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I've been doing this hobby for almost 3 years now, and I've always wondered. What is the value, if any real value, in cleaning the sprews and stuff before building? I've heard a few people say it helps the glue do its job with the oils not there, but I've never personally run into any real issue with it.

Other than that is there really any point to it? Or just a thing people do?

I know it is required for the Forge World resins, as they have a release agent in them which needs washing out, in order to get the paint to take to the model.

Tazay wrote:
I've been doing this hobby for almost 3 years now, and I've always wondered. What is the value, if any real value, in cleaning the sprews and stuff before building? I've heard a few people say it helps the glue do its job with the oils not there, but I've never personally run into any real issue with it.

Other than that is there really any point to it? Or just a thing people do?

Everyone hates one part of the hobby and tries to avoid it. For me is the painting, for others assembly, others the cleaning, others the playing.... Hate may have been a strong word, but oh well.

Plastic does not need cleaning the ay you understand it. Metal models and resin models will most definitely need to be cleaned in soapy water. Plastic will only need to be cleaned if you've built the model, handled it a lot and gotten oils and sweat onto it. You will want to clean it then, or the paint will not behave the way you want it to, and, potentially flake off more easily since the bond to the surface is much weaker because of the oil or relea agent, or what have you...

That said, the other thing I recommend is that you get yourself some files (many insist a knife is fine..... Except a knife can,t get the same smoothing and control you can gt out of a file. Saying you just need to learn how to use the knife is like asserting that you can use a bobcat to level an area despite the fact that a shovel won,t require you to rip the fence and your neighbours garden to shreds I. The proces..... Use the right tool for the right job. You don't use a butter knife to cut the turkey, and you don't use a carving knife to butter your toast) as well as a knife, and use the knife to cut off large chunks, and the files to gently scrape away the flash and the gates off of your model. The seams from the molding process are unseemly and stick out like a sore thu,b after painting, and ruin your model the moment you do any dry rushing, because those seams will be as obvious as a pink lion wearing a wedding dress at McDonald's. Cleaning the flash and mold lines off your models goes a long way to making them look better, can be a time consuming process, but well worth it once you apply inks/washes/dips or just plain paint.

Well for airbrushing its quiet hard to have a model fully built and than airbrush without hitting parts of the model you don't want to.

I hear that. I've been trying a trick I saw in a video which is to put a little ball of blue-tack on the bits I don't want paint on (like armpits etc) then airbrushing them. As long as I'm not messy with the glue, the result is superior to my normal painting method. My problem is I like to put them together, which I usually can't resist doing before painting them.

I have found that it's not always necessary with plastic models, but a quick dip in water with a drop of dishwashing liquid can help the primer/paint/glue stick better. Of course, it's only the models that needed it that will benefit and you won't know which until halfway through painting...so I just do it.

Hmm ok.. So Im gathering its really not necessary to wash the models before building/ painting.

For plastics, no it's not necessary, but for resin you definitely should wash them!

As for knife vs. file... I've tried files and I just cannot get the precision that I can get with an x-acto. You just have to be very careful and have fine muscle control otherwise you definitely can scrape too much off or cause it to be not smooth. It all depends on the angle you're going at and how much force.

I may be just that picky with mold lines but I can never reach ALL of them with a file! Maybe I'm just using a bad set of them haha

I never used to bother to wash polystyrene model kits and it didn't give me any problems.

That said, the kits are assembled and painted with substances (Humbrol enamel paints, for instance) that would dissolve away any hand grease.

These days I just put my wargame models in the dishwasher in batches.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I never used to bother to wash polystyrene model kits and it didn't give me any problems.

That said, the kits are assembled and painted with substances (Humbrol enamel paints, for instance) that would dissolve away any hand grease.

These days I just put my wargame models in the dishwasher in batches.

I think it's important to note here that you probably do not heat-dry.....

I never wash plastic. I always wash resin. With plastics, the glue actually dissolves part of the area on contact to form the bond and you don't need to wash away anything to prevent that. Primer sticks just fine. With resin, the glue (superglue or epoxy) essentially sits on the surface so you need to wash away the release agent before trying to bond pieces together. Primer can have problems on resin even after washing so don't panic.