Support Material

If you can be very confident that you are putting clay of the correct height, and you can put it in place without deflecting your print bed or knocking into your model (or hot end), go for it! But if the clay is too low, the extruded filament will droop down onto it and it might be a bit messy in that part. And if the clay is too high, the hot end will crash into it, either knocking it over or getting clay on the hot end. And if you put any significant force on the build plate when you put the clay in position, you will deflect the build plate downward, which means any filament being extruded during that timeframe will not be squished properly into the rest of the print, which might ruin your print (it's happened to me).

Here's a thread from someone who did something similar:
http://forum.typeamachines.com/viewtopi … &t=385

You can actually see that his balsa wood+blue tape was just a tiny amount too short, there's a slight discontinuity where the filament 'goes off the edge'. But it's slight enough to barely be noticeable, and 2-3 layers later it would be compensated for. Bottom line is: it CAN work, just be careful.

Thanks for your response.  I usually manually support with a file tip or something, so its really no problem to place the support, as long as you place it below or even with the printing surface.  If you are early on one pass, just squeeze the clay a little to rise up, not talking about a lot of clay, just a thin pillar.  As long as you keep it under the current printing level, it should be no problem in my mind.
P/s  I also use Repetier to join models, add to them etc, then selecting all parts and save, resulting in a single model.
I may create some small support pillars and arrange as you suggest.   The sample pic of the model on my original post was created by adding a base, and sword to the original model in Repetier.   Thanks.