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So I just bought a forge world Keeper of Secrets model. It was suggested to me by someone else who has the model at my local store to pin the whole model. I thought that was sound advice and went home and started to work on it and realized it is a lot more difficult to get larger surface area pieces to line up perfectly when pinning. Is there a trick to getting the pins precisely where they need to go to get everything to line up right? Trying to eyeball it is a pain.

Drill one hole, insert a pin that only just protrudes, but don't glue it. Put a tiny bit of paint on the end and gently line the parts up so that the paint will leave a mark on the other piece. Drill a very shallow hole and put the pieces together again and make sure they line up, then drill the hole fully if it's going together. A longer pin glued in and you're good.

If it does not fit well, drill the hole out a little bigger, and use a gap filling glue (epoxy). You will need to think carefully about how to support it while the glue cures.

Prepare both surfaces so that they fit together and have a nice flush joint. Judge which peice will be the harder to drill deeply into, so it might be a thin peice or have not allot of depth to it.

Choose the angle you want the pin to go in and the mark that point with a spot of paint or ink, preferably in a clear colour like red that will show up and gentle press the two pieces back together aligned as you want them to transfer the spot to the position you want on the unmarked piece. Then get drilling.

Dry fit a pin and see how you get on. This isn't perfect by any means by is a pretty good rough and ready way of getting a good match between two pieces.

On big piece you might want two pins in each joint as one can form a pivot that superglue doesn't resit well.

Final tip is to bore/reem out the easiest to drill piece a little bit to give you a margin of error/wiggle room to get the pieces aligned perfectly. It's a good idea to do this on all pin holes to allow glue to get all around the pin anyway.

One option, depending on the shape of the piece is to hold the pieces together and then drill through from the outside. That way you drill both sides of the pin joint with a single hole and leave no possibility of misaligned holes. Then, if necessary, you can just fill in the exterior hole with a little green stuff work. And sometimes you don't even need to do that much, if there's a hidden interior surface you can start from.

Choose the angle you want the pin to go in and the mark that point with a spot of paint or ink, preferably in a clear colour like red that will show up and gentle press the two pieces back together aligned as you want them to transfer the spot to the position you want on the unmarked piece. Then get drilling.

This works very well for lining up the placement of each hole, you just have to be careful with the angle you drill at because there's nothing to help you avoid drilling each side at a slightly different angle. It's probably not a big deal with a thin pin that can be bent easily to match the angle error, but a heavy load-bearing pin requires a lot more precision since it's harder to bend.

Best method I've found while perusing the vast interwebs is the Blu-Tac/Silly Putty method.

1) Drill the first hole in the part of your choosing.
2) Place a small blob of putty on other part and squish rather flat.
3) Lubricate exposed putty face (saliva does the job).
4) Align mating surfaces and press firmly into desired position.
5) Separate parts, revealing a little nub where the putty entered the hole.
6) Center punch through nub, giving you a perfectly aligned starting point to drill the matching hole.

Granted, this doesn't guarantee perfect matching of the angles of the holes, but I haven't found that terribly tricky to eyeball. Slight misalignment in angle is no big deal; slight misalignment in hole position means ugly gaps or awkward shift.

Some really good advice here!

I particularly like Peregrine's of pinning from the outside. I've done that before, back in the days of metal models (especially guys like dragons).

With newer resin and plastic models, what I try to do is find a spot where the two pieces meet where there's an obvious protrusion, that I can drill at 90 degrees. To me, the angle is more important than anything else in getting it right.

Also, I use P3 pinning rods (simply because they're easily accessible). They come in 3 or 4 sizes, and I start with the smallest size. If it doesn't line up precisely, I angle the drill a little, and move up to the next size, and so forth.

I do the same thing when I bore out bolters -- I start with a small drill, and if it's slightly off center, I'll correct it using the next drill bit up.

Also, for resin models, invest in tungsten carbide drill bits. You can get a pack of 'em on Amazon for $10, with the nice fat shanks. When drilling, instead of holding it in your hand, consider using a vice, and align it in a way that allows you to drill a perfect 90 degrees. If you do this on both parts, you're much more likely to get them to mate at the right angle (no pun intended!).

 oadie wrote:
Best method I've found while perusing the vast interwebs is the Blu-Tac/Silly Putty method.

1) Drill the first hole in the part of your choosing.
2) Place a small blob of putty on other part and squish rather flat.
3) Lubricate exposed putty face (saliva does the job).
4) Align mating surfaces and press firmly into desired position.
5) Separate parts, revealing a little nub where the putty entered the hole.
6) Center punch through nub, giving you a perfectly aligned starting point to drill the matching hole.

Granted, this doesn't guarantee perfect matching of the angles of the holes, but I haven't found that terribly tricky to eyeball. Slight misalignment in angle is no big deal; slight misalignment in hole position means ugly gaps or awkward shift.

This is the method I use. It's excellent, and the nub of putty (I use blu-tak) does usually give you the line you need to drill on too. Rather than punch though I normally drill a pilot hole with a small bit, then expand that if it needs a big pin.