Is FINECAST really THAT BAD?

greetings and Welcome To Mediocre Minis I love building miniatures something about the slow methodical work of clipping minis off the sprue cleaning the edges and the mold lines and gluing all of them together is very relaxing for me there are times I do this for days on end without any painting at all and it really is one of my favorite parts of the hobby one of the most common materials that you will find minis made out of is something called polystyrene plastic or just plastic for short this type of plastic is easy to work with durable and relatively inexpensive polystyrene plastic can be used to capture very fine details and Miniatures and it is relatively inexpensive many companies actually use this from Games Workshop atomic mass games Reaper and others or at least some form of this type of plastic however it is not the only type of material that you can encounter metal minis are generally made out of a lead-free pewter or some other form of soft metal though pewter is the most common It's relatively easy to work with and quickly can be reformed if there are some minor bends you can move things in different positions simple to clean off and all around not that bad to use however it is much heavier than plastic and it can be snapped if you bend it too much also it actually needs most the time additional support as it being heavier you need to be careful with how much weight is being put on each aspect of your mini generally you get around this by pinning which is drilling a small hole and adding a piece of metal or paper clip to hold all the parts together then you also have resin Miniatures many companies that create display or larger models tend to be made out of resin though plastic is still common this also includes 3D printers which I happen to have one more specifically the resin type of 3D printers personally I find resin very easy to work with and you can sand it and smooth it down with very little effort and it can actually be very nice and relatively inexpensive if you already have a printer however it is important to note that when working with resin specifically if you are sanding down Parts scraping different areas or cleaning the models in general you should make sure you wear a mask resin dusk is not really good for your lungs and safety measures should be taken however there is one more type of miniature material out there one that brings Terror and fear into the hearts of many and it is called fine cast so before we actually look at any fine cast models one thing we should consider first is what really is finecast and where does it come from finecast is a type of resin miniature that was released by Games Workshop starting in 2011. at the time it was stated at the cost of creating metal Miniatures was becoming relatively costly and the company wanted to switch over to plastic however this process of going from metal to plastic would take some time and find cast would be used as in a way a stop Gap in between these two materials another way of looking at finecast it was a just a temporary transition now there are still fine cast models out there and we're going to be taking a look at some of them shortly but over time more and more plastic models have been released and there are a lot of plastic Miniatures and almost the entire line almost is within plastic nowadays so now with some of that background information out of the way let's take a look at the real question here is finecast really that bad now in order to show off some fine cast models in the construction process I do have a few units from Warhammer 40 000 more specifically Tau to show off and take a look at now in comparison from fine cast to the present day I have here Commander farsight another Tau model it is one of the newest Games Workshop models and was released in the stores about a week or two before the recording of this video now before we go any further I should mention that fine cast is not the same as Forge World resin those are two very different things so finecast is a resin product but is not the same as Forge World now I happen to have one Forge World model this is the Knight commander of the silent Sisterhood honestly I really like this model it's very much on par with other resin models I have worked with and purchased in the past and it is relatively nice very simple to clean up no major issues when it comes to fitting the parts together and it is a really Dynamic and excellent pose I do hope to actually get around to painting this rather sooner than later alright now that we have that out of the way let's take an actual look at some fine cast models starting off with the sting wings for the Tau Empire oh oh boy yeah that is quite a few more contact points than what you see on plastic Miniatures and many others today taking a look at the crew hounds there's really not a lot of difference here lots and lots of points of contact and a lot of supports that would have to be cleaned up even though these Miniatures are really only in two parts the main body and one extra leg all right all right so having supports and contacts doesn't necessarily mean that a miniature is bad or the quality is bad it happens quite frequently especially if you have a 3D printer supports are relatively common but there's more to it than just the supports so as you can see here I am taking my time to clip out one of the sting wings and put it together it took me about 15 minutes in general to get this moderately