I had to try this, and wow. It works SO well! I used some older flour which made slight clumps, but I'll get some new flour for the next batch. Alibaba helps a lot because the PCL stuff is cheap there. Also, a pasta machine for making bigger sheets works like a charm (plus makes it even smoother because of the rolling). Thank you SO much for this video, you just saved me a ton of money!
Using this method almost cuts the cost of worbla in half. if about 420g are needed to make the same sized sheet as a medium piece of worbla, I can get 963g of instamorph on amazon for $35. Going with your 4-1 ratio, using that much I can get just under 3 medium sheets for around $40 USD.
Australian cosplayer here... I've pretty much had to rely on cheap looking foam sheets for cosplay Also, this guy is a genius, thank you so much! His commentary is very charming too, especially like how he lovingly calls his reproduction of the material "worbla-pie" :)
A heat transfer press "t-shirt press" for clothing design can heat those plates controlled, fast and efficiently up to 240°C or more (or less, adjusteable in 1 degree increments). A XXL pasta plate machine seems very usefull too, they can create plates from 25-35cm in width
Wow, great research, fella. I still have verrry old Friendly Plastic sticks, that in time became brittle, but I kept them. A born recycler by heart, always seeing possibilities for repurposing everything so I save it. And also have Friendly Plastic pellets, and as time went on polyclay got hard, but a hammer helped me with that, ... and on it goes. Into crafts, OOAK dolls and MLPs, and cosplay, and on and on. THANK YOU for your great vid- now I'm living on social security/fixed income, so Worbla is a bit difficult to pay for, But in my seventieth year, I'll be darned if I have to give up my play. After all, I heard Roddenberry speak at a forerunner of cosplay at a downtown Los Angeles hotel in 1970- not givin' it up. Now I can play with more stuff. Thanks for your effort!
you are making the world a better place. i'm not going to make this, i prefer spending too much money, but I like listening to your expertise, as listening to a dada artist. beautiful
That was really fascinating. I may actually try this, although not with my own kitchen tools (yes, I am a mother who more often builds armor than bakes cakes, which are anyways just bad for your shape. Just not too happy with craftfoam).
I really, REALLY need to try this. To get Worbla over here in NZ is about $100 a SHEET (large), shipping and customs tax included. I'll definitely be doing this for my Death (Darksiders 2) cosplay!
Great tutorial! Just finished making my first own worbla pie and it turned out great! Hopefully my cosplay I am planing to make with it turns out just as good :-) *thumbs up*
I know it's an old video and you might never see this, but cheap first price cat litter is made of bakelite clay aggregates, wich can be ground to an ULTRA fine dust (careful for your lungs if you use a mixer) I might try this for myself later, but in the meantime you could try it since im not too sure of the results.
In one of the last pictures, you have worblapie sheets with 100g and 50g written on them - is that the measurment of the plastic pellets you put in, or the measurement of the plastic and filler mixed together?
Oh and it's about 5 Euros 4.90 to be precise at the current exchange rate for 100gr of a brand called funkfastic mouldable plastic which is all I've been able to find here in SA
So once the plastic is mixed with the flour does the self life of flour no longer apply? Wheat flour can go rancid after sitting for a while, curious if Worblapie has the same issue.
I hope you're not planning on eating it? ;-) Wood rots too, but noone questions the use of it as filler in worbla. Thing is, once you embed each flour particle in plastic, it stays embedded. Like a mosquito caught in amber.
thanks for this.willsee what happens if I add refined clay and alginate instead. I was actually looking at what happened if you tried to hear polycoprolactone without water
You mentioned fillers that were easy to get a hold of. What would you do if you wanted to crank out a lot of Worbla? Or assuming that you were willing to buy larger amounts of filler and break it up among cosplay friends what were the fillers you passed over? Or passed over that a group purchase would have done?
I was sitting here wondering, "why not just use a pasta/polymer clay machine?" Then, at the end of your video you suggest it. As for fine wood powder.... Do you own a bench sander? Put a nylon sock on the output and sand down whatever blocks of wood you have handy. I find my table saw also produces a pretty damned fine powder. A standard 2x4x8 is about 2-3 bucks here in the US, and would net you close to 9 LBS of powdered wood... Just saying.
This recipe emulates the worlba, but how would one go about recreating the heat triggered glue that all worbla is coated with? Also would one blend two pieces into one with heat or some other special sculpting technique?
+Tempani My guess is that they stick to each other when heated up but not to other surfaces (usespray glue or somehting beforehand :) and yeah i guess you could blend two pieces together with heat :) it sounds pretty neat to me
+Tempani The heat triggered glue is actually just a thin layer of PCL. You can recreate it by keeping the pie on a flat surface and keeping it warm for a few minutes. The filler particles will start floating towards the top surface, while the PCL forms a glue surface at the bottom. Easy-piecy! Check out Worblapie II for more info on it.
