Are you using a sanding block under the sandpaper?  Fingers are worthless for this....

And, did you add "other stuff" to the mix?  White glue is probably harder than flour glue, whiting may increase density.

Sue

Update on the cake decorating tips idea:  thumbs down.  The tip kept clogging with little bits.  Unless I can get PM to the consistency of frosting, it won't work.  Any ideas for processing it that finely?

Use a sandling block, which is a fancy name for a piece of wood with sandpaper wrapped around it  , maybe 1x2x4" or so.  You can bear down harder -- fingers aren't worth much for hard stuff.

Right now, I'm just trying some experiments.  The fine mesh screen from the dollar store was a bust.  It was so fine that the liquid wouldn't even go THRU it!

I have never used Celluclay (usually making my own PM), so I thought it was time to try it:

I mixed up some Celluclay with water and whiting.  Very sticky.  I sprayed some PAM onto a couple of ceramic saucers, then pressed the stuff directly  onto the saucers.  Then I put the saucers into the oven (on low, which is less than 200F) before I went to bed.  I forgot about them this morning, and just remembered when I got home tonight.  After cooling, I tried to remove the PM from the saucers.  "Try" being the operative word here.  This was not a good idea.  I don't know what kind of adhesive they use in Celluclay, but it STICKS!  I managed to pry off some of the PM from the saucers with a dinner knife (only slightly bending the knife  :? ).  But the center area is there to stay forever.  They are now resting at the bottom of the waste basket.  Fortunately they were only the cats' dishes  .

Note to self:  FORGET PAM AS A MOLD RELEASE!  & get more cat dishes at thrift shop.

The stuff that I managed to pry loose did come off in pieces, but it's quite hard -- I don't think I could even dent it with my fingernail, but it's still lightweight.  When I pressed it on moist, it was maybe 1/8" thick, now it's half that after drying, but it didn't shrink any crosswide.  Of course, it may have been permanently cemented to the plate before it had a chance to shrink!

More news later as it happens!

Sue

Is Celluclay as smooth as regular clay?  Is it necessary to bake it or will it air dry?  Maybe that would work as a final coating on my bowl.  I was looking at it last weekend in a craft store and thought it was kind of pricey considering how relatively easy you can make a big batch for free.  But, if it's really smooth, it might be worth it as a finish coat.

Celluclay is not as smooth as regular clay, although adding clay to it would probably make it smoother.  It will air dry, but it takes awhile if it's laid on thick.  It will slowly dissolve if you soak it in water.  For a really smooth finish coat, mix regular clay with fine paper pulp.

Thanks for the information.  Do you have a particular method for obtaining fine pulp?

I usually take scraps of handmade paper, mix them with water, and run them through a hand powered food processor.  <url:
http://www.oakfire.com/store/masks/handmixer.jpg>

-Ken-

Vinca, some suggestions on sanding. Hardware stores usually try to sell women dumb general purpose sandpaper, of whatever coarseness/fineness but there's a zillion types, with different abrasives.

Even for wood there's a huge difference between garnet, regular and a couple of other types of abrasives but those are just the beginning. For sloughing away material quickly see if you can find the 35 coarseness which is most easily found in belts for belt sanders (but can be ripped or cut into pieces to wrap around a block or convenient piece of wood.) Also some "drywall sanding screen", probably not the stuff from the dollar store, works extremely well.

But try the auto parts store. They should have something that works on fibreglass car surfaces, or "smoothing out Bondo". It probably won't be called sandpaper, it will be some strange plastic fiber pad that looks sort of like one of those scrubbers for dishes.

And don't forget steel wool. Though some say it leaves behind tiny particles than can cause rust mixed with water based finishes, I've never made any rusty wood furniture.