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I'm about to actually start tackling my Hearthstone Minis, and I know there are some safety concerns with resin. I'm not sure if this is the right place, but it seemed not horrible location wise. I just wanted to have more info about when I would need to stop worrying about resin dust. Is it safe to remove my particle mask after priming? after a few coats of paint? I've seen some people mention doing cutting or sanding/filing under water, and others just talk about having a very sharp blade for cutting. Outside of the mask and gloves, I'm also planning on doing some basic stuff outside of my usual painting area (which is currently the dining room). Is there a good simple primer for working with resin, the kinds of things you should worry about, and what you can do to make stuff safe? If not can we have people with more experience post stuff here?

My family just bought a heat gun to do some paint stripping, and I noticed it has a lower setting to dry paint. I was just wondering if anyone had used a heat gun in this way before and could share tips. Things I'd be interested in would be length of time, and distance from the mini. Any other thoughts and experiences appreciated. If it matters, I think the low setting is 170 C.

I've been painting for many many years, and for most of those years I've had the same detail brush. Old faithful. Well, Old Faithful finally fell apart on me. I bought two detail brushes from Reaper since. Both have hooked on me after the first use. I have no idea why. I don't ever put my brushes face down in anything, I clean them off after every application, I leave them sitting on my table touching nothing until the next use. Why are my new brushes hooking?!!! Please help!

I hope one of you can help me. For a diorama idea I need TV camera operator. Not a hand-held, but 1970 style camera (the huge ones). I have been looking for a 28mm civilian in office clothes, but no luck. Help please?

So I'm having a Dnd theme mixer for my DND 5e players and there partners this Thursday and I was hoping for some ideas. It will be a session 0 which has a few new faces to dnd and rpg'ing generally. I'm great friends with these people and there partners so talking "shop" is not only fine it's expected. I made all the chars for the party from the basic rule set and they seem very close with the pregen chars (except way less equipment). I had a few ideas. -if u dress up as your character you are rewarded extra items to start with your char (trinkets, adventuring gear(which they have little) maybe even a short sword!) -for really earlier arrivers put on the episode of community that they play dnd s02e14 so they get a basic understanding -go over what they think the game is , how to play and go over a few combat rules etc -show the minis I painted for them! Woot woot -have appys and possibly make piña coladas :) What's some fun DND /RPGs stuff I could go over? Maybe call each other by there game name ?(drink if u don't!?)

I apologize if the topic is covered somewhere, but I couldn't find the answer to my question on the forums or an affiliated site. If it's already covered, please link me. How does one go about volunteering for ReaperCon? I loved attending this year and would like to give some of my time next year to making it as great for others as it was made for me. Help?

Just an FYI/ checking if anyone else is having issues. I get forum notifications, but when I click to check, nothing loads. I can't check which posts are affected. It's only been for the last 2 hours or so (because I haven't posted much lately). using firefox 26.0

I was working on a mini, and it looks like there's a crack... there isn't. I'm just wondering what I can do to resolve the situation without starting over. I've never encountered this issue personally, but it doesn't seem like it's anything particularly weird, so I'm hoping there's a straight-forward way to deal with it. I've been thinning the paints... so I don't think it's that. It finally got cold, so the air has been drier, but this is the only mini it's happened to. Here's a photo: Would adding a thin coat of matte medium over the area be helpful to fill the cracks? Is there a reason this happened? Is there anything I can do to, prep wise, to avoid this in the future?

May I ask for some help from the hardware-savvy of the boards. How can I get 2mm thick stiff sheets to stand upright, edgewise on a table? Here's the idea. I am thinking of painting some backdrop / terrain with transparency included by painting it on clear acrylic sheets. The sheets are 2mm thick, just under 1/8". They are intended, I think, for picture framing and window protection. Some are 8x10" and some are 18x24". I haven't tried painting on them yet because I haven't got a mechanism for standing them upright on the table. Can anyone suggest a hardware solution, brackets or a base or something that could do the job? Feet? I think I have seen shelf brackets that are like a long slot in a base which might work. They would have too big a slot, of course, but I think I could fill that in with some of my picture framing supplies. Anyhow, I don't know what things are called or what to look for and would very much appreciate the brainpower of people who know more than I do about this stuff.