+Scrappy 777 That depends. Is she still ignarant of it? Is there still time for you to replace all her kitchen tools with new ones? Can you make it giftwrapped? If the answer is 'Yes' to all three questions, you still have a chance of dignified continuation of life!
DLShadowwolf This is Scrappy 777's mother. I'm afraid I had to discontinue his life because I found that he had used my kitchen tools. If only he had heed your warning...
+Scrappy 777 Ah, well. Some sacrifices are neccessary. :-P I hope his death teaches him not to use your tools for plastic composite production ever again.
Hey, thank you for this video, its helpfull! but, there is one but. I am not that great at english translation, soo.. Can I ask you for somethink please? Would you write in the video destripcion excact recipes and ingrediences for this awesome pie?
Marta Fernández I aim to please ;-) Hi, people of the world! The topic of the day is Worblapie, or “How to make your own Worbla”, with Obsessive Creative Disorder. Worbla, God's thermoplastic gift to cosplay, the key material for anyone who can afford it, patented already 1973, covering most of the known world (except australia) so noone else can produce it commercially effectively monopolizing the market! Kinda good business strategy. The downside to patenting your material and production method is, of course, that you have to publicly reveal exactly what it is you're doing so that others may benefit from and improve upon your invention. With a few minutes (or more likely days) of google, the patent EP1525284 B1 can be found, which describes what we're looking for. It is filed by GmbH, who owns Rhenoflex, who owns the brand Worbla. Originally developed as a thermoplastic for industrial shoe making under the brand name Rhenoflex RX 5050, it eventually found it's way to the crafting scene where it was re-branded as Worbla's finest art. As can be derived from that patent, Worbla is essentially sawdust filler and Polylacrop... polycrap... Pockylab... Po-ly-ca-pro-lac-tone. Polycaprolactone. Or PCL for short. This plastic is well known under a lot of brand names, such as Friendly Plastic, Polymorph, Worbla's Deco art, Instamorph, Shapelock, Plastimake, Protoplast, Plaast, Polymold and others. It is a biodegradable thermoplastic polyester with a melting point of about 60 degrees centigrade and comes in bags or boxes of white pellets. I have a feeling they are manufactured in Germany, since the price per kilogram seems to increase with the distance to Berlin. Plaast can in Germany be bought for about $27/kg and the rest of Europe can find PCL at the material sample store for about the same. The UK has Polymorph, for about $31/kg and the US sports Instamorph and Polymold at $50/kg. But there's more! If you buy ShapeLock instead, you get to pay $70/kg and topping the list of outrageous prices is Worbla's Deco arts at $80/kg and Friendly Plastic for $88. A bargain if ever I saw one. Note that these prices are for packages of about 1kg and may change with time and demand. And shipping, of course. You can also go directly to the manufacturer and find PCL on Alibaba for about $10/kg. To make Worbla out of it, you simply mix it with a filler material and sheet extrude it. And since Rhenoflex decided to patent it, how to do this is now public knowledge. If you know where to look for it. Check it out if you are interested. In different patents, Rhenoflex describes a lot of different filler materials used in their worbla-esque shoe products. Fillers can be other plastics, such as ground up EVA or PET or organic fillers, such as wood flour, sawdust or fuel ash. Basically, fillers are cheap rest products that no-one else wants. Kinda like fillers in Anime. Now, the finer the filler, the better the surface texture of your finished product, so for your benefit I've located two easy-to-get fillers you can use when baking your own Worblapie. Common pinus pinea shavings and ground triticum. Also known as pet wood shavings and wheat flour, but in latin they sound much more mysterious and arcane. You can get these magical ingredients at pet and food stores for next to nothing. To start off your baking experiment, you'll need a little equipment first. A baking scales for measuring your components, a large flat surface to work on, a few mixing and storage containers, your pie materials (polycaprolactone and filler), a large flat glass form to bake your pie in, a mixer (if you want to use wood shavings), your oven aaaaand what pie was ever completed without a pinwheel. Start by setting your oven to 125 degrees centigrade. Next gather up your materials. If you're using pet shavings, run them through the blender for a while to get them down in size. Original Worbla uses wood flour of about half a millimeter grain size, but that's not gonna be possible to get with a blender. You might find it at a sawmill or workshop, though, and if you're cute they'll give it to you for free. The most useful mix I've found is 4 parts PCL and 1 part filler. This is pretty much as much filler you can get into the polymer without a compouning machine. If you happen to have a table-top twin-screw extruder, feel