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I recently saw someone over-react a lot to a model that had some mold lines on it.

I'm just kind of curious, how do you guys deal with them? And if so, with how much obsession.

I just take the knife to um. Mold lines are a little unsightly to me, but thats about it. Some people just freak the frig out for some reason. Its not the end of the world lol

I just give them a quick trim up once the model is done and ready for paint.
doesent bother me all that much unless they stand out, but it stops people bitching


also, drilling out barrels is the same on here lol.

Sometimes I manage to rub them all down but other times I seem to miss them, however it's not a big deal if you miss them, some people seem to get so worke dup over them lol, it's not like it's there model is it? lol

Mold lines can ruin a model, definitely. They must ALWAYS be removed, IMO. I personally hate the cleaning phase of assembling a model, but to be honest it's one of the most important.

I don't mind mold lines as such, but I prefer models that do not have them, I try to get rid of all of them but I'm not always succesful

Yeah, the hoby knife trim is what I normally do, but I don't consider myself a golden demon painter either, so it's not terribly important to me. (And I don't drill barrels out...but I do put a dot of black paint in the middle lol)

I think mold lines speak a bit about the person's attitude towards the hobby. Prep work sucks, no doubt about it. But some of it comes down a bit to your pride in workmanship. People who want gaming pieces, generally don't care about mold lines or much about painting. It doesn't make sense to me to cut 10-15 minutes of prep so I can then spend 2-3 hours painting a fig that, in my opinion, will look like crap after I'm done. Sorta like painting the Mona Lisa on a dirty dish towel: a flawed canvas detracts from the work.

As a side note, one day I decided to try out my file on mold lines....

bad idea You destroy more than the mold line. So those three guys who picked sand paper....probably not too good of a tactic.

I use a file, you just have to be careful.

They must be done or your model looks like ass. It doesn't matter how good the paint job is, or how cool a conversion it is, if there are mold lines on it the end result sucks. It's just that bad.

Yeah, it sucks doing them - so do them while doing something else. I'll save up all my mold-line-removal-needing stuff and sit and do them while watching a football game.

It's like pinning. It takes longer initially, but the end result is so worth the time investment.

What if it would ruin the model further though? Ive had some models where the mould like is so terrible that if you actually filed it down or w/e you do, it would mess up the model... Im having a case like this on my Chaos Dragon... Theres a giant line going right down the neck.. Half of its darned skin on his neck is lifted higher then the rest! If I sand it down It would make a wierd slanted shape... I will more then likely have to green stuff a giant cut down the neck... Luckily this will look good considering how the model is suppose to look all... cut in half

I normally take the knife to them, but there's some that are too bad to get rid of completely or that I miss until I'm basecoating - which I reluctantly ignore. It doesn't bother me as much on squad models, but on characters and conversions it gets my goat to see mold lines I've missed.

I just hate them on fleshy things mainly. I have to second (or fifth) that people freak out about them too much. My "pride as a workman" doesn't come into play with my toy soldiers, sorry.

I use a combination of knife, files and sandpaper but I don't obsess about mould lines unless it is a 'character' model.

I'm used to painting big historical armies. You can't worry about minor mould lines when you have 200+ figures to get through.

I am far from an aspiring Golden Daemon painter though.

the_Armyman wrote:I think mold lines speak a bit about the person's attitude towards the hobby. Prep work sucks, no doubt about it. But some of it comes down a bit to your pride in workmanship. People who want gaming pieces, generally don't care about mold lines or much about painting. It doesn't make sense to me to cut 10-15 minutes of prep so I can then spend 2-3 hours painting a fig that, in my opinion, will look like crap after I'm done. Sorta like painting the Mona Lisa on a dirty dish towel: a flawed canvas detracts from the work.

Redbeard wrote:They must be done or your model looks like ass. It doesn't matter how good the paint job is, or how cool a conversion it is, if there are mold lines on it the end result sucks. It's just that bad.

Absolutely agree with that!

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote: My "pride as a workman" doesn't come into play with my toy soldiers, sorry.

If so, why do you paint the toy soldiers at all? Either they're just playing pieces - and that's fine just use them out of the box - or you want them to look like models, in which case they absolutely cannot have mould lines.

I did not care about mold lines until recently. Newer models have gotten cleaned up, but stuff that's already been painted will remain lined...


...for now.

