Kaladrax body: three parallel flash lines - is that absurdity normal?

[petrov27]

Prepping Kally right now (and cutting the "meat" from between the ribs for a totally skeletal dragon) and I have had surprisingly good luck just using sanding sticks from the local hobby shop to clean up the bones material, mould lines etc. - at first glance I didnt think the bones was gonna work with these but so far so good.

 

I will say I did not see the triple mould lines and the chest was actually assembled very well (almost too well - I managed to put a four inch cut across my hand from the screwdriver I was using to try to pry the chest apart) so maybe you just had a bad example?

[Panzer_Engel]

Like most of the pre-assembled bones, I think it's the luck of the draw. One of my Kaladraxi had half it's ribcage hanging off, the other had the usual gaps, but was otherwise perfectly fine.

[Wren]

 

 

Feather Scalpel Blades, #11 are the way to go. The other sculptors convinced me to try them. It is actually hard to believe just how much sharper they are than X-Acto blades (you can't even feel it when you cut yourself). They are a must for sculptors and also excellent for paring flash lines on Bones or metal minis. Don't bother getting a new handle; I just slide these into my X-Acto handle and tighten it down. The round X-Acto handle allows you better control to follow detail. The flat scalpel handles are actually quite annoying and make the job more difficult.

 

Andy

 

 

Looking at the #10 (and the other smaller ones, actually) in the picture at that link, I wonder if the curve in the blade would make it easier to use for the purposes of Bones mould line removal. I wonder if anyone sells a sample pack or something, bit pricey to buy more than one pack!

 

Thanks for the tip on the handles. Though I had probably best get some other type of handle as my current knife handle loosens up pretty often, and that sounds like a bad plan if it's holding a super sharp blade...

[TheAuldGrump]

 

The reason I'm so curious about it is because if this is normal, it doesn't bode well for Dragon's Don't Share 2. The multiple mold lines (which are fairly pronounced) are a pain on a material that doesn't really allow filing or scraping.

 

<Ghostly Voice from Above> Get saaaanding neeeedles from Hobby Lobby. They remove the lines. Get bluuuuuuuue and white.</Ghostly Voice from Above>

 

Yep - they are very fine grit.

 

Another method is to CUT, not scrape the mold lines off with a hobby knife.

 

It really is not all that hard - hold the blade nearly parallel with the line you are slicing off, and cut along the line. You end up with a thin thread of plastic. It does take a bit of practice, but my own practice slices are forty years in the past....

 

Works with both large and small model.

 

The Auld Grump, the first vinyl model that I ever made was a mask....

[czak]

Also, when removing mold lines from Bones Wren in all of her infinite awesomeness (her name we praise, in her light we shine) discovered that it works best if you move the sanding needles in one direction, rather than back and forth as one would a standard file on metal.

 

Hmm I was taught to only file in one direction regardless. Going back and forth will damage a standard file won't it? (well not on bones, but...)

[Wren]

I've never heard that, but then there is a great deal that I do not know about tools! It hasn't seemed to damage my files, though it's been years that I've been mostly using diamond files rather than the regular kind.

 

It can be handy to file in one direction on metal, too. If you've got a mini where the mould was slightly mismatched so it's not just a mould line on top of the surface, but one side is slightly raised over the other, if you file from the raised side towards the lower, it 'fills' in a little.

[smokingwreckage]

The more lead in the alloy, the more you can "smear" it over, just like Wren said :) If I'd remembered that I'd have filed Bones properly in the first place!

[ShadowRaven]

it depends on the type of file. a rasp file you only want to go in one direction, some metal files are hatched so you can go in either direction, others are not.