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I use shotgun lead. Me and a friend wents halvies on a 50lb bag of it and neither of us are anywear close to running out 6 years latter.

calamarialldayerrday wrote:
Well I don't really see how it would have helped. I just bought loads of lead, and put as much as would fit in, except the problem wasn't gaps between the balls or anything, it's that the diameter of the balls is greater than the depth allowed by the base.

The small grade of shot in the ballast I recommended fits in the depth of the base, being 0.3 to 1.6mm in size. If you have very thin bases, you can sieve out the larger shot for use in your bigger bases.

 Lockark wrote:
I use shotgun lead. Me and a friend wents halvies on a 50lb bag of it and neither of us are anywear close to running out 6 years latter.

I honestly envy people living in countries with a reasonable access to firearms. It's probably easier to find a store for used nuclear reactors than a hunting supplier around here. And when you do find one, the prices are through the roof.

What about normal sand? Would a paste of pva glue and sand end up heavy enough?

Advance planning of the model and better placement on the base. If I know it's going to be top heavy, i,ll see about using slate on the base. Don't worry about having a perfect round footprint on the slate to match the base. The flint is reasonabl heavy. Just place the model further to the back and pin him to the flint, you should be solid. Flint is also stupid easy to. Work with. Drilling with a pin vice is a non-issue, you can break a large piece of flint by bagging it and dropping it on your floor, etc. highly recommended. I only caution you to wash the flint before using it, or you will be sad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kosake wrote:

 Lockark wrote:
I use shotgun lead. Me and a friend wents halvies on a 50lb bag of it and neither of us are anywear close to running out 6 years latter.

I honestly envy people living in countries with a reasonable access to firearms. It's probably easier to find a store for used nuclear reactors than a hunting supplier around here. And when you do find one, the prices are through the roof.

What about normal sand? Would a paste of pva glue and sand end up heavy enough?

Depends on the "sand". Silicon dioxide? You bet absolutely not. Something that's mixed with heavier stuf.... Mm,m...yeah, might work.. It's not that silicon dioxide is too light, it's that the shape of the sand means air gets in, and air is pretty light. You'd almost be better to use iron filings under the base, but have to cap the base off on the bottom. Added benefit of a magnetic base, wexcept it's still tippy if you put it on terrain.

Obviously advance planning would have been the solution to the issue with this dude, unfortunately this was my first example of a top heavy model, so everything was already in place.

The lead I bought was uniform in size, and slightly too big (I'm talking less than quarter of a millimetre too big, so it stuck out of the bottom of the base. The solution I used was to flatten it slightly, between a hammer and a metal mallet, and then glue it in place. It's not perfectly steady, but it's a lot better than it was and can even support itself on uneven terrain.

However, I did foresee this problem coming with my next model, my Chaos Marine Possessed Champion, and I worked to solve it before it became a problem. I worked the lead into the base decoration, underneath the rubble, and also on the actual underside of the base. The effect is that I know have a really tall and quite heavy model, but that's okay.

So, the lesson to be learned is that foresight is everything, but we all have to learn from somewhere.

^ Awesome!