free to go 7 parts to 3, as the original Worbla, but most of us can't use that kind of equipment for pie. I find that the best amount is between 50 and 100 grams per batch, which will produce a Worblapie the size of a small dinner plate. You'll need about 420 grams of dough to make Worblapie matching a medium size sheet of regular Worbla. Dry-mix the filler and PCL pellets by simply pouring them both in a container and shaking it. Then pour it into your glass form. A few pellets will try to escape the filler, but you can simply push them back inside. Now put it in the oven for 10 minutes until your pie dough has turned into clear plastic and flour. Now for the mixing part. The mass is going to be hot, so you'll want to have either thick skin, a thick head or working gloves. I sport at least two of these. Knead the pellets and filler into a homogenous mass by folding and twisting the dough. Make sure it is thoroughly mixed to avoid any problems later. If the dough gets cold and hard, put it back in the oven for a while. A thick glass or ceramic form will help keep the dough warm while you knead it. Once so thoroughly mixed you can't separate filler from plastic, flatten it out a bit to easier absorb heat and put it back in the oven for another 10 minute heating. Meanwhile, you can prepare the next batch. Once the Worblapie dough is warm, take it out and put it on your work surface. Grab your pinwheel and start pinwheeling it into a thin cake. Like real pie dough. Try not to stretch it, though, since your Worblapie is a bit sensitive to stretch marks that will ruin your perfect surface. Again, if it gets cold, reheat it in the oven or with a heat gun. Once you've got your desired thickness, let it cool. The two fillers I've shown produce very different results. The fine grain wheat flour gives a flexible and smooth Worblapie that with very little surface work will produce a perfect result. A rougher filler, such as wood grain will give a stronger Worblapie but with the texture of pressed wood plate. Both may be useful in your coming crafting adventures, if you want perfectly smooth metal parts or textured organic armour. Because of the limitations of the production method, only fairly small Worblapies can be made, but these can be combined into bigger ones if you want to. Alternatively, you can get creative with a mangle or a pasta machine to produce bigger sheets. And that's pretty much it! I tried to keep this as simple as possible, so anyone can do it, so feel free to improve this method, claim it as your own and write a book or save it on a USB and send it into space to confound future space archeologists, I don't care. If you found it interesting or useful, just spread the word to those who might need it. If you found it interesting, someone else will too. Cheerio guys, and happy crafting! DON'T USE YOUR MOTHER'S KITCHEN GEAR, OK?
Hhaahaha!! You're so funny! I guess this wasn't supposed to be funny, probably, but you made a potentially boring- and yet still informative video- funny! Well done! And thank you very much!! Very helpful! :)
HI, so I understand the filler aspect of th pie video. Do I mix this with thermoplastic beads? What is the ratio? I feel lucky that someone made a video about this due to the sticker shock of shopping on Amazon. Why is it so expensive? Aren't a lot of common plastic parts in cheap items say like a toothbrush. If the prices were that high to manufacture no one would be using them in toothbrushes. But this is literally my first day on the subject. I happened by chance to see it listed along with art supplies. LIGHT BULBS went off in my head. creative sploosh! Until I saw every dealer on Amazon having identical overly high prices that seemed like a bad joke at my expense. This video has helped give me options yet I still cant make afford to make larger objects. But new as I am to this I would probably screw something up and make a plastic money pit. The ratio and is it true any powdered filler works? UH oh so can I just start melting toothbrushes an plastics to renew? Thank you. Covid no work no time schedule, I am so high. I think I just wrote a poorly written lettter.
Have you tried this while mixing the plastic with corn starch? I feel that would also give a very fine, smooth texture but I am not sure if it would work.
Is there a glue that you can put over it to achieve the same effect as Worbla? or does it already do it without the glue? I haven't used Worbla yet so I am curious if I can try this instead. Thanks
Fantastic video! TYVM. My family and I will attempt this. I did sign up for Alibaba, however, they seem to want to sell it by the ton????? any idea how to order about $100.00 worth only?
+winxtwins Perfect? Well, in that case you'd probably need some inside info and a sheet extruder. :-P But it's possible to make a fascimile. From what I know, the mixture is about 35:65 by weight sawdust of 0.5mm grain size and PCL. Heat and mix thoroughly, then spread on a really flat surface in a 1mm thick layer. Cook it at 65 degC for about 10 minutes to produce the glue surface. Then allow it to cool down to room temperature before prying it loose. Tadaaa!
