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Hey everyone. I've been working on my first mini (Imperial Knight) which I hope to post to the finished forum soon for some feedback. I'm finishing the base now and I have a few questions that I hope some of you can answer.

I want my base to be a bit more elaborate and stumbled upon the link below. It looks like something my limited skill set might be able to accomplish:

http://www.miniwargaming.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43449

The site does demonstrate making terrain, but my plan is to scale back the size and use the same materials for the base of my imperial knight.

My question is this; what is the best way to actually glue the knight to the base? Do I paint/flock the base terrain fully before gluing? Do I glue the knight to the unpainted base foundation first? I'm not sure what the best approach is.

Thanks so much for the great environment in these forums. Everyone is extremely helpful and kind and I greatly enjoy lurking about seeing what everyone is up to.

Glue to the model to the base prior to finishing the base itself. If you glue a model to glue/flock...that's what it's attached to. Thus the glue/flock will break off and poof - your model comes up.

Now you can do the whole base and then cut away or sand away areas where you want to attach the model as well, but that seems more time consuming.

Essentially, anything you put between the base and the model, be it paint, flock or whatever, will create a new bond, and the overall strength of the attachment of the model to the base will be determined by the weakest link (which will most likely be anything attached to the base like flock.)

The two easiest ways around this are to leave two blank spots to attach the Knight's feet directly to the base and use plastic glue to create an almost permanent bond, which has the drawbacks of wedding you very firmly to the final position of the model in the base and limiting your ability to add any height where the Knight is standing, or, the best method for the technique you're showing, is to attach two pegs to the underside of the Knight's feet (using brass rod or similar,) paint the base and complete it 100% and then drill down through all the terrain and into the base where you want to put the model. Given the Knight is plastic and relatively light, one foot might be enough, but two feet directly attached to the base through pins should give you a really solid construction.

 Elbows wrote:
Glue to the model to the base prior to finishing the base itself. If you glue a model to glue/flock...that's what it's attached to. Thus the glue/flock will break off and poof - your model comes up.

Excellent point that I didn't consider, thanks!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
the best method for the technique you're showing, is to attach two pegs to the underside of the Knight's feet (using brass rod or similar,) paint the base and complete it 100% and then drill down through all the terrain and into the base where you want to put the model. Given the Knight is plastic and relatively light, one foot might be enough, but two feet directly attached to the base through pins should give you a really solid construction.

Thanks for the advice! I assume that the best method for attaching such rods would be with something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/Army-Painter-Miniature-Model-Drill/dp/B0037V3S08

That's a handy tool to have as a hobbyist, so yes, I'd recommend one (unless you're working exclusively with plastic and not doing heavy conversions, there's not much call for pinning plastic as a rule) but on a model the size of a Knight you could very well have a normal drill that would do the job (there's no right diameter for the pins, the thicker the better from a durability standpoint, you're only limited by the size of hole you can safely drill into the mounting point.)

Oh, and as for glue, poly cement (plastic glue) on plastic-plastic unless you have an idea you may wish to break the bond in the future (such as to swap weapons) for everything else cyanoacrylate (super glue) except very rarely if you have large joints (Titans, big metal models) with heavy pieces you may want to use two part epoxy glue.

Thanks so much for the advice!