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I hear people say Metal is a bitch to work with, I hear people say they hate Resin and prefer Metal, so what's the damn difference?

I might be buying some Metal Daemonettes from 3rd ed. soon, so I need to know what I'm getting myself into before I prime, glue and paint them up

When dealing with a bent part one a metal mini you just bend it back. On a resin you have to warm it up.

On resin there can be air bubbles which disrupt the surface texture left over from an incomplete degassing during casting whilst metal models almost always escape said problem.

On resin models the detail can be sharper vs metal models.

Metal is heavier than resin, although models made with either will probably require pinning.

Resin is generally easier to file, cut, and sand vs metal making conversions with metal models a bit more challenging.

If you're just building your daemonettes stock there shouldn't be any real problems. I always recommend pinning metal on metal connections though.

the problem with bending resin back is that three months later you might magically find that it reverted :(

Resin for some models is fine -- for example, I've never seen a problem with Fire Dragons. However, models with long staves, weapons or banners that extrude outward and don't fit well into a blister often have straightening issues.

Bubbles on resin are rare, but they suck. Also, sometimes, resin pieces don't fit perfectly. I don't know why.

Resin is very easy to sand, and the quality of the cast can be excellent. It is lighter, so superglue is an option with 28mm scale, while with metal, anything bigger than a small arm will fall off with any use unless you pin it.

Metal feels really nice, strips well, and takes a lot more abuse. Metal models survive falls better, and do not generally break.

Metal models typically have less assembly than resin ones (especially on 28mm). The negative to this is that there are more extruded parts, making the model less realistic (you can't have one part behind another part, like armor behind a tabard, unless it's two separate pieces, which rarely happens with metal on small minis).

On large models, metal sucks, because it is awkward to work with. It used to be that everyone made large metal models, but now, you see composite metal/resin, and 100% resin or plastic. This is MUCH friendlier to gaming, because an all-metal 50mm+ model must be pinned, or else pieces all fall out by themselves if you lift them up wrong.

Metal is abit of work to paint at times but somthing nice about it.

At the biggest I only have a termies sqaud but feel very solid and can be stripped by stronger chemicals and more times than plastic so ideal test models.

I have 1989 metal models still in very good condition, 2nd hand.

metal
pros:
durable
easy to clean and/or strip
classically better detailed
cons:
poor for conversions / cutting
requires pinning
requires good primer

resin
pros:
easy to cut for conversions
light on bases
cons:
pretty toxic when filing/sanding
requires special glue
usually has lots of holes that need filling
very weak and brittle


For me, unless I'm doing some sort of conversion I'd prefer the metal figure.