So if i can buy a med size worbla sheet for 29.38$ at a store in town, and order 1kg of PCL for 24.80$, i'll have 50.11$ in savings? 29.38/0.42 - 24.80/1.25
Havn't had no problems longevity-wwise yet, and the first pieces I made are just over 2 years old. I guess the PCL will decompose faster than the flour, because of the encapsulating effect of the polymer. Essentially, you have flour in amber ;-)
Just saw the video and haven't tried making it. You talk about the different fillers and the texture they give and in the second video fillers effect the "glue side" but are fillers critical to use? I understand it makes a batch of pie cheaper but will 100% plastic make the smoothest sheet possible with both sides "glue sides"? It seems to me that if fillers have side effects, then leave them out.
But its the side effects you want! Fillers affect a lot of things in the material, the more filler you have in it, the more stiffness you get, for example. Light fillers make the material lighter. Cheap fillers make the material cheaper. Non-sticky fillers make the material less sticky. Non-meltable fillers make it tougher to shape when heated. It all depends on the end result you want. Regular PCL is almost glue-like when melted, so fillers are usually added to make it easier to handle, as well as for the improvements in material characteristics. It's a lot like baking bread. Flour and water makes decent bread, but to get the right dough to make bread out of it you need the right amounts of each.
I had to try this, and wow. It works SO well! I used some older flour which made slight clumps, but I'll get some new flour for the next batch. Alibaba helps a lot because the PCL stuff is cheap there. Also, a pasta machine for making bigger sheets works like a charm (plus makes it even smoother because of the rolling).
Thank you SO much for this video, you just saved me a ton of money!
Rhaya Cosplay you could always sift your flour or whisk the lumps out too
Using this method almost cuts the cost of worbla in half. if about 420g are needed to make the same sized sheet as a medium piece of worbla, I can get 963g of instamorph on amazon for $35. Going with your 4-1 ratio, using that much I can get just under 3 medium sheets for around $40 USD.
NOTE TO SELF:
Plastic is hot but not unreasonably so
GLASS CONTAINER IS
ow. >_
+'Rei Steiner Well, they are at the same temperature, the glass just conduct better the heat @Veritasium misconceptions About Heat
I know this comment is 9 years old but are you alright?
Australian cosplayer here... I've pretty much had to rely on cheap looking foam sheets for cosplay
Also, this guy is a genius, thank you so much! His commentary is very charming too, especially like how he lovingly calls his reproduction of the material "worbla-pie" :)
A heat transfer press "t-shirt press" for clothing design can heat those plates controlled, fast and efficiently up to 240°C or more (or less, adjusteable in 1 degree increments).
A XXL pasta plate machine seems very usefull too, they can create plates from 25-35cm in width
That's incredible! I'll have to find one of those some time, thanks for the tip! ;-)
use a coffee grinder instead of a blender it will make dust
Thank you this will be very useful
This just made me so chuckle... excellentknowledge & research combined with total eccentricity.... greatvid!
The narration and voice-over is top level stuff. There is a bit of HHGTTG narrator in there, I think.
Wow, great research, fella. I still have verrry old Friendly Plastic sticks, that in time became brittle, but I kept them. A born recycler by heart, always seeing possibilities for repurposing everything so I save it. And also have Friendly Plastic pellets, and as time went on polyclay got hard, but a hammer helped me with that, ... and on it goes. Into crafts, OOAK dolls and MLPs, and cosplay, and on and on. THANK YOU for your great vid- now I'm living on social security/fixed income, so Worbla is a bit difficult to pay for, But in my seventieth year, I'll be darned if I have to give up my play. After all, I heard Roddenberry speak at a forerunner of cosplay at a downtown Los Angeles hotel in 1970- not givin' it up. Now I can play with more stuff. Thanks for your effort!
Char Yates Awesome!! Life doesn't have to get boring just because you get older! Keep doing what you're doing, and inspiring others to do the same!! 💜
We get old but we don’t have to be old. Cheers lad
you are making the world a better place. i'm not going to make this, i prefer spending too much money, but I like listening to your expertise, as listening to a dada artist. beautiful
dude YOUR A FREAKING GENEROUS GENIUS!!!!!
Thank you. I've been looking for a solution to a problem this will solve. And your humor made it fun to learn.
GmbH is just a type of company in Germany! If they're a German company, they'll be XX GmbH. So yes, you're also spot on about where it's made! ;)
+DestructoPop Yeah, I know. :-P Just realized I forgot the entire company name and just said GmbH after publishing it. XP
I hope to be using your recipe soon to add onto my worbla stock! It will be interesting seeing worbla black and worbla pie side by side! :D
That was really fascinating. I may actually try this, although not with my own kitchen tools (yes, I am a mother who more often builds armor than bakes cakes, which are anyways just bad for your shape. Just not too happy with craftfoam).
