Search the Community

So I've always have had problems pinning a round object, more or less trying to get the pin vise/drill into the round part of the piece. In this instance, the round part is the hand of the river troll 14008 (Warlord line). The wrist has a perfect indentation for the "ball" of the hand. With having to travel to play & such & of course actual gameplay I don't trust superglue alone. Any tips?

How do you handle painting those tiny bits like arms and shields before gluing a figure together? I’ve got one arm drilled and mounted on a piece of paper clip that worked pretty well, but I’m looking at my next mini and wondering if there isn’t a better way...or at least one that doesn’t involve drilling, which I’m not very good at.

So I was drilling a plastic figure last night, and realized part of my issue with drilling is my hands are stiffening up, and it won’t be too much longer before arthritis becomes an issue. I was looking at Dremel attachements, and came across small rotary engravers, which also might work. Does anyone here have any experience with ways to drill that don’t involve pin drills? Has anyone tried the rotary engravers? If your hands aren’t nimble, how do you drill?

I have some minis I want to pin (or attempt to, have never done it before). I have wire, tons of paper clips, and am going to acquire some brass rod soon. But my question is about the clippers. I know I shouldn't use my sprue cutters for most things beyond plastics, resin, and other things like those. So my question is what kind of clippers (cutters?) Do I need to cut the metal bits down to size? I don't want to ruin my good clippers by cutting something too hard. I saw some in the jewelry section at Michael's but wasn't sure they'd hold up in the long run since it said it cuts soft wire and thread.

I recently got the set 06173: Shadow Sisters. It consists of four of the figure on the left and five of the one on the right. Only, that’s not quite what they look like. The figure on the right has an extra cape piece. The figure on the left has lacing up the middle seam of her cape. The figure on the right’s cape has a similar seam right at its edge and there is a separate cape piece (not depicted) of another half of the cape. There is a little nubbin to affix the cape which goes into a little socket in her left shoulder. It looks like it could be a precarious pinning job. The cape piece looks like it could possibly be glued in from a variety of angles, from matching the seam of the integrated cape to flying dramatically back. I tried to find out the official position, only to find that in the store photo above the second cape piece is not included. May I ask, what was the original artist’s intent for the second cape piece?

Hello everyone, I'm new to the whole miniature hobby as a whole and I was wondering if anyone had tips on how to pin Tobias Winterhorn's arm better. I used CA glue and a paper clip, but the arm has fallen off quite a few times now. The one I own currently is primed and painted now and is going to be used on tabletop for my Pathfinder game as on of my players characters, but I was wondering for the future when I buy another for myself (and possibly when the painted one meets an inevitable accident). Even if you are unfamiliar with this mini, tips on a stronger pinning bond would be appreciated.

I just got Bombshell Babes 2 and look at all of those tiny tiny hands, so very separate from their arms! I've had a lot of trouble with tiny hands on tiny miniatures... they're far too big for my big fat fingers to hold steady while drilling and they seem to break off at the slightest touch if I don't pin them. How do you guys usually pin tiny hands? Disclosure: I usually use minis for gaming, soooo.... they're gonna get handled. And not always nicely.

Note: This was not inspired by anything I bought from Reaper, but another company. Note also: Sculpting and casting is not my art. It is entirely possible that I am being thoroughly ignorant about this and it is already a solved problem. *** Occasionally one will run into a miniature in a particular pose popular at the moment, with two arms stretched straight out front, generally holding long range combat weapons. In such cases it seems to be pretty common to cast the arms as separate pieces to be attached to the rest of the model at the shoulders. This is, I gather, is because of the nature of moldmaking. Pieces seem to need to be not too far from flat to release from the mold properly, so a complex shape is often broken down into simpler shapes to be assembled after molding. But casting the arms separately makes for a very difficult and delicate attaching job, involving balance and cussing and tiny drills and wire (and that last is especially difficult if the figure is, say, a woman with tiny, thin arms). This results in a fragile miniature, difficult to handle and play with. This strikes me as inefficient. Surely there are better ways to put together a human figure. May I suggest a different way of thinking about dividing up the figure for molding? The problem here is the arms, which are long, thin, horizontal structures with only a single attachment point which needs to bear their weight and any stress put on them from handling. But what if they had built-in support? If a figure in that pose were composed of two pieces, one the body from the armpits down and one the head, shoulders, and arm assembly, it seems to me it would be less fiddly and more sturdy. If the arms and head were a single piece it would still be relatively flat for casting, something of a flat "U" shape, but it seems to me it would be much easier to glue and structurally much stronger than separate arms are. *** (Note again, sculpture and casting are not my arts. Am I being naive here? Would the difficulty of dividing up the sculpture and the possibility of weirdly placed gaps outweight the convenience and stability?)

