Cutting/ Converting Metal Models

vox transmission in:
Matt,
I have a question I am sure you can answer. I need to cut the heads off of some pewter models (14 or so) and put on an alternate head. What do you use to cut pewter/metal mini's? I am getting ready to place an order from WarStore, so let me know.
Magilla Gurilla


vox transmission out:
Hey ***** what's up?
Sorry its taken me a bit to get back to you. I really depends on the model you are trying to cut. Sound stupid?, well the trick is not ruining the rest of the fig and that can be really difficult if you have a lot surrounding the head. There are a few ways to cut metal.
1) with a razor, working it back and forth for hours and then some stiches for you fingers.
2) a sprue cutter. This makes a really nice cut on one side but will destroy the side that's not on the flat side of the cutters. This is a picture of a old metal bit that was lying around. The red arrow points to the side that got distorted and the yellow arrow points to the flush cut. There is no real way, that I know of, to not have one of the sides distorted. The side of your sprue cutters that is flat will give you the flush cut. This is what I use most often since I don't own the other two options.


3) a jewelers saw
4) the last thing is a dremel tool. This might be good if you wanted to save the body of the Fig and it had a lot of things surrounding the head. Hope this helps.
Black Matt


Is there anything that I left out? How do you guys get that bad ass bit off metal figs or replace heads? Go and check out and become a follower of Magilla Gurilla's new blog, www.tabletopwar.net The Warmaster commands it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Death to the False Emperor!!!!!

1 comments:

Grizzled Gorilla said...

Thanks for the plug Matt.

I tried to swap several heads and was less than successful. I have since decided to use plastic miniatures, so I can just swap their heads with the pig iron heads. I had to swap weapons around, but it was much easier than me killing myself and the miniatures trying to cut pewter heads.