This also works great for making custom braces used for arthritis or other body bracing needs.
your voice is oddly soothing and this is amzing thank you!
Thank you so much for this!
Gonna try it right away
thank you so much for all of your hard work that went into this video.
I really, REALLY need to try this. To get Worbla over here in NZ is about $100 a SHEET (large), shipping and customs tax included. I'll definitely be doing this for my Death (Darksiders 2) cosplay!
yaaass god bless you
yaaass god bless you
Also doing War too, hopefully will have them ready for the next Wellington Armageddon ^^
I wish you the best of luck!!! :D I'm sure its going to look amazingly epic! I'm actually doing Death as well but as a female >
we're doing a full height one, going to be nuts to build them haha
Great tutorial! Just finished making my first own worbla pie and it turned out great! Hopefully my cosplay I am planing to make with it turns out just as good :-) *thumbs up*
What a delightful fella! Genius too!
one of the most interesting, entertaining and informative videos i´ve ever seen on youtube!!! big thumbs up
I love this!!! So much inspiration...so much information... Kudos for helping other creative folks do their thing!
Thank you so much for this tutorial, ill definitely try it
This is a keeper. Thanks for sharing.
I know it's an old video and you might never see this, but cheap first price cat litter is made of bakelite clay aggregates, wich can be ground to an ULTRA fine dust (careful for your lungs if you use a mixer) I might try this for myself later, but in the meantime you could try it since im not too sure of the results.
This is FABULOUS! Thank you! New goals.....
You are amazing. Thank you!
This will make things so much easier! Thank you! xxx
Fantastic video. The cost of Worbla is an issue.
In one of the last pictures, you have worblapie sheets with 100g and 50g written on them - is that the measurment of the plastic pellets you put in, or the measurement of the plastic and filler mixed together?
Starrysify together
Thank you very much for this video, I appreciate it very much...
"Jane.... The man we call Jane..."
Thank You Jane
Epic work
You are wonderful, helpful, and hysterical! Thank you so much :)
love your hat. thanks for this!
Gave me a Jane vibe. BrownCoatsUnite!
+eternal8song I think it's Jane's hat from Firefly.
Well done sir.
Oh and it's about 5 Euros 4.90 to be precise at the current exchange rate for 100gr of a brand called funkfastic mouldable plastic which is all I've been able to find here in SA
So once the plastic is mixed with the flour does the self life of flour no longer apply? Wheat flour can go rancid after sitting for a while, curious if Worblapie has the same issue.
I hope you're not planning on eating it? ;-) Wood rots too, but noone questions the use of it as filler in worbla.
Thing is, once you embed each flour particle in plastic, it stays embedded. Like a mosquito caught in amber.
thanks for this.willsee what happens if I add refined clay and alginate instead. I was actually looking at what happened if you tried to hear polycoprolactone without water
Excellent work
So... i love watching things... it brings me joy .. your voice is... idk... I like it. 🙂
You mentioned fillers that were easy to get a hold of.
What would you do if you wanted to crank out a lot of Worbla?
Or assuming that you were willing to buy larger amounts of filler and break it up among cosplay friends what were the fillers you passed over? Or passed over that a group purchase would have done?
This is awesome! Amazing job! Going to have to try to make some!
I was sitting here wondering, "why not just use a pasta/polymer clay machine?" Then, at the end of your video you suggest it.
As for fine wood powder.... Do you own a bench sander? Put a nylon sock on the output and sand down whatever blocks of wood you have handy. I find my table saw also produces a pretty damned fine powder.
A standard 2x4x8 is about 2-3 bucks here in the US, and would net you close to 9 LBS of powdered wood... Just saying.
Hi, awesome video, can you make the list of the ingredientes? thanks for de video :D
Great video! And: I'm do happy to life in Germany. I always see stuff and can't get it here. Or need to order it from the US which is quite expensive.
This recipe emulates the worlba, but how would one go about recreating the heat triggered glue that all worbla is coated with? Also would one blend two pieces into one with heat or some other special sculpting technique?
+Tempani My guess is that they stick to each other when heated up but not to other surfaces (usespray glue or somehting beforehand :)
and yeah i guess you could blend two pieces together with heat :) it sounds pretty neat to me
+Tempani The heat triggered glue is actually just a thin layer of PCL. You can recreate it by keeping the pie on a flat surface and keeping it warm for a few minutes. The filler particles will start floating towards the top surface, while the PCL forms a glue surface at the bottom. Easy-piecy! Check out Worblapie II for more info on it.
wow, thank you!! this is such a money saver!!!
Thank you so much!!!!!Now I can make my costume correctly
Now you're Jesus to me!
As in non-existent?
