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Does anyone know a good pin vice(Or a good size for it) to drill out bolter/heavy bolter barrels? I kind of don't like the look of just having a flat nub as a muzzle.

1.2mm for barrel, 1mm for the breaks

kb_lock wrote:
1.2mm for barrel, 1mm for the breaks

Thanks! Any brands you recommend?

Hss drill bits on ebay from actual tool supply places is best for the bits. Any vise will be fine -don't cheap out on either though, wonky drills and blunt bits will wreck your day.

Gf9 is good, citadel is good buy expensive, tamiya has a fantastic range

Second the Tamiya pin vise. I'm sure there are other good ones out there, but so far, mine has done everything I've needed it to and I have no complaints.

i just bought one from a local hardware store. however, if youre only using it for barrels, and not going to be using for other things like converting/pinning etc, then a cheap and easy method i use when im being lazy is to make a small indent with a pin, then poke a small scalpel in, and just twist it 360 degrees. keep twisting until youve bored a hole to your required diameter.

Just got a Tamiya pin vice to replace my old one (can't remember the bran, but it was ok at best), it's a huge improvement and I really like the reversible chucks alowing you to use 0.3 - 3 mm bits. The previous one only did 0.5 - 2 mm, which meant anything bigger went to my dremel and risked a) me losing fingers b) ruining the piece/model as it's way too powerful for what I was using it for even on the lowest setting... I'm an idiot really. ANYWAY, it's a great pin vice, but perhaps only comes into it's own if you're doing more than jsut drilling barrels.

For bolters/bolt pistols I typically use 1mm drill bit for both types of hole. For heavys generally a 2.5 for the barrel and 2 or 1.5 for the vents. (Some of the resin heavy bolters vary signficantly from plastic ones, so take it as you find it really).

Speaking of Tamiya, I just got one of these bad boys (as well as a ton of other stuff - no-one here sells it(!))

http://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-74041-Electric-Handy-Drill/dp/B000J46WZ4

Ignoring the fact that it's a model drill to put together to help you put models together, it is utterly perfect for drilling plastic. Really slow, really clean.

A note on QAR's method - I do that AND drill. The pin gets you a perfect centre, the drill does the work, the knife can realign a misdrilled hole back to centre.

I second on using a variable speed drill. It really helps.

You can also get a 6 drill bit set from Dremel tools. They run about 7-8 USD. They are more than enough for drilling out barrels and other things on minis.

kb_lock wrote:
Speaking of Tamiya, I just got one of these bad boys (as well as a ton of other stuff - no-one here sells it(!))

http://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-74041-Electric-Handy-Drill/dp/B000J46WZ4

Ignoring the fact that it's a model drill to put together to help you put models together, it is utterly perfect for drilling plastic. Really slow, really clean.

A note on QAR's method - I do that AND drill. The pin gets you a perfect centre, the drill does the work, the knife can realign a misdrilled hole back to centre.

kb, I think you've just identified my next hobby purchase. The dremel shall be relegated to sanding, drilling metal and DIY tasks as nature intended.

 sockwithaticket wrote:

kb_lock wrote:
Speaking of Tamiya, I just got one of these bad boys (as well as a ton of other stuff - no-one here sells it(!))

http://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-74041-Electric-Handy-Drill/dp/B000J46WZ4

Ignoring the fact that it's a model drill to put together to help you put models together, it is utterly perfect for drilling plastic. Really slow, really clean.

A note on QAR's method - I do that AND drill. The pin gets you a perfect centre, the drill does the work, the knife can realign a misdrilled hole back to centre.

kb, I think you've just identified my next hobby purchase. The dremel shall be relegated to sanding, drilling metal and DIY tasks as nature intended.

lol @ above

does anyone know if the Tamiya set that includes bits from 0.3 mm to 0.8mm will fit in a GW pin vise? I'm not certain even the small chuck will necessarily work. (I really want the super tiny stuff because I think it may help putting together those pesky Wyrd models)

Also - anyone have any handy ideas for drilling pewter? besides, you know, don't? I broke one of my bits drilling to make a pinning possible sigh. Since replaced but ugh, still annoyed about it.

Thanks everyone! I think I'm going to go with the Tamiya Fine Pin Vise and the tamiya basic drill bit set. This thread has been insanely helpful.

I have a set of bits from 0.3mm up to I think 1.5mm. To be honest it hasn't seen much use. Almost anything I need to do can be done with standard 1mm bits in the pin vice or 2mm and up in various tools.

To be fair, I'm not interested in super detailed modelling.

Yeah, I use 1, 1.2, 1.5, 1.56, 2, 3, 4

It's because 40k is chunky hero scale, you rarely need to use the smaller drills because any detail that would be small and fine just gets chunkified in the hero scaling process. Working on historics or more accurately scaled models you'll find yourself using smaller drills more often.

