Bumble sent me this sample along with the package it came in. In an attached note, she says "Daiso is a popular dollar store in Japan". I wish we could buy carving materials this good in a dollar store! We're stuck with Dollar Tree erasers which are big enough but too grainy for serious carving.

This material has 3 colored layers, blue on one side and yellow on the other with white in the middle. The package says "Can use both sides." I chose to carve the yellow side, as I'm using blue ink for my transfers these days and I print very lightly to minimize smearing. My standard inkjet transfer worked very well indeed on the yellow side.

The entire 3-color slab is only 5mm thick. Pink stuff is 6.4mm thick, so this stuff is significantly thinner than that. I like the fact that it's this thin because I mount my stamps. Those who leave their stamps unmounted might be less enthused about a material this thin.

Neither surface seemed as smooth as I'd like. They both looked as though they had been sliced off a thicker block with a jagged knife, with little ridges across the surface. You could feel them with a fingernail. They were small and perhaps wouldn't affect the stamping, but I was unwilling to wait until after carving to find out. I applied an acetone scrub to the yellow side. Unfortunately, that did not work well. The acetone seemed to cause some of the material to roll up, leaving the surface more uneven than when I started! So I resorted to sandpaper. A bit of sliding the stamp back and forth on a piece of fine sandpaper laying on a flat surface and the stamp was ready for carving.

It carved smoothly and easily with a wire knife -- in fact, it arguably carves too easily. The wire knife moves so cleanly and easily through the material that you feel you might lose control at any time and have to concentrate on moving slowly and deliberately.

The material provided no noticeable visibility of where you've made a slit. I guess that means the yellow layer is opaque.

As always, the different color layers are pointless when carving. Once you've made all the slices and begin digging big chunks out of the stamp, though, I have to admit it's kinda fun! Everywhere you're removing material you can just make a point to dig all the way down into the white, which ensures you've made your recesses deep enough. When done, your stamp looks like a yellow mountain range on a white plain. Cute!

I would be content to be carving on this material all the time. I would prefer something a bit harder and more translucent if I could find it, though.

OK, color me surprised that Daiso exists on this side of the Pacific. Perhaps that explains why half the writing on the package is in English -- and there's some Spanish, too. I'll have to see if there are any anywhere I ever go.

Great. California, Washington, and Texas. Oh, well, maybe that'll help somebody here.

Hey, I just noticed something else on the Daiso package: "Color changes when you rub." No idea what that means.

Ha! Of course!

People pick on the Chinese for the instructions that come with some of their products, but sometimes I think the worst examples come from Japan. There are more English-speaking people in China than in the US, so I guess they have less trouble finding someone who can translate pretty well.

How much does the Daiso stuff cost, Bumble? When it's available, that is. Is it atrociously expensive like Seed? Or is it a dollar? Man, a dollar would be cheap if it's a 100 x 150mm piece.

The Daiso eraser stamp is currently unavailable at this site, too:

http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Toys/Eraser-Stamp-Daiso/9999887478343

This seller has it, but he's lost his mind on the price!

https://www.amazon.com/Daiso-Eraser-Stamp/dp/B01G6QS1C0/ref=sr_1_1?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1469500902&sr=8-1&keywords=daiso+eraser+stamp

100 yen for a 4x3 piece? That's not bad! Somebody who lives near a Daiso store needs to set up an EBay business just buying them at the store and shipping them to people who don't live near a Daiso store.

4x3 piece of really good carving material for $1.50? Still a good deal! Why didn't anyone tell us about this stuff while it was still available?

I'd be willing to bet good money that when a replacement Daiso carving material appears, it'll be lousy by comparison.

Back in September 2013, I bought a single piece of "random color" carving material from sweetloveqiner on etsy, and reviewed it in the message I am replying to now:

http://www.atlasquest.com/boards/message.html?msgId=806199

I liked the stuff, and it set off a group purchase for what came to be called SLQ -- but we bought white instead of random color because it came in larger pieces so there's less waste. Several of us got some, including me. It carved well, but I could never get over the nagging feeling that it wasn't quite as impressive as the original random color piece I had purchased.