This is a great video and thanks for making. But I might still buy my own worbla :)
I accidentally used my mother's kitchen tools. What do?
+Scrappy 777 That depends. Is she still ignarant of it? Is there still time for you to replace all her kitchen tools with new ones? Can you make it giftwrapped? If the answer is 'Yes' to all three questions, you still have a chance of dignified continuation of life!
DLShadowwolf
This is Scrappy 777's mother. I'm afraid I had to discontinue his life because I found that he had used my kitchen tools. If only he had heed your warning...
+Scrappy 777 Ah, well. Some sacrifices are neccessary. :-P I hope his death teaches him not to use your tools for plastic composite production ever again.
OMG, like really ?
Gonna try that out ! THAAAAAAAAAAAANKS
Fantastisk! Tusen takk for at du lagde denne videoen! :D
Hey, thank you for this video, its helpfull! but, there is one but. I am not that great at english translation, soo.. Can I ask you for somethink please? Would you write in the video destripcion excact recipes and ingrediences for this awesome pie?
Flassipa I think the same. In writing I understand a little English but if I listen to it don´t understand anything XDD please written recipe!
Marta Fernández have you tried turning subtitles on? May help a bit if you haven't :)
AH! *^* thanks, I try in this moment! XDD
Marta Fernández
I aim to please ;-)
Hi, people of the world! The topic of
the day is Worblapie, or “How to make your own Worbla”, with
Obsessive Creative Disorder.
Worbla, God's thermoplastic gift to
cosplay, the key material for anyone who can afford it, patented
already 1973, covering most of the known world (except australia) so
noone else can produce it commercially effectively monopolizing the
market! Kinda good business strategy. The downside to patenting your
material and production method is, of course, that you have to
publicly reveal exactly what it is you're doing so that others may
benefit from and improve upon your invention.
With a few minutes (or more likely
days) of google, the patent EP1525284 B1 can be found, which
describes what we're looking for. It is filed by GmbH, who owns
Rhenoflex, who owns the brand Worbla. Originally developed as a
thermoplastic for industrial shoe making under the brand name
Rhenoflex RX 5050, it eventually found it's way to the crafting scene
where it was re-branded as Worbla's finest art.
As can be derived from that patent,
Worbla is essentially sawdust filler and Polylacrop... polycrap...
Pockylab... Po-ly-ca-pro-lac-tone. Polycaprolactone. Or PCL for
short. This plastic is well known under a lot of brand names, such as
Friendly Plastic, Polymorph, Worbla's Deco art, Instamorph,
Shapelock, Plastimake, Protoplast, Plaast, Polymold and others. It is
a biodegradable thermoplastic polyester with a melting point of about
60 degrees centigrade and comes in bags or boxes of white pellets. I
have a feeling they are manufactured in Germany, since the price per
kilogram seems to increase with the distance to Berlin. Plaast can in
Germany be bought for about $27/kg and the rest of Europe can find
PCL at the material sample store for about the same. The UK has
Polymorph, for about $31/kg and the US sports Instamorph and Polymold
at $50/kg. But there's more! If you buy ShapeLock instead, you get to
pay $70/kg and topping the list of outrageous prices is Worbla's Deco
arts at $80/kg and Friendly Plastic for $88. A bargain if ever I saw
one. Note that these prices are for packages of about 1kg and may
change with time and demand. And shipping, of course. You can also go
directly to the manufacturer and find PCL on Alibaba for about
$10/kg.
To make Worbla out of it, you simply
mix it with a filler material and sheet extrude it. And since
Rhenoflex decided to patent it, how to do this is now public
knowledge. If you know where to look for it. Check it out if you are
interested.
In different patents, Rhenoflex
describes a lot of different filler materials used in their
worbla-esque shoe products. Fillers can be other plastics, such as
ground up EVA or PET or organic fillers, such as wood flour, sawdust
or fuel ash. Basically, fillers are cheap rest products that no-one
else wants. Kinda like fillers in Anime.
Now, the finer the filler, the better
the surface texture of your finished product, so for your benefit
I've located two easy-to-get fillers you can use when baking your own
Worblapie. Common pinus pinea shavings and ground triticum. Also
known as pet wood shavings and wheat flour, but in latin they sound
much more mysterious and arcane. You can get these magical
ingredients at pet and food stores for next to nothing.
To start off your baking experiment,
you'll need a little equipment first. A baking scales for measuring
your components, a large flat surface to work on, a few mixing and
storage containers, your pie materials (polycaprolactone and filler),
a large flat glass form to bake your pie in, a mixer (if you want to
use wood shavings), your oven aaaaand what pie was ever completed
without a pinwheel.
Start by setting your oven to 125
degrees centigrade.