Have people been pinning the wings of their Bones dragons? How about the large ones, like Ebonwrath? How well do those wing joins hold up to regular handling, or holding together while painting?

I'm currently working on some minis for Infinity. They're motorcycles (with riders) that come with fairly standard 40mm thin plastic bases. http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Image-A.jpg I'm pretty certain that they're not going to remain put on the bases as is, so I'm intending to pin them through the back tire and then attach that rod to the base. The base though is just a very thin piece of plastic. Something like this in cross-section: __________________ / \ Does anyone have experience or recommendations with what you should fill in the underside of the base with to give the pin something to grab onto? Greenstuff maybe?

Okay! It's been a while since I've asked any questions (other than plead for comments), so here it goes! What kind/brand of saw is everyone using to remove the broccoli bases from their minis? The feet of my minis long to be unfettered, and actually look good in the process. Previously I've just used wire cutters and snips to remove the metal bases then sanded like a man possessed. So, ideas? Thank you in advance! I prefer to spend a bit more on premium tools rather than fuss with something of life quality.

Hi all, so I think here sooner or later I'm going to do me up a dragon that has a bunch of pieces, so I'm trying to get the pinning thing figured out. I put holes in both sides of what I want to pin together, jam a piece of wire or paper clip in there, then glue them together and patch them up with green stuff. So how do I exactly make the holes into the metal. Anybody have a picture/name/explanation of what I actually need, preferably at a pretty low cost? If there's some other post on the subject, I'd appreciate somebody pointing it out to me. Thanks Mark

So after I got my really groovy pin vise from those fine folks at Hobby Lobby, I've been itching to actually pin something with it. I have tons of different stuff I could choose from but finally came upon this Ral Partha Gold Dragon from their Council of Wyrms. As I started working on it, I started photographing it, so figured I'd do a WIP out of, which I hadn't done since I'd painted up some Drow Elves a while back ago. Hopefully it's not too tedious to watch, and I've got oodles of pictures of the dragon in various states of pinning, so if you get bored, I apologize. I think I'm using this as some kind of therapy, with the hopes that if I photograph it, I'll actually have to finish it sooner or later. I'm also working on three dwarves and an Amazon chick at the same time, which I imagine will all get done before the dragon, but if you never start you'll never finish. It's a gold dragon, so my main color will end up being Palomino Gold, and his underbelly I think I'm going to start out as cream ivory, with his wings and feet being buckskin tan (I think that's the name of the color). I want to probably do the horns in some kind of brown, maybe even start out with earth brown, not sure, and will work from there. So now I've got to figure out how to do all the pictures, which I took so many of. Maybe I'll just describe it ahead of time and then put the photos in at the end. Oh well, I'll figure it out. Anyway, to start out with the model itself, pre-assembly. There's a bit of blood on him, because I ended up stabbing myself with the pin vise. Missed any vital arteries, thank you all for the concern, but after I got some holes drilled, I went and washed him off really good with soap and water.

So, last weekend my family went on our semi-annual pilgrimage to our F not-so-LGS. Along with the needful supplies, I spotted this and thought she was awesome enough to pick up. (The packaging in the store said "Kosumi, Lupine Alpha Guardian," and I saw her in my mind's eye as completely different from the paint job online ... more of a giant female red were-fox kitsune warrior than a snow wolf.) She comes in two pieces, her body and arms. The arm piece is her entire left arm up to the shoulder and her right hand to the wrist holding her weapon (this is from her perspective, so to us the arm is on the right and the hand on the left). My question is this: Would it be a good idea to pin the wrist? It sits in the bracer, but I look at the join and wonder if it will be strong enough. I've never pinned anything before, but I have a pin vise and some 24 gauge and 28 gauge stainless steel wire. I guess I'm a little nervous about it, but I think I might like to try.

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!