Finecast Query

[thebigdog]

Hi guys,
I've just had my first experience of citadel finecast having been on a break from 40k until recently. Things started well enough, opened box, saw the cool.striking scorpion minis, got excited and after starting to clean them up it all went wrong really.

I was cleaning some mold lines off the hand guard of a chainsword and the whole guard peeled right off with almost no pressure on it. Ok, a pain but theres a spare in the box so not disastrous but damn annoying. Putting the exarch together and the hand grip of the chainsword broke near to the back of the hand, again hardly any pressure.

The finisher was when i accidentally knocked the exarch off the table. It hit the concrete floor. Plastic minis bounce from this distance (i have done it before), a metal mini might have lost an arm at the joint. Was this the case with my shiny new finecast toy? No. The damn arm snapped at the bicep!! Uad it simply come out of the socket id have been able to stick it back, ive now had to pin the damn thing and I'm now dreading trying to stick the others together, let alone subject them to the wear and tear of an actual game, especially with the bendy swords etc.

Sorry for the rant, I'm not anti GW, but I have not always seen eye to eye with some of their marketing decisions.

Have i just picked up a bad batch of finecast minis or is this the norm?
Has anyone else had similar problems?
Is it possible to get replacement finecast parts anywhere?

[Mr Mystery]

Some casts are dodgy, but its a material you have to get used. It's much softer than plastic, so even light pressure applied in the wrong place and you can bugger a model.

GW do a mould line scraper, but any suitably blunted, hard edged tool will do the trick. And rather than a scalpel, a fine grade emery board is what you need.

Thankfully, GW remain excellent at replacing faulty kits with no quibbles. Back to the shop with you young man!

[thebigdog]

Back to the shop? Easier said than done as there isnt one nearby. Maybe i just need to get used to the material then. Its still very soft and i am worried about damaging my minis during games.

Maybe i'll aim for metal aspect warriors from ebay in future. Is it possibly to fix bendy swords etc?

Maybe GW forgot that many painters use their minis to play actual games?

[Deadlift]

I was initially a fan of finecast, much easier for me to convert than metal. But my gripe with it isn't anything to do with quality, but the actual material. I just hate painting it. To me it's almost porous and cardboard in texture. I really dislike it. I much prefer the stuff FW are using.
If you ring GW direct however they are more than happy to send you a replacement. Their customer service is usually faultless, give them a ring and see if they can help you.

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

tell gw or have your hobby shop replace them. i don't mess around with them not giving you a discount on a cheaper shotty product the least they can do is replace they junk when they break

[Cpt Codpiece]

bent weapons and spears/rods can be bent back with long term gentle pressure, i am straightening illuminator szeras' rod right now, got a superglue tube lid wedged between his leg and the haft of the rod to gently bend it back into place over an hour or so, just keep checking it and it will be ok.

FC really is an inferior product and i can see GW in the future either going plastic for the entire range, or making specialist pieces like characters FW only.
fine cast has way too many cons for it to be sustainable, its only pros are convertibility and ease of clean up (moldlines and flash).

[LordGrise]

A couple months after the finecast sniper drones hit, I bought three boxes. The first one, absolutely no problems, beautiful detail, flash very thin and easily cleaned up. Second box, flash a bit thicker and more of it, minor bubbling, no big deals. Still quite satisfied.

Box three, flash all over the place, and when I got to it, paper thin walls hiding a huge inclusion in the disc of one of the drones, making it only usable as wreckage, probably the victim of a melta. I called GW North America, and had the replacement in less than a week, no problems. The only thing they wanted was the lot number off the box.

Give them a call. The one thing I'll give GW full measure is they take care of bad product.

[Lexington]

Unfortunately the norm with models that were brought over from metal to Finecast. Plus anything with a rod or other thin protuberance. Or fine details in odd places. There's minis it's a good material for, but they're precious few.

As others have said, tho, GW will replace them with no quibbles if you've got the box laying around. Just give them a call. Might take a few tries (3 full boxes of Scorpions before I had a fair squad), but you'll eventually get what you paid for.

[DarkLink]

Of course, stuff like halberds are a lot easier to fix in finecast than in metal. If, say, a Grey Knight halberd breaks off, it's effectively impossible to really fix. You can't pin it, and while you can glue it back on metal is so terrible to glue that it will snap off again, it's only a matter of time.

[rle68]

im not sure what issues you had but i can pin a halberd with no issues ive done 3 of them for a friend micro drill is your friend

last box of fire dragons i bought one guy was missing his entire left leg from the knee due a bubble and the fire pike was in a circle.. vwery poor quality control.. not a fan of finecast ... too brittle for this game

[mathhammer]

wait till you realize the phase change temperature ( solid to not solid) ( can't think of the word for the state. sigh)

I can fix the boneswords using hot tap water, so if you head to the shop never leave a finecast model in a car because it will become soft and try to flow down.

Really the low melting point is my biggest issue, It is so bad ( and I live in a southern state) that I look for a china recast since their in a harder resin with a higher melting point.

[magickbk]

I believe DarkLink is referring to the metal Grey Knights from the Daemonhunters codex release.

I just had my third finecast mishap last week, out of not many purchased. It seems like the miscast rate is way higher for models that were converted from metal than new finecast releases. I have had them all replaced with no hassle by GW. I tried talking to the customer service guy about miscast rates and so forth, but he basically just blew it off and said sometimes models that were cast in the beginning before they worked out the quality issues are still hanging around. My theory is that if they are willing to replace a model so quickly without return of the damaged product or proof of the damage, they are well aware of a high miscast rate, but have determined that a majority of customers won't complain about it.

Trying to keep thin parts in the right shape is also a disaster, since every finecast model I've gotten has been slightly warped somewhere, and I've had to fix it with heat or hot water, and then try to prevent the same thing from happening again in my case or during travel.

I don't like finecast as a material, but the detail is awesome.