Friday, October 24, 2014

Ovens used for - baking your Reborn Babies- to set the heat-set paints.





In between each layer (application) of paint the parts should be baked. There are exceptions, (such as touch-ups or creases, nails etc.,) to this rule that we will explore later during one of our painting sessions. Finding the right oven for this was a real challenge for me. I found many suggestion on Reborn Doll forums. It is advised against using your oven that you use for cooking family food. The vinyl gives off fumes and could contaminate your oven. Before I heard that I had used my oven, but found it did not hold temperature at 265 degrees F which is the desired baking temperature.

Convection ovens are recommenced by many. I found that most of them were too small. The oven needs to
be a large one, with the inside at least 16 inches wide and  12  inches high to accommodate the dolls parts. Although many people seemed to have success with their convection holding temperature, I did not!  I would preheat to 265 degrees F, but when the vinyl parts were inserted - the oven would cool down at least 100 degrees. I suspect it was the air blowing over the cool vinyl bring the temperature down. You are suppose to bake for 8 min., in this oven it took 4 minutes to come back up to 265. So I started to preheating to 365 to try to compensate, that did hold the temperature better, but also scorched by towel I had under the vinyl part to keep them from having contact with the medal tray. Parts in contact with hot medal will destroy the vinyl.  One day  the towel started to smoke and almost caught on fire.  So you need to be very careful with a convection oven even if it holds temperature. Never leave it during baking!!

Then I heard about the NuWave Infrared oven.  I have found it works really well, with
some manipulation. I guess nothing is perfect.  This oven blows a constant heat at the set temperature, So it is instant heat, you do not need to preheat (although I do just slightly). The only problem is the timer is digital and setting 6 is for 255 degrees and 7 is for 275, with no in between.  I use the setting 7 when I place the parts in and when my oven thermometer reaches 265,  which means the air temperature in the oven has now reached 265.  this takes about 5 minutes. At this time I turn the oven off and let the parts sit in the oven for another 3 minutes. This usually works well.
 Although one time the holding temperature dropped to fast and I decided to restart and must have put in the wrong setting and before I knew it I had melted the dolls face.  And this was my last bake on the doll.  Boy was I up set, so lesson learned not only don't text when you drive- don't text while you are baking dolls either. 





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