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 BryllCream wrote:
Woah, source on this? Please don't claim that anyone who doesn't hate finecast is some kind of apathetic slob.

No source, just personal experience. It's not exactly hard to see that there are a lot of people who don't bother to paint anything, never remove mold lines, throw their models around, or various other things that show a lack of concern for their models as anything other than game pieces.

And I'm not saying anyone who hates finecast is just apathetic, just that you have to exclude the apathetic people before you can have a meaningful discussion about defective product rates. If you don't the numbers will be skewed in favor of "finecast is ok" by people who get defective products but don't care.

So a majority of professional painters refuse to paint finecast? You sure about that? If the quality was that bad, it wouldn't be profitable for anyone to do it. Sounds like anti-GW grandstanding to me.

I never said a majority of professional painters refuse to deal with finecast, just that there was a recent discussion involving some who do.

Also, anti-GW grandstanding makes no sense. Refusing to paint finecast means less income, and I doubt commission painting is really a high-paying career even when you take every job you can get. So the only reason to refuse those sales is if the failure rate with finecast is bad enough that finecast commissions are no longer profitable.

 Peregrine wrote:

1) Bubbles. Finecast is full of bubbles that destroy detail, or create a fatal weakness in the part so that something breaks off. Metal models did not have this problem at all.

Not exact same problems, but similar problems. Metal surfaces are sometimes wrinkly, since metal shrinks when it cools. Also, producing straight lines from metal moulds appears to be problematic:

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs29/f/2008/093/2/6/Broadside_2_by_Kaiii.jpg

What you don't see in that pic is that metal SMS pods are similarly deformed.

Personally, I also hate painting metal miniatures. People complain about Finecast flash, but metal is just as annoying and many metal models take a lot of sanding and filing before it's paintable. Even then, paint chips off all the time, it's really annoying.

 Peregrine wrote:
... and I doubt commission painting is really a high-paying career even when you take every job you can get.

It is. It's been paying for my rent, cable, internet, heat, hot water and cigs for a few months now.

I haven't had any problems with finecast models, I've had a small bubble in one, but that was easily fixed.

The worst problems I've had with my Finecast stuff are some tiny air bubbles on the knuckles of my Big Mek.

It's nothing that would ruin a 700% of life size photo of the model more than my craptacular painting skills would.

And on the tabletop, I wouldn't even notice it.

I've only bought two finecast models; a Commissar Lord and a Vanguard Veteran squad.

The Commissar Lord was fine; his foot was slightly warped, kind of compressed, but hard to notice. Annoying when it's a $16 single model, but not critical.

The Vanguard, however, were a bit of a nightmare. Flash and FC spikes everywhere, requiring extensive cleanup. The intake vents were misshapen, and the swords completely useless; replaced them all with GK falchions. Several of the heads were also cast to the chestplates; there was no neck space, which required further repair.

Overall, i wouldn't buy FC unless it's in a clear blister; I want to look the model over completely before I pay the ludicrous prices they charge for one of the cheapest substances on the planet.

By the same token, however, there's lots of plastic kits that are very old with poor casting quality; tactical Marines are a good example, with many details indistinct, huge mold lines and so on.

 Pouncey wrote:
The worst problems I've had with my Finecast stuff are some tiny air bubbles on the knuckles of my Big Mek.

It's nothing that would ruin a 700% of life size photo of the model more than my craptacular painting skills would.

And on the tabletop, I wouldn't even notice it.

And you are the reason why GW still uses finecast: you just accept the defective product instead of demanding a replacement because "it doesn't matter". The profit GW makes from selling you a cheap product with no quality control pays for the endless replacements other people have to get.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Backfire wrote:
Personally, I also hate painting metal miniatures. People complain about Finecast flash, but metal is just as annoying and many metal models take a lot of sanding and filing before it's paintable. Even then, paint chips off all the time, it's really annoying.

To be clear, I hate metal models and think that resin is far superior. The problem with finecast isn't that it's resin, it's that it's badly cast resin with nonexistent quality control. And unfortunately, as bad as metal models are, finecast manages to suffer from horrible casting problems that metal doesn't have.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
The worst problems I've had with my Finecast stuff are some tiny air bubbles on the knuckles of my Big Mek.

It's nothing that would ruin a 700% of life size photo of the model more than my craptacular painting skills would.

And on the tabletop, I wouldn't even notice it.

And you are the reason why GW still uses finecast: you just accept the defective product instead of demanding a replacement because "it doesn't matter". The profit GW makes from selling you a cheap product with no quality control pays for the endless replacements other people have to get.

Suppose I shouldn't mention that metal Death-Cult Assassin I ordered online which arrived with a malformed sword because the mould didn't fill all the way. Didn't get that one replaced because I'd ordered 3 blisters of 2 when I was only ever going to use 5, and I don't like communicating with "official" people. Like in WoW, I get all anxiety-ridden when I file an in-game support ticket for a serious issue like not being able to level my Death Knight because at a bottleneck point in the quest line in their starter zone, I was unable to complete a quest because the NPCs in the area were malfunctioning, or when I got stuck in a battleground after it ended (the latter I solved by disabling my addons, the former, the GM had to manually respawn the NPCs to get them to work right).

So I guess I'm sorry for having anxiety problems and not really wanting to have it when the reason to go through it doesn't affect me that much?

And it's not like I've never gotten replacements from GW before. When my metal dragon ogre was missing a hind leg, I went in and got it replaced (oddly, they had the EXACT part just sitting around loose in a drawer of bitz). Or when my Eldar Battleforce's Wave Serpent was missing a weapon sprue, I went in and got it replaced. Or when my Wood Elf Battalion came with its archer sprues replaced by cavalry sprues, I went in and got it replaced.