Next gather up your materials. If
you're using pet shavings, run them through the blender for a while
to get them down in size. Original Worbla uses wood flour of about
half a millimeter grain size, but that's not gonna be possible to get
with a blender. You might find it at a sawmill or workshop, though,
and if you're cute they'll give it to you for free.
The most useful mix I've found is 4
parts PCL and 1 part filler. This is pretty much as much filler you
can get into the polymer without a compouning machine. If you happen
to have a table-top twin-screw extruder, feel free to go 7 parts to
3, as the original Worbla, but most of us can't use that kind of
equipment for pie. I find that the best amount is between 50 and 100
grams per batch, which will produce a Worblapie the size of a small
dinner plate. You'll need about 420 grams of dough to make Worblapie
matching a medium size sheet of regular Worbla.
Dry-mix the filler and PCL pellets by
simply pouring them both in a container and shaking it. Then pour it
into your glass form. A few pellets will try to escape the filler,
but you can simply push them back inside. Now put it in the oven for
10 minutes until your pie dough has turned into clear plastic and
flour. Now for the mixing part. The mass is going to be hot, so
you'll want to have either thick skin, a thick head or working
gloves. I sport at least two of these. Knead the pellets and filler
into a homogenous mass by folding and twisting the dough. Make sure
it is thoroughly mixed to avoid any problems later. If the dough gets
cold and hard, put it back in the oven for a while. A thick glass or
ceramic form will help keep the dough warm while you knead it.
Once so thoroughly mixed you can't
separate filler from plastic, flatten it out a bit to easier absorb
heat and put it back in the oven for another 10 minute heating.
Meanwhile, you can prepare the next batch.
Once the Worblapie dough is warm, take
it out and put it on your work surface. Grab your pinwheel and start
pinwheeling it into a thin cake. Like real pie dough. Try not to
stretch it, though, since your Worblapie is a bit sensitive to
stretch marks that will ruin your perfect surface. Again, if it gets
cold, reheat it in the oven or with a heat gun.
Once you've got your desired thickness,
let it cool.
The two fillers I've shown produce very
different results. The fine grain wheat flour gives a flexible and
smooth Worblapie that with very little surface work will produce a
perfect result. A rougher filler, such as wood grain will give a
stronger Worblapie but with the texture of pressed wood plate. Both
may be useful in your coming crafting adventures, if you want
perfectly smooth metal parts or textured organic armour.
Because of the limitations of the
production method, only fairly small Worblapies can be made, but
these can be combined into bigger ones if you want to. Alternatively,
you can get creative with a mangle or a pasta machine to produce
bigger sheets.
And that's pretty much it! I tried to
keep this as simple as possible, so anyone can do it, so feel free to
improve this method, claim it as your own and write a book or save it
on a USB and send it into space to confound future space
archeologists, I don't care. If you found it interesting or useful,
just spread the word to those who might need it. If you found it
interesting, someone else will too. Cheerio guys, and happy crafting!
DON'T USE YOUR MOTHER'S KITCHEN GEAR,
OK?
DLShadowwolf hahahaha ok ok, I'll be a good girl and I won´t destroy the kitchen!
Ceramists use a rolling machine to make slabs of clay. If someone wants to make a-lot of it they could buy a slab roller.
Thanks for this
dude awesome thank you
This was really cute, thanks! :D
lol- ROLLING PIN, lol "Pin wheel"
Could use a coffee grinder for the wood shavings
that cat cracked me up :]
Tnx 4 the vid man. Very usefull
What have you made with your home made worblapie?
Hhaahaha!! You're so funny! I guess this wasn't supposed to be funny, probably, but you made a potentially boring- and yet still informative video- funny! Well done! And thank you very much!! Very helpful! :)
HI, so I understand the filler aspect of th pie video. Do I mix this with thermoplastic beads? What is the ratio? I feel lucky that someone made a video about this due to the sticker shock of shopping on Amazon. Why is it so expensive? Aren't a lot of common plastic parts in cheap items say like a toothbrush. If the prices were that high to manufacture no one would be using them in toothbrushes. But this is literally my first day on the subject. I happened by chance to see it listed along with art supplies. LIGHT BULBS went off in my head. creative sploosh! Until I saw every dealer on Amazon having identical overly high prices that seemed like a bad joke at my expense. This video has helped give me options yet I still cant make afford to make larger objects. But new as I am to this I would probably screw something up and make a plastic money pit. The ratio and is it true any powdered filler works? UH oh so can I just start melting toothbrushes an plastics to renew? Thank you. Covid no work no time schedule, I am so high. I think I just wrote a poorly written lettter.
Awesome! Do you have written instructions anywhere to go with this?