cleaned up and glued together as there's really only a few parts now one of the problems is I'm not 100 sure if this really is cleaned up or not I could easily spend another 15 to 30 minutes cleaning up the mold line supports and all the bigs bits of extra resin there was also something else to keep in mind when dealing with fine cast and that is putting together slightly more complex parts or in a sense two parts all right one of the issues you might run into when it comes to fine cast is putting together multiple contact points on a model and by multiple contact points I mean it's not just putting an arm into its socket it might be putting an arm in and then the hands also holding something as well and to show that I'm going to record a actual rendition of me trying to put together a crew talks Rider and give you an idea on how well that goes all right here is the crew talks model it only has a handful of pieces such as front leg part of the rider the head the main body and one of the back legs so it has really two contact points together you have this area here where the leg predominantly meets the body and also the top which will form the lower leg portion of the rider while the actual crew writer on top and if you think it just kind of go together like this sort of I think there's a huge gap here in the back I'm going to try to match this up pushing that together or it should be now there's this huge gap down here and while they are a little bit flexible like what the hell is that you gotta be kidding me legs don't match up this part doesn't even comfortably fit in here it's most certainly not this leg because well that goes up here in the front which is a little bit better push that in there and see that's not bad that little Gap isn't too much of a problem obviously that goes there head kind of goes on front even though it doesn't set really nicely it would be kind of like that but the problem is doesn't match up here in the back at all huge huge gaps and the part doesn't even really go together so yeah there's that yeah I'm not gonna lie this is the first time I ever actually just rage quit while building a miniature I know that you've seen a little bit of footage and me attempting to build a model and also putting some together let me get into my personal opinion on fine cast and how it actually is yeah I really did not enjoy building any of these fine cast models there are so many mold lines and they're so prominent and takes a lot of effort to clean all them up there's so much flashing and supports also that are all over the place small resin bits are all over the model and you really can't tell is this part of the model or is it a support doesn't need to be cleaned up I have no idea and just the massive quantity of these types of supports every nook and cranny you can find another little piece of resin that needs to be removed or it's just going to be sticking out and this really isn't even getting into the issue such as Parts warping how sometimes it can easily break Bubbles and air pockets that you find leaving gaps in your models and also anything else in post-processing such as filling gaps with a type of material such as milliput and sanding it out it's just a pain to work with so I kind of think you might get the point at this many individuals in the community call fine cast fail cast and I actually kind of have to agree with it there's just way too many issues when it comes to putting these Miniatures together too many small things that you just don't see in other resin models you don't see it in Forge World and you definitely don't see any of these with other plastic models especially from Games Workshop now one good news is there is a slow transition away from fine cast into plastic as new sculpts are created new models come out finecast is slowly and quietly retired which I think many people will agree that that's a relatively good thing I still have some of these fine cast models I still plan on building them because I do want them part of my Army and some of them do look kind of cool I just want to you know make a process a little bit easier myself so if you end up finding yourself with some fine cast or in the having a question of being able to purchase it if you need it or if you like the sculpt I say still go for it even though keep in mind that you're gonna have a little bit more work to actually process and actually put together all of this material because it's going to be a little bit more work I definitely would not suggest this if this was some of your first models I'd stick off with something simpler just such as the regular Games Workshop plastic or even resin Miniatures or even plastic Miniatures from another company finecast is not very beginner friendly so that is my take on is fine cast really that bad yes yes it is and I also do hope you enjoyed this video if you have any types of experiences with fine cast or any alternatives or even methods on how to make this process a little bit easier feel free to leave a comment below I'm curious to see what everyone else's experiences are like thanks again for watching and I shall return [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Mediocre Minis

Views: 12,437

Keywords: warhammer, 40k, gamesworkshop, wargaming, minis, minatures, finecast, modeling, painting, mini, minature, construction, hobby, miniature wargaming, tabletop gaming, warhammer40k

Id: NyzraOoVysQ

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023