 Guildenstern wrote:

 sockwithaticket wrote:

kb_lock wrote:
Speaking of Tamiya, I just got one of these bad boys (as well as a ton of other stuff - no-one here sells it(!))

http://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-74041-Electric-Handy-Drill/dp/B000J46WZ4

Ignoring the fact that it's a model drill to put together to help you put models together, it is utterly perfect for drilling plastic. Really slow, really clean.

A note on QAR's method - I do that AND drill. The pin gets you a perfect centre, the drill does the work, the knife can realign a misdrilled hole back to centre.

kb, I think you've just identified my next hobby purchase. The dremel shall be relegated to sanding, drilling metal and DIY tasks as nature intended.

lol @ above

does anyone know if the Tamiya set that includes bits from 0.3 mm to 0.8mm will fit in a GW pin vise? I'm not certain even the small chuck will necessarily work. (I really want the super tiny stuff because I think it may help putting together those pesky Wyrd models)

Also - anyone have any handy ideas for drilling pewter? besides, you know, don't? I broke one of my bits drilling to make a pinning possible sigh. Since replaced but ugh, still annoyed about it.

If it's the new GW one, then no idea I'm afraid. Smallest bit I tried with the old one was a 0.5 and that was fine. Wyrd are amazing but they can be an almighty pain in the proverbial, a 0.3 is probably about right for most of the human sized stuff.

When it comes to not ruining drill bits on metal you just need to check the material they're made of and free up some cash for the more durable ones.

 sockwithaticket wrote:

 Guildenstern wrote:

 sockwithaticket wrote:

kb_lock wrote:
Speaking of Tamiya, I just got one of these bad boys (as well as a ton of other stuff - no-one here sells it(!))

http://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-74041-Electric-Handy-Drill/dp/B000J46WZ4

Ignoring the fact that it's a model drill to put together to help you put models together, it is utterly perfect for drilling plastic. Really slow, really clean.

A note on QAR's method - I do that AND drill. The pin gets you a perfect centre, the drill does the work, the knife can realign a misdrilled hole back to centre.

kb, I think you've just identified my next hobby purchase. The dremel shall be relegated to sanding, drilling metal and DIY tasks as nature intended.

lol @ above

does anyone know if the Tamiya set that includes bits from 0.3 mm to 0.8mm will fit in a GW pin vise? I'm not certain even the small chuck will necessarily work. (I really want the super tiny stuff because I think it may help putting together those pesky Wyrd models)

Also - anyone have any handy ideas for drilling pewter? besides, you know, don't? I broke one of my bits drilling to make a pinning possible sigh. Since replaced but ugh, still annoyed about it.

If it's the new GW one, then no idea I'm afraid. Smallest bit I tried with the old one was a 0.5 and that was fine. Wyrd are amazing but they can be an almighty pain in the proverbial, a 0.3 is probably about right for most of the human sized stuff.

When it comes to not ruining drill bits on metal you just need to check the material they're made of and free up some cash for the more durable ones.

Ah kk thanks!

I'm a bit rusty at interweb shouting, so bear with me and try not to assume I mean to be condescending, if I ever seem it. This simply felt relevant and I've not stood on a soapbox for a while:

Expensive drill bits are unnecessary, for our purposes. Super-cheap drill bits are barely worth the cost of their steel. All you need is a decent drill bit - the mid-shelf stuff. Material quality is usually less of an issue than tip geometry, when it comes to crappy bits. Bits, at least in the tiny sizes we're talking about, are generally broken by lateral strain (compared to the central axis of the bit) caused by too much vertical pressure. With a sharp bit, this isn't an issue - it starts easily and gentle pressure keeps it cutting, all while the walls of the hole guide the flutes. Dull bits (whether abused or merely poorly manufactured) require far more force to cut than should be necessary. Use a sharp bit, and drilling is a breeze.

As for materials, we work primarily with styrene, white metal (lead-free pewter), and polyester resin. These materials are child's play, in terms of hardness. The difference in hardness between styrene and white metal is far less than between mild and stainless steel, yet those are drilled and sawed through constantly, sometimes with the same tools. The difference? We don't generally consider our tools outside the confines of "does this have a hobby use." A machinist, however, will consider how sharp his bit is, what it's made of, what he's drilling, the best speed and lubricant to use, etc. A "hobby" saw is unlikely to ever outperform a saw designed for cutting wood, soft metal, hard metal, or whatever the material in question is.

