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I have removed the wings from one of my models in order to paint it properly and want to pin them back into place. One of the issues that I have when trying to pin is making sure that the holes line up correctly (i.e., so once they are put back together that both parts line up correctly).

I was wondering if there were any tricks for doing this?

Drill a hole on one side, before you put a wire in, use some blu tac on the not drilled side.

press the two pieces together in the right spot. and hope the tac stays on the not drilled piece.

there should be a nub from the hole you drilled first.

drill into that and it should fit fine though not much to be done about the angle. just try to keep it as perpendicular to the piece as possible.

you could also do something similar with paint.

drill the hole, put a temporary pin in and have it cut fairly close to the model but enough that you can extract it (like 1.8th of an inch.) put a dab of paint on the tip and get the other piece close to it.

it should leave a little indicator there.

or you can skip the paint and just press kinda hard. it should also leave a mark for you to drill.

I use an extremely short pin, with paint on the end, and then line the piece up as desired - it will leave a mark and you have the point to drill.

It's always worked fine for me, and I've done monstrosities like the FW Lord of Change, its wings needed three pins to feel comfortably secure for me!

Thanks heaps for the good suggestions.

Two options:

1) Put a dot of (wet) paint on one side, press the parts together. There should be a dot of paint on both sides now, drill in the center of the dot.

2) Hold the parts together then drill from the outside through both parts. This works especially well when the shape of stuff works out so that you can drill through a spot that isn't visible (from the inside of a vehicle, a spot where another part will be glued on top of the first two, etc) but as long as there's no complex detail on the outside surface you can easily patch the hole with some green stuff once the pin is done. If precise alignment is important this is the best way to make sure you get it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:
drill into that and it should fit fine though not much to be done about the angle. just try to keep it as perpendicular to the piece as possible.

One thing to note here is that "don't worry much about the angle, just keep it as perpendicular as possible" only works when you have pretty thin pins that can bend easily to fit a set of holes that aren't exactly straight. If you're using heavier pins (as you might on a titan, for example) that don't bend easily you'll need to get those angles perfectly straight. And that likely means using the drill from outside method so that you put a single hole through both pieces at once.

Another, slightly cheap and nasty but quite often stronger approach is to glue the pieces then 'stitch' straight through both in one go.
This will leave a hole on the face of the model so you have to be able to fix that with a little GS and touch up the paint.
The main advantages are that it's quick and easy to do and the angle of the pin can sometimes be almost perpendicular to the direction that the pieces fit making them lock together.
The disadvantages are the touch up of painted models, it can't be used on every join due to angles etc, it's pretty much permanent so no chance of removing wings etc for transportation/storage.

If the connecting surface is (pretty much) circular, take your knife and draw two-three lines through through the centre of the area, which should give you (pretty much) an exact centre. Simply drill through.

Either that, or, put a tiny dot of paint, stick together, position is marked.

Note, you should use that knife method when drilling anyway, as it gives pretty much centre starting point as well as a pilot mark so your drill doesn't slip when it starts to blunt. This is especially important if you're drilling thin gun barrels or wrists for magnets. If you've ever drilled bolters, you'll know how easy it is to accidentally drill too close to the edge.

Putting a little dot never works for me, it seems the parts never fit well enough for the dot to transfer to the other side or if it does I manage to smudge it too much to be useful.

I just drill one side, put a short pin in, a bit of blutack on the other side and position the parts and the short pin will leave a spot on the blutack.

Here's my method to ensure aligned pins.

Drill one hole.

Wet the drilled part with some sort of lube. Spit is good as it doesn't interfere with gluing later.

Put a small amount of blu-tack on other part.

Press the joint together firmly. The blu-tack will stick to the part you need to drill, and the already-drilled hole will be marked as a nub of blu-tack. This not only indicates position, but roughly the direction of the hole too. Helps a lot with thicker pins that need to be aligned properly.

Drill by aligning the drill through the nub of blu-tack and making a small pilot hole. If a large hole is needed you can then remove the blu-tack and use the correct size bit.

Since my pinning material is 20ga wire, I find with my pins that I have a point on the end from the clippers I use. I actually use the point of the pin to help me find the alignment spot for the other half that way, and with a little pressure it'll make a mark on the material to work with.

I just tend to drill through one part into the other and then conceal the hole.
But I'm talking vehicles, not figures.

I use the paint spots if parts have a clean fit, short pins where it's more difficult to get the two surfaces to touch. Having winged up a few hive tyrants back in the days of fourth edition, it worked pretty well.