand, just the hand-crank at this time, and then
00:06:11 –> 00:06:17 all you do is you start cranking it out. And the very
00:06:17 –> 00:06:22 first few slices of a cane like this are going to be whatever color it is that
00:06:22 –> 00:06:29 you put at the end. So it’s going to be white for the first few slices but as we
00:06:29 –> 00:06:32 start cranking this, I will try to go faster,
00:06:32 –> 00:06:37 I used a fairly large die so that this one go really quickly, and you can see
00:06:37 –> 00:06:43 I’m starting to run out of the white because it can’t quite stretch but it
00:06:43 –> 00:06:45 did pretty good.
00:06:45 –> 00:06:53 Now I’m just going to trim off this way to trim off this end until we start
00:06:53 –> 00:06:55 seeing some sort of stripes happening.
00:06:55 –> 00:07:01 So at first, it’s just going to be white. Oh we can already see a little bit of green.
00:07:01 –> 00:07:08 So now, what I’m going to do is cut this into some equal length and make a little
00:07:08 –> 00:07:11 cane, look at each one of these each time I cut.
00:07:11 –> 00:07:21 We’re going to get another cool stripe-y circle which looks like we’re coming
00:07:21 –> 00:07:26 right back to the 60s, and it mod times. Alright, so we’re going to cut a bunch of
00:07:26 –> 00:07:32 these up all the same length and then we’ll stack them together, and you can
00:07:32 –> 00:07:35 use these canes to make beads,
00:07:35 –> 00:07:40 pendants, backgrounds, stuff for frames, you know all kinds of funky things,
00:07:40 –> 00:07:43 whatever you want to make using pattern
00:07:43 –> 00:07:51 canes. Then I just stack these all together, and because they’re square,
00:07:51 –> 00:07:58 they fit nicely together, that’s the odd man out,
00:07:58 –> 00:08:07 I’ll leave him out, and then we can stack it together, and then you can cut it in half
00:08:07 –> 00:08:10 again, or reduce it or whatever you want to do.
00:08:10 –> 00:08:19 I’ll cut it in half again so that we can stack it again.
00:08:19 –> 00:08:22 Well look at that, there’s a weird little thing happening there, I’m not sure
00:08:22 –> 00:08:25 what’s going on with that one.
00:08:25 –> 00:08:31 Well it’s a good thing I have this extra. Always at the very end,
00:08:31 –> 00:08:34 that’s odd and didn’t have that happen before,
00:08:34 –> 00:08:39 must have been that very last bit that I pushed through the extruder.
00:08:39 –> 00:08:44 Alright, get rid of him.
00:08:44 –> 00:08:52 Now we have a nice funky cane in all these great colors.
00:08:52 –> 00:08:56 Alright, so now you have something new to do with your extruder if you didn’t know about that.
00:08:56 –> 00:09:03 Alright, so I hope you like this video, if you did, do let us know. And we’ve got
00:09:03 –> 00:09:07 lots and lots of neat videos, so if there’s something that you haven’t
00:09:07 –> 00:09:11 learned about polymer clay or you’d like to learn about it, make sure to search
00:09:11 –> 00:09:15 through all of our videos and see if you can find the answer there. And if not,
00:09:15 –> 00:09:19 leave us a suggestion in the comments section below and maybe we can do a
00:09:19 –> 00:09:21 video on it in the future.
00:09:21 –> 00:09:24 Alright, so we’ll see you next time and bye for now.
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Resource Links:
- Related Article: Making A Mod Cane Using a Polymer Clay Extruder
- Related Video: Review of the Lucy Clay CzeXtruder
- Related Video: Cynthia Tinapple Polymer Clay Extruder Disks
- Related Video: Sculpey Souffle Polymer Clay Product Review
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- Amazon: Sculpey Souffle Polymer Clay **
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If you plan on using a multi-drawer cabinet for bead or findings storage and you want to divide each drawer, here’s a thing to watch out for with most of them.
I bought the Akro-Mils 64 small drawer cabinet from Home Depot but it only comes with 8 small dividers. I had to buy a pack of dividers separately as I needed all the drawers to be divided. Having so few dividers may be fine for clay storage but it’s a nuisance for itty bitty items :-)
Not sure if you are n the US but I bought the same drawer system at K-mart and Harbor Freight. When I needed more drawer systems found them at K-mart online with free shipping because I spend more that $50.00. I think it is free shipping all the time if you have them delivered to the store. I am sure Sears has them also.
Cindy,
Can you tell me the name of the company or brand of your plastic drawer system and where you can purchase. I love it. Thanks!
Hi Joni, that unit was made by Mastercraft… a brand at Canadian Tire, one of our Canadian Big Box Stores.
Here is the link for more info… Plastic Drawers
There are probably tons of other places you can get these too if you look around. They are great though… I would not be without them now!
Cindy – Thank you so much. I am going to check these out for sure. Thanks again!
There are really similar ones at Wal-mart in the tool area. I love them.
Thanks for a great video Cindy. I even went back and watched the your original Mod Cane Tutorial from Feb. 2009. I believe it was Vol.#9.
BTW I love watching your U-Tube videos on my Samsung Smart TV in 50″ hi resolution. I wish I could do the same for all your Library videos. Maybe a Google Chromecast or similar. I am sure Doug will know the answer.
Hi Cindy!
Always new things to learn from you – thanks so much! And here I ‘d only used my extruder for finer solid colored parts of a project i.e. hair, mini squares, etc. I printed out a picture, several years ago, of this massive canes ‘wall art’ that resembled stained glass and thought of all the work but here it seems easy-peasy this way! Is it the weekend yet to get playing with this!! – thanks again.
Wow. I’ve seen these but always assumed you made a bunch of extruded “noodles” wrapped with sheets of colors. LOL. Glad I watched this.
Hi Cindy, Great mini tut, I am definitely going to try it.
Thank you sincerely for sharing this! Canes have intimidated me so much that I’ve not tried them, but THIS one seems easy, so I will most certainly try it. Thank you again!