Sarah Cohan ua-cam.com/video/iQf3Ry-_prE/v-deo.html&lc=z13gdnwjfur4fxjt223qhz1xqw3cxjs1o
WORBLA O.O HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS IT IT IS STRANGE WEIRD AND COOL
Can you give the ingredients again like saw dust I got, but the rest I'm lost, is it baking flour,
Very interesting video
Have you tried this while mixing the plastic with corn starch? I feel that would also give a very fine, smooth texture but I am not sure if it would work.
Corn starch will probably work just as well as wheat flour. I just had flour at home when I started this ;-)
soo helpful thank you~ ♡♡
you are straight up adorable!!
Is there a glue that you can put over it to achieve the same effect as Worbla? or does it already do it without the glue? I haven't used Worbla yet so I am curious if I can try this instead. Thanks
you're like Olaf of League of Legends haha
Fantastic video! TYVM. My family and I will attempt this. I did sign up for Alibaba, however, they seem to want to sell it by the ton????? any idea how to order about $100.00 worth only?
LMAO my brother from another mother ,while I probally will never do this ,your video was great and so funny( your not alone lol.....)
Can I just patiently use heat gun to melt the pellets? My oven died from too much cake
thank you man ;)
Another question, can I make sheets of this and store it for later? How would I do so?
freakin helpful!!! but... with wheat flour... you mean the regular flour you have in the kitchen? like for baking??? o.O
+dIxIklo85 Yep :-) Though you can use pretty much anything, this is just an easy to obtain suggestion
Wait! I missed a step! What needs to be mixed with the PCL to make it nice and flat and smooth?
Something with a small grain size, like wheat flour ;-)
I tried using this, but unfortunately the worbla pie kept sticking to my work surfaces. What can I do to fix that?
+Mani Derp Try greasing up the surface with some vaseline. Works wonders :-)
Looks at username
Me: wow LDSHADOWLADY cosplay
Stares into the distance
Looks again
Me: *looks again & sees DLShadowwolf* .......oh
ok so what all do I exactly need to make the perfect exact worbla?
+winxtwins Perfect? Well, in that case you'd probably need some inside info and a sheet extruder. :-P
But it's possible to make a fascimile. From what I know, the mixture is about 35:65 by weight sawdust of 0.5mm grain size and PCL. Heat and mix thoroughly, then spread on a really flat surface in a 1mm thick layer. Cook it at 65 degC for about 10 minutes to produce the glue surface. Then allow it to cool down to room temperature before prying it loose. Tadaaa!
So if i can buy a med size worbla sheet for 29.38$ at a store in town, and order 1kg of PCL for 24.80$, i'll have 50.11$ in savings?
29.38/0.42 - 24.80/1.25
Sessh73 Compared to buying the same weight (3 M-size sheets) in Worbla, yes.
If you use flour as your filler how do the final projects fair longevity wise? Do they decompose after awhile or do they hold up fairly well?
Havn't had no problems longevity-wwise yet, and the first pieces I made are just over 2 years old. I guess the PCL will decompose faster than the flour, because of the encapsulating effect of the polymer. Essentially, you have flour in amber ;-)
i am going try this but can you give me advice - how to glue together parts of diy worbla?? any recommendations regarding type of glue. many thanks
+Dorota MUA Contact cement is great, otherwise just heating the joins and melding them together works also :)
yes yes Yes YES YES YES!
can you reheat the excess worbla to combine it and not waste it?
How to make clear worbla
in germany? berin? wAIT I AM FROM GERMANY; BERLIN
happiest moment of the week. Thank you so. much.
You ROCK!
0:17 seconds in, I live the sad life in Australia
Just saw the video and haven't tried making it. You talk about the different fillers and the texture they give and in the second video fillers effect the "glue side" but are fillers critical to use? I understand it makes a batch of pie cheaper but will 100% plastic make the smoothest sheet possible with both sides "glue sides"? It seems to me that if fillers have side effects, then leave them out.
But its the side effects you want! Fillers affect a lot of things in the material, the more filler you have in it, the more stiffness you get, for example. Light fillers make the material lighter. Cheap fillers make the material cheaper. Non-sticky fillers make the material less sticky. Non-meltable fillers make it tougher to shape when heated. It all depends on the end result you want. Regular PCL is almost glue-like when melted, so fillers are usually added to make it easier to handle, as well as for the improvements in material characteristics. It's a lot like baking bread. Flour and water makes decent bread, but to get the right dough to make bread out of it you need the right amounts of each.
excellent reply, thanks!
Loved your video, your so funny
Thanks for the video! :D you're funny.
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What about using your fathers kitchen tools?