Green Stuff is dead - long live Green Stuff! Last month, the world's only factory making original recipe Green Stuff shut it's doors, terminating the supply of the iconic modelling material for miniature wargamers and model sculptors everywhere. Now the UK based plastics maker Sylmasta has pledged to bring it back from extinction. Wargamer caught up with company owner Simon Bedding to find out how the company plans to have a working product "by the summer at the latest" - and learned that this is a surprisingly personal goal for the British businessman.
"I would say probably by the summer at the latest we'll have a working product" out on store shelves, Bedding says, "We're on our way already". "The thing about these developments is sometimes you can just get it right the first time, and then other times… you can't quite get it right and it takes ages" - but things seem to be on the right track.
Green Stuff - actually a consumer name for the plumbing putty Kneadatite - was invented by the US company Polymeric Systems Inc in the 1970s, and their Pennsylvanian factory was the only source in the world. It rose to popularity as the go-to sculpting medium for miniature wargames in the 1990s.
"My dad, I believe, was the original person to start bringing Green Stuff into Europe in the first place, back in the early 90s", Bedding says. I've read accounts that say Games Workshop owner Bryan Ansell had his hands on a supply in the 1980s, but that was reserved for GW sculptors - Sylmasta was certainly one of the earliest suppliers for general customers.
Bedding's father turned up at the military modelling convention Euro Militaire in the port town of Folkestone "With a few boxes of Green Stuff" just to see if there was a market. "He ended up having a queue of people outside the exhibition center in Folkestone queueing up behind his car, buying packs of Green Stuff from his boot".
The timing was prescient: a book by American military modeller Bill Horan had recently been released, introducing Europeans to Green Stuff for the first time, and it had a real allure. Recognising the market for the putty, Sylmasta started to import it in earnest. The firm has grown a lot since then, and now produces around 90% of the products it sells, even separating out a distinctive 'Sylcreate' brand just to target the hobby market. Green Stuff was a consistent (blue and yellow) thread throughout the business' history.
"We've never actually made our own version", Bedding says, "I've always thought about it, but then I always thought, well, what's the point in developing a replacement? It already does a good job, everyone loves it, so there's not really much point". But in 2025 the original Green Stuff plant was shuttered by its owners. "Our supplies of Green Stuff are running low, and we're getting inquiries for it", Bedding says. What better time than now to try and make it?
I ask Bedding what makes Green Stuff so popular. He's not a sculptor, but "From speaking to people who are really experienced with using Green Stuff, they like the particular consistency, that kind of flexibility it has even before it sets" - that ductile, chewing gum feeling. And "When it sets it's not brittle, so you can have very fine detail and it doesn't break".
That elasticity makes it a little harder to carve or file, but "It also seems to be very good for making organic looking shapes, things like flags, tent rolls". And "A lot of people like the fact that it's very versatile, so you can change the ratios to affect properties", whether you want it harder or more elastic, and "You can easily introduce other putties into it, Milliput or Epoxy or Geomfix or whatever to change the actual consistency of it when you're using it and when it finally sets". I'm a big fan of a two parts Green Stuff to one part Milliput superfine blend, personally.
Sylcreate doesn't know the secret recipe for Green Stuff, so it's going to develop a new product that closely matches its properties. But how closely? Bedding has been taking opinions from modellers, and there "Seems to be a bit of a split into two camps, between those who want something exactly the same", and those who want to tinker with the original recipe - asking for something that sets harder is a common request. "Maybe we'll end up with two variants", Bedding muses, "One that sets very firmly, one that sets a little more flexibly".
One thing is for certain: "You can't change the color". There have been some requests to drop the green to make sculpts easier to photograph, but Bedding has found that even with test samples, if it doesn't look like Green Stuff, no matter how similar the behaviour is, it won't feel right for testers.
The testing process is involved. "The benefit we have is the industrial size of the company", Bedding says. "We have a lab with a very sophisticated mixer which enables us to make actual putty batches of about 100 or 50 grams at a time". There's as much art as science in this. The firm's material sciences can "Develop several different starting formulations which we think will have the right kind of properties", and rapidly prototype them to find out if their suspicions bear out. They're going for "That chewing gum feel where you can pull it apart and it draws apart" when it's uncured, and then "Retaining that slight flexibility once it's cured".
"We have made pretty good progress on both these counts", Bedding says, "We came up with a really nice feeling putty, it was really similar to Green Stuff, and when it set it remained flexible". Even so: "You have to leave the cured samples for quite a few weeks" to test whether the properties will change over time, so he's not quite ready to call this batch done. Between the lab and full factory production in mixing machines, that handle between 110lb and 440lb a go, are pilot tests in small batch machines. And all of that is bound up in multiple rounds of monitoring, testing, and tinkering, as well as getting model makers to try the new materials out.
Bedding is, by his own admission, not a modeller, but he's clearly a nerd with a passion for the company he runs. He's proud to run a British factory providing practical jobs for people who don't want to work in an office. And Green Stuff "Is quite close to my heart, because it's a [big part of the story] of where our business started". "I'm just excited for the day when I can look at one of our extruding machines, and you've got yellow and blue strips, new Green Stuff coming out and turning into an actual product - for me as a manufacturer, that excites me".
Do you sculpt miniatures, or are you curious to get started? Come and join the friendly community in the Wargamer Discord - we'd love to see your work, hear your tips and tricks, or give feedback and pointers. For a regular round up of all the best stories on the site, sign up to the Wargamer weekly newsletter.