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Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





KINGPIN54 wrote:
Its just that when i use rhe blade it seems that i am making it "blocky" especialy on the pouldrens or rounded surfuces
If using a knife I'll often use the back of the knife and scrape rather than cutting in to the model. You do it in several light quick passes rather than trying to scrape it in 1 pass, that lets you gently work the curve back in to it so it doesn't look blocky.

In general I hate cleaning mould lines, the part of the hobby I hate the most. If someone designed models where the mould lines don't need to be cleaned up I'd happily pay a premium, lol.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





When you do it with a knife blade, the blade needs to be reasonably stiff. I've found scraping is easiest with a thick blade that has a linear taper, so something like a #11 in a decent handle or one of those Testors knives with the fixed blade

"Disposable Hobby Knife": http://www.testors.com/product-catalog/testors-brands/testors/tools/cutting-tools

I tend to not use sand paper on miniatures, I find I get the surface smooth enough using the knife that I can't see it under a layer of paint. I use sand paper for aircraft models more, aircraft models tend to have a despicable seam that runs down the centre of the fuselage and along the leading edges of the wing and the only way I've found to fix it is with a decent filling putty and then sanded smooth. But for regular miniatures I rarely touch anything other than the knife.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





 Vermis wrote:
I know people scoff at it, but the mould line remover is one of the the best things I've bought from GW. People said just use a knife (or the back of it) but that's how I did it, and still use a small blade for cleaning out little nooks and crannies; but for long, unbroken mould lines over even surfaces, I find the MLR is very smooth and controllable, without any judders from knives or scratches and fuzz from files. YMMV.

Other seam scrapers are cheaper, but for whatever reason the ones I found had shipping that bumped them up to the same cost.
The reason I haven't bought the GW mouldline remover (aside from the fact it's $19AUD for what amounts to a shaped piece of metal ) is that those long unbroken mould lines are the easiest to remove anyway. They usually only take me a few seconds to remove. It's the mould lines that are in around detail that are fiddly and time consuming to remove.

If you're getting judders with a knife it probably means the knife isn't stiff enough or you are doing slow heavy scrapes when you should be doing fast light scrapes.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





For aircraft I tend to use sanding sticks like these:

http://www.hobbytools.com.au/flex-pads-assorted-grits-6pc/

Or a Tamiya sanding sponge for convex curves (like the wing root). Then I just finish the surface off with some regular sand paper from an auto parts store (because my sanding sticks are reasonably rough so I just give it a quick polish before priming).

But I don't think I've ever used a sanding stick on an miniature, I use them on aircraft because it's really fething hard to hide the seams on aircraft models, way more tricky and time consuming than just removing mould lines.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





 Talys wrote:
You generally hold a scraping tool (whether it's a blade or a mold line remover or a standard file) perpendicular to the mold line for the most efficient removal of mold lines.
I'm going to disagree with you there and say you want to hold it about 30-45 degrees off perpendicular, angled toward the direction of motion (so it's scraping rather than digging in)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/02/18 22:44:32


 
 
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