Warbringer Nemesis #4 - Cut and Dry (but not in that order...)

After I give the old Titan pieces a bath, I give them a good long time to dry.  It will typically be days before I start cutting pieces off of their gates (the big blocks of resin used in the molding process).  Unless I cut a piece of its gate before the bath to make it fit my Ziploc tub.

Note, it does not really matter if you wait to cut pieces off of their gates.  A bit of moisture is not going to have any impact on that process.  However, it is important to let pieces thoroughly dry before priming, because moisture trapped in the resin can harm the paint job later on.  I do not know what constitutes a minimum safe time for drying, but I know that more than one week usually passes between when I bathe a piece and when I prime it.  That is less because I am waiting and more because I have a life and things to do and then on top of that I spend a fair amount of time in the building phase, especially if I have to pose multipart legs (as I have to with this project).

In order to cut pieces off of their gates I use a few tools, shown below.

First, I use a 3M respirator to protect myself from inhaling resin dust.  This stage is not as bad for dust as the sanding stage, but dust still gets in the air.  Especially during the first part.

 

I use a hobby saw to cut each pillar connecting the part to the resin gate.  I do this instead of going straight to my cutters because I do not want to pop any pieces off of the gate.  The resin pillars are less robust than the small pieces of plastic sprue that connect to plastic pieces.  Sometimes the slight pressure put on one pillar when another one one is clipped off is enough to crack it if they are both still connected to the gate.  Sometimes this is fine, sometimes it tears a chunk of the piece off as it goes. A hobby saw avoids this because instead of cutting and separating it chews through the resin.

You do not have to cut the gates off close to the part, in fact it is often better not to because the saw can leave nasty marks on a piece if you slip or judge your initial cut wrong.  Better to cut closer to the gate, then deal with the remaining bits of pillar in the next step.  

 

Next up are my hobby clippers.  These are the workhorse of my prep toolkit.  When working with plastic models I can often get by on these alone.  Here, I use them to cut the remaining pieces of cylinder off of the part.

Again, you want to be careful how close you cut.  These clippers are pretty good, but the can still leave marks.  I have another tool to get close (two, really), so I often leave about a millimeter or two of the gate pillar on the part.

 

My favorite tool in my kit, if not necessarily the most versatile.  My God Hands SPN 120 Ultimate Nipper.  This is not cheap, but it is the only tool that can do its job quickly and with low risk of injury to your fingers.  I actually picked mine up in a hobby store in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood.  I am glad I did because there is some risk of getting fake ones online.  The link I have here is to USA Gundam Store, which is a reliable supplier, but if you buy them on Amazon beware.  The fake ones are, reportedly, very prone to breaking.

What these do is cut very close to the surface of your model without leaving a mark.  You can cut the remaining gate bits off of a piece leaving almost no residue and saving yourself the trouble of slicing off that last bit with your hobby knife.  This leaves a smoother surface and keeps you from slipping with the knife and cutting up your fingers.  My hobby sessions are much less painful now.

If these are so great, you might wonder why I use the normal hobby clippers before them.  Well, here is why: the God Hands are an expensive precision instrument and their blades are so fine that there is a risk that they can crack if you are too rough with them.  Also, they are honed to have an extremely sharp edge, but any edge can dull with use.  Therefore, I try to minimize stress on them by only bringing them in when they are necessary and not cutting through pieces where other clippers would do.  I would much rather replace $20 clippers than $50 clippers.  And by the way, thank god you can reliably get these for $50.  I remember when they easily ran close to $100 on the internet. 

Also, the separation between the blades is pretty small, so on a big kit like this there are some gate pillars that are just too big for them to get around.  For these pieces I use the saw, the xuron clippers if able, and then I do shave down any remainder with my hobby knife.  Sometimes there is just no avoiding it.