The #1 mistake hobbyists make is assuming that their hobby is entirely unique and specialized. Metal is metal, wood is wood, plastic is plastic, steel is steel (and yes, there are plenty of different formulations of each with varying qualities - I'm making a point, here ). You can do a thousand different things with each in a thousand different ways, but taking a scalpel blade to steel is pretty much always a bad idea, if you're trying to cut through it. A crappy drill bit may work with styrene and struggle with white metal. A decent drill bit will bore through either like it was nothing. If you have a material than can be bent by hand and deeply marred by a knife, any drilling difficulty means that your tools are garbage - they need to be sharpened or replaced. Sometimes, this is beyond the reach of a hobbyist. They have, in my mind, three options: Keep struggling, work/save up and spring for better equipment, or adopt a more wholistic approach and learn what their tools do, how they do it, and how to maintain/adapt them. There's little reason to attempt it, but boring cleanly through a metal miniature can be done with nothing but a regular nail (roofing, finishing, etc.), properly shaped by file and/or sandpaper. Personally, I'd suggest a $5 set of Ebay/Amazon micro-bits and a bit of time with fine-grit abrasives, instead.

While we are speaking of drilling bolters, my tip of the day would be to drill the bolters before gluing them. If you botch up the drilling, don't use that bolter. Most boxes contain more bolters than you need anyway.

Ayyy oadie's back.

For drilling plastic, I completely agree - I don't buy "hobby" drills, I buy proper drill bits from a cutting tool supplier. They're cheap, they're actually good, and he also sells really good ones which make a difference when going into metal (I snapped a drill bit off into Trevor's tail during assembly).

I use "hobby" drills simply because it's what I bought ages ago and they still all work, occasionally when I need a new drill the hobby store is the easiest place for me to get them.

But I don't really drill metal models any more, it's been years since I last built a metal model that required drilling.

At work sometimes we have to drill lockwire holes in high strength aluminiums and steels, for that we buy boxes of drills because they break or go blunt constantly and it's cheaper to throw it in the bin and get a new one than pay someone to sharpen a blunt or broken 0.8mm drill bit

I get the tungsten carbide ones on amazon that all have the same shank size. It allows me to swap them out with the same collet, and the tungsten carbide bits are very sharp (cuts easily) though brittle (breaks easily).

I have the GW and PP hobby pin vise (3 of each) and I think they are both adequate. For me, assuming the hobby drill is relatively true (little runout, drilling straight), the biggest issue is clamping the piece down in a vise so that the hole is drilled exactly where I want it. It's basicakky the same challenge that you have whether you're hand drilling or drilling with a drill press - if you can't get the piece to stay in one place, preferably with the barrel facing up, it's hard to get a centered hole.

This is much less if an issue with a bolter as it is with storm bolsters and assault cannons, because on single barreled weapons, if the hole is off center, just cut another bigger barrel with a bigger bit re-centered - a luxury not really practical if you have 4 nice holes and miss the fifth one in an assault cannon.

Has anyone considered, instead of drilling out the barrel on a bolter, just replace the muzzle brake with a piece of plasticard tube?

I don't usually drill my barrels because the OCD part of me can't deal with a hole that's slightly off centre and many of the barrels aren't perfectly circular anyway, so when I drill them out with a hole that IS a perfect circle it just highlights the barrel itself not being perfect.

But the idea of replacing the entire muzzle brake, that might be something a bit more appealing.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Has anyone considered, instead of drilling out the barrel on a bolter, just replace the muzzle brake with a piece of plasticard tube?

I don't usually drill my barrels because the OCD part of me can't deal with a hole that's slightly off centre and many of the barrels aren't perfectly circular anyway, so when I drill them out with a hole that IS a perfect circle it just highlights the barrel itself not being perfect.

But the idea of replacing the entire muzzle brake, that might be something a bit more appealing.

Well, that could work in simple single-barrel applications like bolters, but it does nothing for all three hundred other weapons like plasma guns, flamers, meltaguns, grav pistols, storm bolters... not to mention more esoteric xenos counterparts and heavy weapons. In the GW universe of currently produced models, nearly all plastics are perfect, and a very high percentage of resin guns have drilled-out barrels -- but your point is well taken on many other models I've run across.

one problem with using a hollow cylinder might be cutting all the ends the same length for a large number of models? Also, some people may have trouble making a perfectly perpendicular cut. But in certain weapons, I think it's a cool idea that could work. And, if you had a mini press or mill, you could spend the time drilling cool vents on the side, which would be possible because you can very accurately clamp a tube

Incidentally, I tend to take an afternoon and drill a lot of weapons at the same time -- like, a couple hundred all at once -- so that I don't have to worry about it down the line. Unless it's a really special weapon, I just toss it if I mess it up, as the fail ratio is pretty low (about 1-2%, and never a piece that is important, because I take extra care). I use a micron marker to draw the center, an awl to indent it, and then either a drill press or hand vise to drill them.

Showed this somewhere before, if you really tight on cash for a pin vice, just epoxy s drill bit onto a pen, might be a crude way of doing something...but it works

 Talys wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Has anyone considered, instead of drilling out the barrel on a bolter, just replace the muzzle brake with a piece of plasticard tube?