Recently I purchased another piece of colored "Chinese stuff" from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EAGC0KM/ref=twister_B01EAGC0BG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

You can click on whatever color you want, but I opted for the "yellowish green" because that's the color I tried the first time. Again it took a month to get here. To my surprise, what I got this time was not a solid color but rather a yellowish green/white/yellowish green sandwich.

Tonight I tried carving on a piece of this stuff. Having just finished failing on a 2nd attempt on a piece of Seed "Hard-Type" (see preceding message), the difference in these materials was immediately apparent. While the Seed feels like you're slicing air, this stuff reintroduces the concept of having a bit of resistance to your slicing. And while it's been a while since I carved any white SLQ, I still contend that the yellowish-green cuts better than the white. It feels creamier, if that makes any sense.

I did have some issues, but I'm not entirely sure they weren't because I wasn't used to the material. The stamp came out great even though I thought I had ruined it.

We are left with the question: Are all the colors better than the white? Or just the yellowish-green? Is the seller going to have a run on yellowish-green?

There is one more complicating factor. The trouble with getting good prices and reasonable shipping on Chinese and Japanese materials caused me to walk into a Michael's a coupla weeks back with a 40% off coupon and buy a slab of pink stuff. I have carved one stamp on it, and it wasn't bad at all. It was certainly nowhere near the garbage we were expected to carve with in 2013 -- the reason I was looking into the SLQ stuff in the first place. It would seem that Speedball has actually made progress on bringing that material back toward the stuff we loved. That being the case, Speedy-Carve needs to be reintroduced into the list of currently available carving materials and ranked against the others.

And for me, the current Speedy-Carve may still top the list. And I would rank the Chinese stuff, either white or colored, ahead of Seed "Hard-Type". I do wish we could get Daiso, especially at $1.50 for a 4x3 piece, but it's apparently NLA. If a replacement shows up in a Daiso store, someone grab some and test it out.

Here's my wire knife carver list as it currently stands:

1) Speedy-Carve
2) yellowish-green Chinese stuff
3) white Chinese stuff
4) Daiso if I could get it
5) Seed Hard-Type, but only for stamps with no tiny details
6) Dollar Store white erasers

I won't buy Eco-Karve again. I'd take up a new hobby rather than carve that stuff.

OZ is actually kinda fun to gouge carve, but it is wholly unsuitable for wire knife carving. If I'm ever forced to use any, I'm looking for images that call for gouge carving -- which is not my usual style.

Sorry, I've never tried NZ.

You list pre-2012 pink stuff. I'd have it at the top, but it's NLA. Same with orange and white PZ Kut, obviously.

Seed, Hankeshi-Kun, Daiso: all take heat transfer - neither SLQ nor the sandwich does.

Interesting. I would have expected that the factor determining whether heat worked or not would be the toner, not the carving material. What does SLQ do when you attempt a heat transfer?

SQL ... the drag is inconsistent, which is hard to manage as I carve - in spots the knife slides right through, then the next minute I need to push.

OK, are you heat transferrers the only ones reporting these issues? I'm wondering if the heat screws up the surface of the SLQ. I've carved a coupla dozen stamps from the stuff, and while it may not be my all-time favorite, I don't recall any consistency problems at all.

Japanese or Chinese, make up your mind! If Japanese, a material only 5mm thick recalls the Daiso stuff that I reviewed before:

https://www.fishpond.co.nz/Toys/Eraser-Stamp-Daiso/9999887478343

https://www.atlasquest.com/boards/messages.html?startId=931735;authorId=927;search=Daiso

That stuff is a 3-color sandwich, but it was also discontinued apparently. Perhaps reintroduced as solid white?