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Happy Saturday all,

Just curious what you guys use to cut resin piece from the gates?

Has anyone used one of these? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aap34udZOQ

Seems a bit excessive/expensive but just curious what you guys use.

That depends very much on 1) Size of the gate 2) the bit in question.

If it's a space marine foot attached to a sensibly sized gate, sprue clippers will do. Big chunks attached to big chunks, like the back of a Mk. IV dreadnought, need a hand saw (or saw attachement for a dremel if feeling lazy) to avoid the risk of snapping the gate off and it pulling away little chunks from the model bit.

The gadget hoarder in me wants that ultrasonic doohickey very badly, but TBH if I got one it'd likely stay in it's box as I continued to hack away with a regular knife.

I have the book 'Modelling Scale Figures' by Osprey. One of the few good hints in it is to use a pair of nail clippers for sprue clipping and the like. Something like these. Can't honestly say they're better than some types of hobby clippers, or that I've chopped much resin with them; but they cut plastic sprue attachments nicely enough, more cleanly than my Xyston cutters and cheapo Rolson clippers, and the slight curve is useful when the sprue point sits on, well, a curve.

Hold on...what are gates? What do they look like?

The red circle part would be considered the gate.

 amrogers3 wrote:

The red circle part would be considered the gate.

Thanks!

Please continue.

Thin pieces like that can usually be clipped off with plastic cutter or an exacto knife without any damage to the detail.

I use a razor saw and side cutters. I very often use the cutters to 'nibble' little bits at a time on the thicker stuff rather than try & cut through in one go as this can send shock waves through the resin causing it to shatter, not violently but usually it ends up breaking the figure.

If you have a Dremel tool or simular. Proxxon has a circular saw that you can attach like a drill bit. I used it for the larger pieces when I got my Warhound Titan.

If they are realy big square bastards use a small metal saw and carefully shave or file off whats left.
Having a large metal working file is also handy put it flat on a surface and slide the part over it. Finish of with a small file, sandpaper or a sharp hobby knife.

Those little gates aren't a problem. Just use clippers. No biggie.

If you get something like a fellblade, though, you get parts with HUGE gates. I mean, blocks that are 1/2 inches across and thick. The way I take them out is with a hacksaw

Then, pare it back with a knife, file, sandpaper, etc. It's a lot of work.

As Talys said, for big gates, you can look into a hobby saw, such as the one in here: http://shop.thearmypainter.com/products.php?ProductGroupId=5


I've used it to tu thunderhawk gates and even to carve out some armour from the traitors to put in bases!


It was a rather inexpensive useful tool

What ever you do, if the piece connecting to the model is excessively large that a single "snip" won't remove it all, BE VERY CAREFUL.

If you try to cut something like that, it may split - and take part of the model with it.

in the case with an excessively large "gate" (I call them sprue) I use a razor saw to get it close, then carefully file the rest away.

For smaller gates that can be removed in a single "snip" I just use flush cutters.

Best of luck

I pretty much just use my 10 years old Xuron cutters. That ultrasonic cutter certainly looks cool, but not $250 cool.

OMG, wow, $250 I didn't realize it was so expensive!

Although it looks like a super cool tool, the model on the video does not actually look too be useful for large FW models (tanks, titans), as the blade is simply not large enough. You'd get more mileage out of either a micro chop saw or a micro scroll saw:

http://www.amazon.com/Proxxon-37160-KGS-MICRO-Chop/dp/B001AT5H1C/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1455516862&sr=8-3&keywords=proxxon+saw

http://www.amazon.com/Proxxon-37088-Scroll-Colors-Vary/dp/B0017NUBMQ/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1455516862&sr=8-6&keywords=proxxon+saw

But like, you'll get probably more control and just as good results as a hobby saw or a mini-hacksaw from the dollar store (though it won't be as fast), as there is no way you can get around using a fine tool afterwards to finish.