Saturday, April 6, 2013

Fine Cast, yes or no?

Ok, I would like to get some peoples opinions on this one. Do you like fine cast models?
They have some real nice details put into them, and they are light weight, those are the only pros I can come up for them.

They are always always expensive. usually more than a box of the most common unit in that army. If I could find models I liked that were plastic or even metal I would buy them. I hate hate hate resin models

Maybe I am too much of hobby lightweight to get the full bang for the buck out of these models, but I would like them to get rid of the resin all together. I would like to hear from the people on this one.

Cons:
One: They dont paint well, even with good base coats paint doesnt like to stick to the model. In most cases I apply a second base coat over first and sometimes have had to go back and apply a third base coat in some areas by hand, i use the spray  on the first two. Colors never seem to come out right on the resin and I have even had paint come off the model, paint flaked then fell off.
Two: They are a nightmare to put together and keep together. Same problem as paint, glue doesnt seem to want to stick. I have tried crazy glue, super glue, both of GWs light and thick glue, which to be frank i wasn't surprised when they didnt work because they never do. Then when you finally put it together it breaks before any other model. I have even had pieces fall of during the night. left the model standing up after painting, in the morning wake up to paint but find first I have to re-glue an arm on. I even hold the son of a gun there for a good five minutes, and still the glue just doesnt seem to want to hold. I have even tried elmers and rubber cement, nothing seems to work.
Third: Holy cow cleaning the pieces off of the sprue, I spend a good ten minutes picking pieces off and shaving away wherever the press came together and leaves the edging going around. Yes the models look amazing when done but you have to spend too much time to get them to that point. Another thing I have never had to deal with in my 12 odd years of the hobby, my Chaos daemonic mount still had a piece of the foam die they cast the model in practically inbeded in the model, pic to follow, took me ten minutes to pick that crapper out of there. And I always miss some piece of shit sprue bit leftover until i am painting details on the model, my job requires me to spend hours looking at drawings trying to find mistakes of 1/16th of an inch or less, and yet somehow one bastard always slips through
Bit of yellow is the foam, notice the frills on the mail lower in the picture and a little extra yellow in the folds of the mails lower edge



 Lastly: the cost. They are always more expensive than a whole box of plastics if I could find models I liked in either plastic or metal i would buy those instead; maybe I am just too much of a hobby lightweight to get the full bang for my buck from these guys, I would not mind at all if they got rid of the Fine cast line or resin I have had that bad of experiences with them. Would really like to hear back from other people on this one. If you use fine cast resin models let me know what you think. I promise to listen to your side, at least as much as any one on the internet listens to someones else's argument they dont agree with




4 comments:

  1. Also, even though this is true across the board, the fine cast models come with no extra bits, I would really like to at least choose the weapon they hold.

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  2. Okay I am going to jump on this bandwagon and vent about FC too. My first experience with it was very similar and has not drastically improved since. I have tried cleaning the models in a solution of warm water with a bit of soap to remove any oils that are left on the model from the molding process. It has worked for years on the 1/72 scale military figures but it did squat towards helping the painting of the FC models. I had to base coat twice with regular Abbadon Black and then spray several figures to get a base coat to adhere. Also I agree 110% about the cleaning of the figures off of the spru. It is a godawful nightmare. The amount of flash that is left on the spru when it is taken from the mold is ridiculous.

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  3. Yours is the first I have seen pics of that had mold material embedded in it! Crazy! Yes, I have done a very good job avoiding Finecast for the most part. I am really not taking a leap of faith and buying a box set where I can not see the item before purchase, and I scrutinized the heck out of the two packs I did buy. I want this whole Finecast nightmare to just go away....bring back METAL!!!

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  4. I don't understand why GW is having such a quality control nightmare with the FC range. Just go talk to Forge World about casting resin and ditch this brittle junk GW is using now. At this point I would love to have the old metal models back, or hell just make it all plastic.

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