So I paint then assemble then put on the finishing touches, but while assembling, the male hip bone got stuck. It's about 3mm from being pushed through. I've tried putting nail polish remover into the bit, and I've immersed the entire thing in water over night but it hasn't budged. What can I try next? The only thing I can think of is to leave the hip hole blocked and cut off the male piece, then try to super glue the two hips on like that. Does anyone have a better idea?

Hello everyone, my brother and I have recently decided to pick up miniature painting for our Pathfinder games so we have a little more control over what our characters look like. I currently have 3 miniatures being shipped and we are also waiting for the LTPK to arrive as well. Definitely looking forward to learning the art and I've been watching videos and reading the pinned topics at the top of this page to get an idea of what to do in terms of painting. Now I have decided to post here to ask the more experienced (and by that I mean you have actually put paint to miniature unlike myself :P) what are some things you wished you had known or done before you started your first miniature. Maybe some tips or products that you didn't think about being useful then, but now you couldn't do without. Even some paints (or paint brands you might recomend to buy or stay far away from) that are really important to have in a collection (I already know about browns being useful for the obvious reason of skin and what not) Any tips or help would be greatly appreciative and I'm definitely looking forward to getting into this hobby.

I'm planning on painting Ulf Gormundr soon, and I want to get him as close as i can to the painted example on this website. So maybe someone can help me out with some of my questions. To be blunt: How did they do that blue chainmail? How did they do that NMM Gold? How did they get the blonde hair to look so real? On the subject of blonde hair, I have the reaper 3 tier Blonde paints. It works well, but it doesn't come out looking as good as Ulf's hair. While i'm on the subject of blonde hair, I'm also planning on painting Seoni, as she is on this site, and her blonde hair looks post worthy as well. Appreciate any help. Sorry so many questions.

Hi, I'm wanting to paint a mini separate from the base he'll be on. I've only done this a couple times and I've pinned them to cork and mounted the cork to a pill bottle. What do you do if it's a tabbed base, and the feet/legs are too small for pinning? I know I've seen people using some kind of vise to hold tabbed minis, but I can't seem to find anything on this now. FYI, the tab doesn't have to stay on if there's some other way to hold the thing other than pinning.

I need a bit of help. I am planning on running a game based upon the Bottle of the Bound. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is a bottle that contains 666 Fiendish creatures. What I need is 222 each of devil (LE), demons (CE), and daemons (NE) or sub species of each. I will be starting the players off at level one. They will be working their way up through the ranks, so they will start off at CR 1 opponents. The following table is per alignment (CE, NE, LE) of the monsters I need CR: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Extra Amount 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 Now, I do not want to just sick 20 of the same creature at my players at level one. That would end up feeling like too much of a grind. I want each and every fiend to be unique. So, they will have personalities, names, and (hopefully) different stats. The players will also, among themselves, have a few special items to help them since they will need to deal with this army in as small amount of time as possible. Because after the first CR1 creature comes out, there will be only 11 hours till the last creature comes out. Now, the big thing I need help with is just getting a bunch of individual CR1 to CR5 fiends. Luckily, the fiendish template is a zero change to CR with creatures of 5 hit die or less, so I can just have a bunch of level two to level five characters to fill in the majority of the CR1 to CR4 group. So, if anyone reading this could help by coming up with short stat sheets (like the kind found in the monster manuals, not full blown character sheets) for a bunch of fiends that look to have been sealed up during Ancient Egypt (the equivalent of where they were actually sealed), I would be very greatful. Also, I would like a short bio (just a brief glimps at the personality, name, and description of the looks would be good). No need for full on backstories, but I want to have enough to help make each enemy further unique.

So this is a bit of a noob question. I've only recently started actually pinning my miniatures. I have a small pin vise, as well as a Dremel Stylus. The problem that I run into, pretty frequently, is that at some point in the drilling process, I find myself unable to get the "teeth" of the drillbit into the pewter: I've crafted a small divet, exactly sized like the tip of the drillbit, and nothing I can do at that point results in any traction whatsoever. If I'm near the surface, I can manually scratch out a new starter hole, but this usually gets messy and is more or less ineffectually (not to mention out of the question if I'm trying to drill out a weapon handle out of a hand, for instance. If it's further in the mini, there seems to be nothing I can do. This happens using either the pin vise (actually more often with the pin vise) OR the dremel. I don't know if I'm just going about it the wrong way, or what. I've been struggling with it for a while, assuming it was too dumb a problem to ask about, but this is me biting the bullet, so to speak. Thanks in advance!