I don't usually drill my barrels because the OCD part of me can't deal with a hole that's slightly off centre and many of the barrels aren't perfectly circular anyway, so when I drill them out with a hole that IS a perfect circle it just highlights the barrel itself not being perfect.

But the idea of replacing the entire muzzle brake, that might be something a bit more appealing.

Well, that could work in simple single-barrel applications like bolters, but it does nothing for all three hundred other weapons like plasma guns, flamers, meltaguns, grav pistols, storm bolters... not to mention more esoteric xenos counterparts and heavy weapons. In the GW universe of currently produced models, nearly all plastics are perfect, and a very high percentage of resin guns have drilled-out barrels -- but your point is well taken on many other models I've run across.

one problem with using a hollow cylinder might be cutting all the ends the same length for a large number of models? Also, some people may have trouble making a perfectly perpendicular cut. But in certain weapons, I think it's a cool idea that could work. And, if you had a mini press or mill, you could spend the time drilling cool vents on the side, which would be possible because you can very accurately clamp a tube

Incidentally, I tend to take an afternoon and drill a lot of weapons at the same time -- like, a couple hundred all at once -- so that I don't have to worry about it down the line. Unless it's a really special weapon, I just toss it if I mess it up, as the fail ratio is pretty low (about 1-2%, and never a piece that is important, because I take extra care). I use a micron marker to draw the center, an awl to indent it, and then either a drill press or hand vise to drill them.

A lot of those other weapons you could replace larger sections of the weapon, drilling even larger holes and replacing the whole barrel (flamers usually have 2 straight tubes then the shrouded igniter/mixer part, you could replace the whole long sections with brass tubes).

I just can't deal with off center barrels, I'd rather not have them drilled at all, and maybe because I used to do machining but I have a very good eye for spotting things that are slightly off center No matter how hard I try most my barrels end up far enough off center that they don't look like they were actually machined but rather they were drilled by hand by some drunken intern My failure rate is probably more like 50-75%

Have you tried drilling them sober?

How un-Australian of you to suggest I would attempt to drill them sober!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Talys wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Has anyone considered, instead of drilling out the barrel on a bolter, just replace the muzzle brake with a piece of plasticard tube?

I don't usually drill my barrels because the OCD part of me can't deal with a hole that's slightly off centre and many of the barrels aren't perfectly circular anyway, so when I drill them out with a hole that IS a perfect circle it just highlights the barrel itself not being perfect.

But the idea of replacing the entire muzzle brake, that might be something a bit more appealing.

Well, that could work in simple single-barrel applications like bolters, but it does nothing for all three hundred other weapons like plasma guns, flamers, meltaguns, grav pistols, storm bolters... not to mention more esoteric xenos counterparts and heavy weapons. In the GW universe of currently produced models, nearly all plastics are perfect, and a very high percentage of resin guns have drilled-out barrels -- but your point is well taken on many other models I've run across.

one problem with using a hollow cylinder might be cutting all the ends the same length for a large number of models? Also, some people may have trouble making a perfectly perpendicular cut. But in certain weapons, I think it's a cool idea that could work. And, if you had a mini press or mill, you could spend the time drilling cool vents on the side, which would be possible because you can very accurately clamp a tube

Incidentally, I tend to take an afternoon and drill a lot of weapons at the same time -- like, a couple hundred all at once -- so that I don't have to worry about it down the line. Unless it's a really special weapon, I just toss it if I mess it up, as the fail ratio is pretty low (about 1-2%, and never a piece that is important, because I take extra care). I use a micron marker to draw the center, an awl to indent it, and then either a drill press or hand vise to drill them.

A lot of those other weapons you could replace larger sections of the weapon, drilling even larger holes and replacing the whole barrel (flamers usually have 2 straight tubes then the shrouded igniter/mixer part, you could replace the whole long sections with brass tubes).

I just can't deal with off center barrels, I'd rather not have them drilled at all, and maybe because I used to do machining but I have a very good eye for spotting things that are slightly off center No matter how hard I try most my barrels end up far enough off center that they don't look like they were actually machined but rather they were drilled by hand by some drunken intern My failure rate is probably more like 50-75%

I did do this for Lasguns on a Guard army 5 or so years ago.

I used small copper tube rather than plastic. Although plastic would have glued stonger and more easily I found that I got a neater cut on copper tube and the hole in the middle was smaller than plastic giving a "suppressor" look. Silver Nickel tubes might be even easier if you have a good hand/eye as you can cut with a decent Xacto blade.

Straight cuts were done with a mitre box and razor saw. I actually drilled into the gun and inserted the new barrel for a much neater and more robust finish. By coincidence I had just bought a Tamiya Hobby drill at the time making this super easy.

I thong the effort is really worth it.