Mierce Miniatures

Purely out of curiosity, how long does it take you to remove the flash and mold lines on minis? I read some peoples stuff on line and they don't seem to take anywhere near as long as I do. Am I just a slow worker or am I more of a perfectionist than these people? An example I can give is the Circle Oroboros battle box for Hordes. An online source said they removed the mold lines and cleaned up the whole box in 1/2 a day, whereas it took me 1 & 1/2 days. Last night I spent 2 & 1/2 hours cleaning and partially assembling Carroweck on horse and Hywel Hir with a craft knife, brass brush and fine sanding stick. (left carrowek's cloak and reigns off and didnt glue him to the horse and left hywel's standard off).
Does anyone else take this long or am I just slow? Want to know as none of my friends bother with this sort of prep as they can't be bothered so I can't really compare.

It takes as long as it takes Andy! Then you undercoat and find more so you have to do it again!
I tend to clean and assemble models in batches, when I'm in the right mood, then I don't have to do any for months, because I paint so Damn slowly!

I tend to do the same with batches of models at a time. I just wondered, facing this mountain of resin in front of me, if anyone else took as long as I do

I take a long while removing mold lines myself. It is just part of the process. I'm also a slow painter and figure if I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the miniature I want it to be as perfect as possible when I start. For me there is nothing worse then spending a lot of time on a miniature and then finding an obvious mold line. It varies depending on how bad the mold lines are or if they happen to be in tough to reach or detailed areas but in general I spend a lot of time on clean up.

Thanks. It seems to take forever to get the minis ready for priming with clean up, drilling and pinning then gap filling. So long as its not just me

AndyP wrote:Does anyone else take this long or am I just slow? Want to know as none of my friends bother with this sort of prep as they can't be bothered so I can't really compare.

I generally take a long time to clean my minis as well, a 28mm model usually takes me around an hour, depending on how badly it's in need of cleaning up.
The Maaru I have took a several of hours to do properly (some chunky channels needed removing with some care, and stuff had to be rebuilt afterwards), most of the cast was very clean though.

As others have said, it takes as long as it takes to get it right

I do most of my cleaning up and building on my lunch breaks at my desk, so I just take my time and enjoy knowing once it's done it can go home to add to the hoard of painting to do I think I'll be investing in an airbrush soon to see f that can help speed things up slightly

Funkychef...Oh it helps to get started...But you'll be sitting on a pile of basecoated mini's instead

No, I'm being firm with myself this year, I'm making a serrious dent in my 'to paint' pile

I'm signed up to a tale of gamers challenge to get an army painted with my local club, I've signed up to another painting oaths group on FB, and I'll be getting my project log on whineseer back up and running as well, and I've told myself I want to be able to demo Darklands before the full rules KS with 2 painted starter forces, so there's my motivation for here

I'm still going to end the year with a nett increase to my painting pile, curse you KS, but it will be less of a nett increase

I was just wondering if you guys would mind giving me advice on removing mold lines from resin. Mierce minis is my first foray into resin and I am just newer in general. I feel like I am stripping away a lot of detail when I remove the lines. I looked on YouTube and various blogs and started mostly using an exacto knife to remove the lines. Previously I used files. Does anyone have any tips or techniques that would help me out?

Thanks again, I love this forum!

I use a couple of methods, it depends on where the mold line is located. I will scrape some with an xacto and use files on others, either way I will try to hit the area with some very fine grit sandpaper as well if possible to smooth it out and remove any scrape or file marks. Removing the lines should not remove detail. If a line is that pronounced then it may be a miscast. Lines should generally be pretty fine and easily removed without damaging detail.

I agree with warchild40k. Removing mold lines shouldn't be any problem at all using either files or knives as long as you are gentle and careful.

Mold lines are an necessary evil with all miniatures. Some have barely any, some the mold,has,slipped and half the,model will need to be scrapped and filed and rebuilt. For me, the worst thing on a mini is a mold line.Personally, it takes me hours to clean a resin mini, I also use watered down miliput to smooth any mold lines that I can't fix with filing. And painting takes me way too long too!

EVL HMR wrote:Mold lines are an necessary evil with all miniatures. Some have barely any, some the mold,has,slipped and half the,model will need to be scrapped and filed and rebuilt. For me, the worst thing on a mini is a mold line.Personally, it takes me hours to clean a resin mini, I also use watered down miliput to smooth any mold lines that I can't fix with filing. And painting takes me way too long too!

I'd never thought of using milliput to sculpt back up to a mold line instead of gratuitously filing it down! I'm going to have to give that a try on the next one I clean. Thanks for the idea!