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I have lots of experience with plastic and resin, but the last time I even saw a lead mini was a trio of Ral Partha D&D pieces in the early 90s.

My main question mark is with regard to prep work like seam removal and sanding. Knife? File? Sandpaper? Is it harder to "see" what you are doing with metal?

Metal can still be shaved with a knife and sandpaper works fine, it is a good idea for "tooth" for gluing.
Beware of really old models and sanding, they may have a fair bit of lead content rather than pewter so you would need a light face mask and should vacuum right after.
Remember you are to use a crazy glue or an epoxy to bond pieces together (there is no "welding" with solvent glues like plastic).
New models need to be cleaned well of mold release, I found metal models especially bad for this (use a strong detergent).
Metal to metal or metal to plastic bonds should be pinned to ensure the strength of the model.
I find plastic metal combinations really need pinning if the model is left in a car during hot or cold weather since they expand/contract differently and may pop the glue (had a metal vindicator fall apart one winter).
That is all there really is to it that I know of.
I find I miss/want the weight of a metal model it just feels nicer.

wash the metal figs like you would resin, casters use talcum powder as mold release and you get some left on the models, makes it easier to paint and glue. Mold lines are only marginally harder to remove than plastic, you can still scrape them w/ a hobby knife or use files and sanding sticks. Use super glue to assemble them, brand doesn't particularly matter but everybody likes to chime in w/ what they find is "best", any of the regular brands work fine: Loctite, Gorilla Glue, Zap-a-Gap, Super Glue.

Depending on the size of the pieces you may want to pin them w/ a small hand drill and a length of brass wire/paper clip to strengthen the join. You can also strengthen it by sprinkling baking soda into the wet superglue, or in some cases use a 5-minute 2-part epoxy if they're really large pieces to join. I find super glue and baking soda works 99% of the time and I rarely need to pin anything anymore, even on the larger TAG robots for Infinity

Files and a hobby knife are what I use to clean up seams. Generally speaking, my best advice to you would be to look THOROUGHLY for them. Hold the model at different angels, different lighting etc. Metal is really good at hiding seam lines due to how shiny it is. I've had models with seam lines on the front of the arms that I could only really see if I held it upside down.

 Talizvar wrote:
Beware of really old models and sanding, they may have a fair bit of lead content rather than pewter so you would need a light face mask and should vacuum right after.

I'm looking at Infinity figures which I understand are made with a classic lead formula. I wont start another lead-scare thread but sanding/filing is the one area I do have concerns with: I assume I can wet-sand the same way I do resin (which I'm very cautious with)?

Infinity use a pewter alloy that contains about 3~5% lead. But even if it was regular 100% lead there's no worry unless you're sanding them and licking the residue off your fingers like it was Cheetos powder, historical modellers have been using lead figures for decades with no adverse effect. You'd have to be extraordinarily stupid to get lead poisoning from working with lead figures, just wash your hands after you're done modelling is all you need to do

Lead is so much easier to work with than white metal, I have a couple of newer white metal minis from GW and they dont file down as easy as lead

Note: many people use things like rotary sanders on dremel tools and fling around the dust a fair bit, those are more my concern. hand files and sandpaper pose much less of a risk.

Most modern-day metal models are pewter and have a very low concentration. I have a few pure lead miniatures, so I threw that out there as a possibility.

I have seen a few horses walking around in circles due to eating too much leaded paint off their stall walls so it really does not take much (they have about 5x the mass we do!).
So I have a little objective evidence for me to take suitable precautions without being an alarmist about it.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Infinity use a pewter alloy that contains about 3~5% lead.

Apparently they have switched (again): cs rep I was in contact with emailed me saying that as of July 2018 they are back to unleaded. They mentioned that packages may still have the content warning but he said thats because the new package printing hasn't completely caught up yet.

I recently got a batch of metal minis (Greebo Blood Bowl team). The models are beautiful but the prep and building the models was hellish! Washing the parts, filing and sanding the seams away and then trying to get the pieces to glue was very time consuming. Pining is fine for the larger bits but for small arms it was too time consuming and fiddly.

I then dropped a model towards the end and both arms popped off... My wife was laughing at me cursing and asking me why I was doing this to myself.

I should add that the fact they were chaos and covered in little spikes didn't help when holding the pieces in place during gluing. Also, the models were great cast so very minor seams. Still missed one on the minotaur though!

I have pretty much only worked with metal models for the last year and they have been really... questionable casts. I have found diamond files to be my most go to tool when prepping, generally I use a blade (or even clippers on the really bad casts) to hack down flash and trim off vents and then finish up with files, using different shaped files where appropriate. After going over the model once I tend to run a light coating of nuln oil on seams to highlight any areas I have missed first time.
I would highly recommend pinning anything you can as metal models are pretty unforgiving.

I'd advise heading to this site
https://www.eternaltools.com/files-burnishers/small-diamond-files

And get yourself a 900Grit halfround and 600Grit halfround diamond files.

Note if you search on ebay you can find other sources of 600grit files if you want, but I've not found anywhere else that sells a 900grit file (if you find any please do say).


Diamond files are graded in grits just like sandpaper and the higher the number the smoother the finish. A 600grit file will really eat through mould lines very fast, it really makes working with metal models a breeze. The 900 is there to help polish over and to work on more delicate areas where there might be underlaying detail below the mould line.

Used together they will really make working with metal a lot less painful and a lot faster in my view.

Emery boards also work well, but they are often bigger and thus not as easy to get into all the little spots; plus they wear out faster.




I'd also recommend if you go the diamond file way, that you get a nice regular firm rubber/eraser. The files will clog up with material fairly fast so you rub them over the rubber and it will clean off the gunk. Avoid putty rubbers as they will bend and warp as you press down which isn't what you want.

Other than that just make sure the join areas are cleaned and have a flush connection before scoring with a blade over the surface with a cross-hatch pattern. The scoring increases surface area and, just like with resin models, this makes the superglue make a much better contact and hold. It also dramatically cuts down the amount of time it takes to get a tacky hold where you can let go of the parts. Otherwise you can end up sitting there for ages waiting for the glue to get tacky enough to hold parts without support (not adding too much glue also helps).

On cleaning files, assuming you have a Dremel, getting a brass brush for the rotary tool takes your files back to brand new no matter how much metal, glue, or green stuff is packed into them.

I use two different diameters of round file for everything without an inside angle, and a triangular file (not a square one) for flat and angled surfaces.

Scoring surfaces to be glued with a sharp hobby blade helps if you're not going to pin. And obviously a good pin vise or two (to keep multiple bits ready to go) and some practice with pinning is essential.

This is coming from a longtime Sisters of Battle collector

Knife or dremel comes down to preference, something easily over looked is weight. Depending on the mini you might have to weigh the base down to keep it from toppling over. Metal still big when I started 40k a million years ago, and I got good at weighing those puppies down