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Please can anyone tell me a better way to hold minis while painting. At the moment I'm trying to use a cork with a needle stuck in it with blue tac to hold the model on however this keeps spinning and moving too much need something more stable any suggestions!?

Fingers.

I usually have the model on a base before I start painting it and just hold that.

You could also hold it were the paint has dried provided your fingers are clean.

Keep it on the sprue....left this behind quite a few years ago but still use it for some bits that are difficult

I've found with fingers the paint rubs off then have to repaint :/, less contact the better in my book. I would use the base but at the moment completing riders for a mount so can't do that.

Old paint pot with a big blob of blue-tack on top. Attach base to blue-tack hold paint pot while painting.

For fine details try this: Lean your elbows on the chair's arms, push your wrists (or your bottom two fingers) together. Helps stops the shakes.

Have a lamp behind your shoulder so you can see the mini without any shadows cast on it.

I base mine last, so I typically keep bits and things I'm painting in alligator clips.

I used an old cap from a used up canister of spray paint. I put a whole bunch of sticky tac on the top and it works great.

Double sided foam tape + popsicle craft sticks. Or, a tooth pick through the hold I will eventually pin the model on

Double pin (one in each foot) and then attach to cork. You can also just stick with one pin and use PVA to secure the pin to the cork.
I try to avoid attaching my models to the base prior to painting as I like having full access to all parts of the model and often find a base would prevent access.

So far everything GW I've painted has already been on a magnetic base, so I've just used that to stick it to a piece of metal for holding. I will be making bases separately in future and plan to use a pinning method like Foxfyre describes. I might super glue the pins to something.

For my flames of war stuff If the tank is resin I super glue a popsicle stick to the bottom of the hull and the back of the tracks and I blutack the turret to a disposable shot glass. For plastic tanks I just blutack them to the paddlepop stick and shot glass. Same for infantry bases.

Most of my minis are already based, come painting time, so the poster tack+paint pot works well enough. Heavier metal models did spin on me when pinned to corks, though - the material was simply too squishy for friction alone to suffice. One solution is a second pin, to resist the torque, if the model's footprint allows it. If you already have or can easily source one, though, a pin vice will provide positive grip on the existing pin that keeps it stable without any additional work.

That's what bases are for. The few times I've painted miniatures of the base they were going to be based on, I'd use a tiny, tiny bit of super glue to hold them onto a separate base. So I'd take models, use a tiny bit of glue to put them on a plastic base, then when they were done I'd pop them off and transfer them to resin bases that I'd painted separately. It's easy and you've already got the bases.

I''m still not sure about bases as you can't get to certain parts of miniatures however it does work for some models. In this case as I said before i'm doing the riders for mounting so can't use the base method anyway.

It depends on the models. If I can keep them on the sprue, I keep them on the sprue (still have to trim off bits and clean the mould lines, just leave a tab of sprue where the feet attach to hold the model.

You can hold it by the sprue, and when you want to put the model down to dry, just have some blobs of blutac on your desk you can push it in to so that it doesn't fall over.

If you can glue it to the base without obscuring detail, you can do that. Some models you can just blutac to their bases and that's fine, others you can't.

The Fenrisian Wolf models I just painted, I superglued magnets to the feet of the wolves, then placed them on a base with another magnet on the otherside, this holds them down, but they still spin, so I just squished a bit of blutac under the magnet to stop it spinning (blutac alone would not have held it). I then blutacked the base to the top of an old paint tin, as I was airbrushing them and it's easier to deal with it like that.

You can also superglue the models down. Don't use tons of superglue, just a dab. Then when you're done, you can snap them off as the superglue is quite brittle.

So, lots of methods, it depends on the model in the end.

For my Savage Orcs, I left a tab of the sprue on the bottom of the foot, but this wasn't really sufficient so I then superglued that tab to a more solid bit of sprue to hold it.

Using the pins and cork like you're already doing, you can superglue the pin in and just break it off when you're done, or just leave the pin in and use it to attach the model to the base (drill a hole in the base). Or if you can, pin both feet to the cork, that will stop it spinning.

I use an old vitamin tub, blue tack on top voila.

 Ma55ter_fett wrote:
IYou could also hold it were the paint has dried provided your fingers are clean.

Do not do that. Ever.


When painting squads, I simply hold the models by their base. When painting individual models, I use blue-tack and stick the model on an old paint pot.

My models are primed and painted while on the base, So I just hold em by that.

Basically you want something you can hold easily, that's stable enough to stand upright without wobbling.
I used to use empty paintpots with blu-tac stuck under the base of the mini. Now I use empty asthma inhalers instead of paintpots, mainly because I'm asthmatic and I've got about a dozen of them...

If your mini doesn't have a base you could embed one of the mini's feet into the blu-tac, leaving that foot to be painted last when you base the mini. I've done that before, but with 1/35 scale figures.

I pin both feet and stick the pins through two holes in Gatoraide drink bottle caps. When finished, I pin them to their base.

Blue tack is terrible. Your local hobby store should sell something similar but this is the exact stuff I use, and it never dries out.

http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/gray-plastalina-modeling-clay-553503/

I use poster tack on the end of an old prescription medicine bottle, and I hold it with my arms locked in tight at my sides and my wrists in as close to constant contact as I can get. It keeps my models accessible and keeps my hands as steady as possible.