I've never actually had bad mold lines prior to the last 2 Guard platoon boxes I bought right before GW cut down pack quantity on them. The last 2 had some excessively bad mold lines, to the point where the bitz had a vaccum-formed flashing thing going on. Just took a knife to em' and cleared out the worst of it. The minis are gaming pieces, not display pieces, to me. So making them spotlight worthy isn't something I care about, but I do expect a good end result nonetheless

Other than that though, my experience with mold lines has been next to nil. Maybe I just made lucky picks

Buttlerthepug wrote:What if it would ruin the model further though? Ive had some models where the mould like is so terrible that if you actually filed it down or w/e you do, it would mess up the model... Im having a case like this on my Chaos Dragon... Theres a giant line going right down the neck.. Half of its darned skin on his neck is lifted higher then the rest! If I sand it down It would make a wierd slanted shape... I will more then likely have to green stuff a giant cut down the neck... Luckily this will look good considering how the model is suppose to look all... cut in half

I disagree on the mold line ruining a mini. Ive never seen one THAT bad. The normal ones get a blade over it. The worst ones I get my low powered dremel and a small drum bit on them. If your careful youll never even harm the mini

It's files and the hobby knife for me. The most annoying thing for me is when I'm base coating a figure and then discover that I've missed a mold line.

I know there are folks who don't really think about them much and that's fine. I don't understand spending time on a great paint job and leaving mold lines. It just seems pointless.

I'm not mean enough to tell someone they're really bad in a forward way, but they do make a model look fairly crap, and they're really easy to do at least a decent enough job removing them, and will infinitely improve the look of a model.

Now ask me about sharp highlights

Sand Paper and a file

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I just hate them on fleshy things mainly. I have to second (or fifth) that people freak out about them too much. My "pride as a workman" doesn't come into play with my toy soldiers, sorry.

That's cool. But where does pride of workmanship take place for you? I spend far less than some on this hobby, yet I find it hard to spend the amount of money I do and end up with something that I'm not proud of when painted. But, like I said, everyone has different priorities. If it's just a game, then don't worry about mold lines or painting!

Mold lines on my models bother me and I try to run my hobby knife over most of the visible ones however on metal models especially small bitz like heads it can be a royal pain in the ass.

Sometimes trying to remove the mold lines results in accidentally shedding off more than I bargained for requiring more touch up work later with greenstuff, etc.

As for other people's models - it can look unsightly and I agree that mold lines are an automatic "fail" in painting competitions but for a tabletop army especially a horde one I can give some leeway. Definitely disagree that models are flat out ruined because of lines but I understand that mentality however if the guy did a bad ass paint job or conversion work it'll still look great.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Simple Green, the safe product recommended for paint stripping, also helps weaken or remove mold lines from my experience.

Buttlerthepug wrote:What if it would ruin the model further though? Ive had some models where the mould like is so terrible that if you actually filed it down or w/e you do, it would mess up the model... Im having a case like this on my Chaos Dragon... Theres a giant line going right down the neck.. Half of its darned skin on his neck is lifted higher then the rest! If I sand it down It would make a wierd slanted shape... I will more then likely have to green stuff a giant cut down the neck... Luckily this will look good considering how the model is suppose to look all... cut in half

Yup, if the mold line is too pronounced, green stuff on/around it to fix that problem.

I do a quick once-over with a file. If it's particularly stubborn and way too pronounced, I might attack it with sandpaper, although I've found that to be pretty dangerous stuff for detail.

If I've basecoated it already before I notice it, it officially becomes "character" and thus more charming, because I'm sure as heck not going to go through paint to get it.

I always try and clean them all out.
I'm not really bothered by mold lines on others models, unless they ask for C&C or start talking about their model being a conversion, nicely modelled etc.

If you're in it for the game, it's all ok.
But the moment you start modelling for real, mold lines are a lazymans item.

I have never seen a mold line that doesn't ruin a model for the eye.

Beork

I've never seen a mold line that ruined a model. If it's great paint job, it's a great paint job, even if i can see the mold lines. It really does not bother me.

I would remove really big, obvious ones and maybe take more time over character models, but otherwise I don't bother...

Zip Napalm wrote:I know there are folks who don't really think about them much and that's fine. I don't understand spending time on a great paint job and leaving mold lines. It just seems pointless.

I know what you mean, however I don't see the point in a great paint job. I want my models to look good on the table, not when photographed at 10 megapixels and blown up to three times life size, so I'm happy to overlook minor imperfections.

I was reading a post the other day by someone who spent 8-20 hours per figure, and was worried about the amount of time it took to finish his army. Not surprising!

I once painted 72 figures on a Friday night, including flags and bases, and used them in an exhibition game the next day. Mind you, they were 15mm ACW and I only did basic highlighting. But when you deploy a brigade of infantry, you don't need to worry about individual figures.

I value my free-time. So I rarely remove any, I don't enjoy doing it so why bother?! It doesn't bug me at all. And I think it is seriously pathetic for someone to complain about them on other people's models - very insulting and childish...