Perfect Touch Sculpting Tool Review
- Sunday, 23 May 2010 10:37
- Last Updated on Monday, 16 May 2011 06:14
- Written by Marc Spess
If you like to sculpt a lot, chances are you have tried to find sculpting tools that work well for sculpting your puppets. Recently I got a catalog in the mail from a company called Perfect Touch. I knew about them from surfing the internet and stumbling across their site but never bought any of their tools. But this catalog convinced me that these tools must be something special. Perfect Touch sells hand made tools that are used mainly for very small sculptures. The kind of sculptures such as model and resin kits that have minute detail. Well I gave them a phone call and picked out three tools that I thought would work well for detailing my puppet sculptures - specifically hair. To my surprise, in only two days I got the goods in a well packaged box! Inside this box were the three tools I ordered all inside neat little plastic bags as you can see above.
My first impression was - Wow these tools must be very fragile. They are extremely light weight and seem flimsy. The three tools I chose were the curved spatula, the circular loop tool, and the ear tool. After some experimenting and test sculpting on a piece of blue Van Aken clay, I realized these tools are not as fragile as they appear. In fact they are very strong tools, but since they are used for detailing you wont be needing to press hard on your clay, but it is good to know they won't just fall apart. The loop tool is made of very hard piano wire that will not even bend, and cuts through clay like butter. The spatula is made of strong stainless steel, and the ball on the end of the ear tool is made of glass. All in all these are some very well made tools!
The first tool I tried out was the Curved Spatula. My main sculpting tool which you can buy at this site is the Wax Spatula. So I thought maybe a smaller version would be a good start for a detailing tool. I find that the curved spatula works surprisingly well as you can see below. It is probably a good tool for any mini angular patterns in general, cloth patterns, and scale patterns.
The next tool I tried out was the Ear Tool. This is now one of my favorite tools! It works great for making smooth round indentations as you can see below. This is great for noses, ears, small eye sockets, and all kinds of frog and lizard textures. This tool is also surprisingly strong for its size, and actually has two glass beads on both sides so you can roll one side around for great hair texturing.
The last tool I tried out was the circular loop tool. I think this tool would be best for roughing in areas since it does not leave smooth edges in Van Aken. The best way to use this tool is to smooth out the rough parts using the ear tool.
So my final impression is that these tools are solidly made. Although I probably would like to see thin aluminum handles as opposed to wood. On the other hand these tools are easily modified if you feel the handles are too long. Just take a small saw and cut them however long you need. I would recommend these tools for someone who already has a set of tools and needs tools specifically for detailing. The other plus to these tools is that the people creating them have done a lot of research dealing with many sculptors to fine tune their products.
For more information on Perfect Touch you can visit their web site here: Perfect Touch Tools You can also give them a call: 281-491-2389
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