Why spend the time to actually prep your toy soldiers before assembly?
I don't suppose you'll let me off with just a basic "Just do it, cause you should", will you? No? Alright fine, let's dive into 3 key prepping procedures and find out why your time is well invested.
Scrubbing Resin
Raise you hand if you've bought something from Forge World. Now keep it up if you've ever noticed some parts of your horribly expensive, and yet entirely addicting resin toys a bit more shiny than other parts. That, my friends, is what's called mold release. It's this oily compound that resin casters coat their molds with to help the cured resin piece release easier from the rubber molds. The problem with this compound is that is oily. Ever heard of the expression "oil and water don't mix"? Well our paints are water based, and they don't mix with the mold release compounds, or sit on them either. Easiest way to remedy this is to soak the resin pieces in a mixture of water and degreasing dish soap overnight, then scrub the pieces with a spare toothbrush. I tend to go a bit heavy on the dish soap in the mix, just for good measure, there are times when you may have to repeat this to get all the compound off. You'll be happy you spent the time on this one, folks. Nothing worse than spending a hundred bucks on a single model, just to rush the prep and not have your paint stick to the model.Cleaning Flash
This could pertain to resin, plastic or metal. Or even that weird resin-plastic hybrid stuff that some companies use now. Either way, we're talking an out very carefully removing the extraneous flakes of material along the edges of most figures. This is the extra material that's left over after the casting process is done, and yes, this even includes the mold lines. There are many ways to do this, but my favorite is to have two hobby knives, loaded with two different types if blades. One is a scalpel style of blade that is truly my go-to blade, and the other is the long tapered point style of blade. I use the scalpel blade to gently scrape along the mold lines and shave flash off, and the rounded blade helps to avoid gouging into the figures. I use the long tapered blade to clean in small nooks and crannies that the scalpel doesn't reach. I do know some use hobby files to gently smooth out mold lines and flash, but I've found this to be a bit clunky for me, personally. However you choose to do it, do not skip this step. Nothing shows mold lines better than a well painted figure.
No, this particular prep doesn't always actively involve glueing your figures, or fingers, together. It does, however, help some of the best conversions come to life. It also helps avoid irritating situations when your ranked troops, won't rank. Take the extra time to sketch out your ideas, dig through your bits box for options before you glue things together, and maybe use some blu-tac to plan out your poses first. Not only will you be happier with the results, your wallet will thank you.
This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of preps you can do in our hobby, but they are the 3 most important to me. Have something to add to the list? Shout it out in the comments below!
- Tim
PS: Yes, the picture above does indeed mean I'm dusting off the Engineer on Mechanical Pegasus conversion. I'll be finishing it for Golden Demon this year in Chicago!
Couldn't have said it better myself! I have literally seen a beautifully painted FW Nurgle greater daemon have paint flake off of it... simply because the owner didn't clean the model properly... It was agonising, and you could pull paint away with the lightest of touches! We ended up having to clean it back and he had to re-paint most of it!
ReplyDeleteI, like you, also use a knife for mould line cleaning using the scraping technique. I'm convinced it gives a smoother and easier finish... plus I do everything with one tool rather than having to continue swapping between a range of appropriate file types.
Finally, as for planning, that is one thing I do a lot of. probably far too much of! definately more planning that actual doing! lol. I spent months figuring out the best pose (and how to achieve it) for my Eldar Revenant Titan. You can see the process of building it on my blog (I'll avoid the shameless plug link!)
Bah, no worries on the shameless plug link, I don't mind so long as it doesn't get out of hand. In fact, I'll be starting a new series of posts soon...kind of like my own blogroll spotlight. After a year of doing this, I've got plenty to spotlight!!!
DeleteAnd you can never plan too much, in my opinion. Though I spuuose eventually you do need to stop planning and start doing at some point :)
Something else to try regarding resin is to apply a thin layer of dullcote to the model. At that point you should be able to paint over it.
ReplyDeleteI would only ever suggest using files for removing mold lines on metal miniatures. Files can leave groove marks that require sandpaper to smooth out (yay.. another tool) and while I haven't tried it out, I'm certain finecast would react the same way and small parts would likely break off entirely.
There are times when the mold release can be a pain to get off entirely, that's a solid tip with the dullcote :) THenks Kev :)
DeleteFinecast could definitely see the end of file use for the majority of uses with GW products, agreed.
For my most important pieces like the forgeworld imperial space marine (ya know that large scale one?) where I'm doing what I call showcase standard paint jobs I wash, clean flash and then do something crazy: I mist the parts with a light spray of white primer, when that dries I apply a thinned wash of a darker colour and let that dry. At this point any rouge mold lines or imperfections I might have missed become glaring and I clean them up wash every thing one more time in warm soapy water and then proceed to prime and paint normally. Now THAT'S model builders OCD!
ReplyDeleteThat may be modeling OCD...but you bring up and EXTREMELY good way to deal with mold lines and imperfections from a competition standpoint!!! I may have to try this myself, actually.
DeleteI actually like to use a fine grit sandpaper for cleaning up some of my models since I can be a little to aggressive withi a hobby knife.
ReplyDeleteI've done a number of restoration projects and having a plan and prepping the model is critical!
Now there's two things I've never done...use fine grit sandpaper, and restore models from botched, bad, or damages states.
DeleteWhat grit sandpaper do you use?
I second the fine grit Sandpaper but only for large models. A Scythed Heirodule I got from forgeworld had a large amount of Flash between the ribs on one side definitely was a pain to get out of there. Way I see it I can't complain about cleaning up resin if I already take the time to do the same to plastic now can I? Saw in an early post you mentioned using a dremel, on plastic kits a good dremel can be a god send!
ReplyDeleteI'll ask you the same as I did Casey :) What grit do you use? I may have to pick up some and make a sanding stick or three to test.
Deleteooo...dremel for cleaning up models? I don't think I'd trust myself. but for carving and converting, definitely :) Though I do plan on purchasing a new dremel soon, so maybe I'll get one that has a higher RPM so I can control it better.
I'll have to to check on the actual number of grit, but it was the finest I could find. The dremel has slowly become my favorite toy, so i am partial to attempting to use it on anything :D. I recently took apart all my Cities of death buildings to start again from scratch and magnetizing the different floors so it can be stored piecemeal, smoothing out the edges where the glue had melted the plastic together was super easy and saved me countless hours.
Deleteif you are just using standard sand paper 400 or 600 grit is great but for finer work I would visit a store (online or in person)that sells hobby sand paper.
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