Okay, so this has probably been asked a bagilion times. But I must know if there is a way to prevent wear and tear on minis beyond protecting them with gloss varnishes and other types of coatings. I use my minis in my table tops games and so they have some metal/platic flecks showing here and there from toppling over and being handled, even if its being done carefully. Is there anything I can do other then touch up and gloss varnish to make them last longer? On a side not, is testors gloss varnish as good as the citadel gloss?

OK, just so everyone knows, this is the Harbinger... I didn't paint this or assemble it. I just like the picture so everyone can have an idea of what I have to work with and what the miniature is intended to look like. Also, this is in the 26mm scale. Here's my idea for the conversion. I'm going to lose the banner and banner pole, the sword, and probably the shoulder pads as well. I want the figure to have her arms raised high, both hands on a sword held above her head, with the point straight up to the heavens. That's not the hard part though. The hard part I need help with is this: I want to use a piece of crystal, glass or plastic for the sword. I want to run a small fiber optic cable from the hilt of the sword to and LED, and I want to connect that LED to a batter so that I can make the sword glow FOR REAL! Additionally, where should I go to purchase these sorts of paraphenelia? This will be my first time playing with this kind of thing and I was hoping that all the people here could help me out. Ahead of time let me say, "Thanks for the help, I'm gonna need it!"

I used to paint figures as a teenager, and then took a ten year hiatus. I've started painting again, and I'm much better at it now then I was then. However, I never did get the knack for painting eyes. Right now white with a spot of black is about where I'm at. It works ok with male figures, but when it comes to female figures it leaves much to be desired. (one mistroke and you have a transvestite) I was wondering if anyone has any tips. Starting with, how do you paint something that is almost microscopic, so well. What kind of brush do you use. A lot of times, I'll get my brush where I want it, but no paint will come off the brush, because you can't really apply any pressure, and you can't really have your brush soaked in paint. I know the (for instance) Dark blue dot, followed by a light blue dot, followed by a black dot, followed by a white dot. But I don't have a clue how you pull that off when you can barely get one dot on there without screwing up the whole face. Also need help with applying makeup effects. I'm tired of my ladies looking butch, or lazy. They're not all natural beauties. They need some makeup. Do i need a magnifying glass or something and a special brush?

I'm working on 60044, Damiel, Iconic Alchemist. http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/damiel/sku-down/60044 shows the figure in Reaper's store. The figure came with that long skinny thing in his right hand badly bent. I've tried to be gentle with it, but it's really vulnerable and sticks out, and has gotten bent again several times as I've been painting. I don't think it's going to survive painting, let alone gaming. Does anyone have suggestions for how to shore it up? I had some idea of painting the figure fully, then simply epoxying the thing back onto his hand with clear epoxy. It looks far too thin to pin, and besides, I've not yet pinned anything and don't yet have the tools. Help, please, oh ye of far more experience?

If this is discussed somewhere I couldn't find it. The search helper didn't do it's job using every word I could think of either. So if this is covered somewhere else please point me to it. How do I upload pictures to the forum? For the life of me I can't figure it out. When I click on the little "my media" icon at the top of the post box I get this message: Your Media Library Media you have uploaded to the community is available here for sharing. Content you share will be visible by all members who can view this topic. Select a media type to choose what to share. But it doesn't say HOW to upload media to the community nor is there anything to "select" from so I can choose what media type to share. When I click on the "image" icon at the top I get a box asking for a URL. And that lost me. Help??

I just came back to painting minis after a hiatus of 20 years, and discovered I am no better now than I was back in 1990. I did get an art degree in the meantime and become a pro artist/illustrator, so it was kind of an embarrassing realization. I am way out of the loop of current miniatures culture. Can anyone suggest where to start? At the moment I don't feel my painting skills are worthy of the minis. These are, left to right, probably the best one of the batch I just painted, the worst one (ouch), and the dark elf mini I painted as a Githyanki for my player character. At life size they look a little better, but still ...

So, I'm trying to take this swashbuckly guy and replace his head. http://www.coolminio...ay-blade-1.html I'm willing to behead any mini I can find, but I REALLY want to finish my wife's Elf bard/Swashbuckler. I don't need it to even be Elven. A slender human would be ok too. Ideally, It would have medium to long hair pulled back, but short hair would do. The one major requirement? He needs to be smirking. Can anyone suggest a smirking face?