Carving Material Review: Speedy-Cut Easy by Speedball

Speedy-Cut Easy by Speedball

I had been warned.  I knew it would be bad... But I could never have appreciated how bad until I got my hands on this blue stuff. 

The cost was fairly average, again being unbalanced by the shipping costs to bring it up to Canada across the border.  I'm sure some craft or art supply store is carrying this stuff, but I won't be hunting that shop down to buy this stuff.


Speedball: you have such an opportunity and almost a cornered market in North America.  Why oh why would you do this to us? Why?

Appearance:

My first thought when I opened the package was actually optimism (oh, to go back and regain my innocence).  When touching the material, it didn't actually have the immediate crumble/pilling that regular Speedy Cut has. The surface was nice and smooth and I liked the colour (easier on the eyes than the pink stuff).

Size and Weight:

Fairly average size and weight - this one is about 7 mm thick.

Smeared acetone transfer on Speedy-Cut Blue.  Wtf.

Transfer:

It doesn't heat transfer!! What? How is that even possible.  I just don't understand.  And then my back up go-to, acetone?  Look what it did! Smearing it all up as if I am just a learner.  Jeez.

While this is not the first material I've had to not take a heat transfer, I will quote from the actual packaging: "Use slightly warm iron to transfer ink-jet and laser-print images."  Uh, no. Based on that alone, Speedball should be refunding my money on this one.  You can't be advertising this as being able to heat transfer - oh, Speedball, what are you thinking?

Crumble Factor:



Oh, how I was wrong.  This stuff is far worse than the regular Speedy-Cut.  This stuff pills while you are carving it. Literally, whether the blade or gouge, the metal running along the material causes it to pill along the cut of the material.  Wut??

Also, once you cut into the material, it starts expanding into pills.  Double what??!? It's bonkers. This stuff crumbles like that's its job.



Carving:

Speedball Speedy-Cut Blue - knife carved letters...

This is kind of crazy.  It crumbles so badly that you can't carve any detail because the detail crumbles as you carve it.  Ridiculous.

Look at that image to the right of the text having been knife-carved.  It's terrible.  Can you read it (backwards, obv, but still)?  It was disintegrating while I carved it.  Bah.

Gouge carving is the same.  Crumbles and pills as you are making cuts.  And massively jagged lines.  Click on any of the photos on this page and they'll enlarge for you to see.


Inking:

It inks fine, no issues, though I have this suspicion that it is actually sponging up some of the ink.  For example, my new StazOn midi inks are realllly juicy - so juicy that sometimes the ink is too much and I end up with over inked impressions.  Check out the violet impression below; it almost looks like the pad is drying out.  I think the material may be soaking it up...

Conclusions:

I think Speedball may be trolling the stamp carving community with this stuff.  Either that or they just want us all to stop complaining about the regular Speedy-Cut.  Avoid if at all possible.