Do you sharpen your blades?

[shris]

If the mini comes with a sword, dagger, or other blade, and it\'s rediculously blunt and fat (so it can be cast properly and ship decently) do you sharpen it before painting so it doesn\'t look so thick and clunky?

I bought a bunch of minis that seem to have really thick, clunky, undecorated blades, and \'m considering filing them down thinner so they don\'t look so stupid.

What do you think?

 

[Errex]

I used to do that, but often, i ended up with a very fragile item, wich would eventually bend and break. Also, sometimes there would be grooves that would show off after painting.

Rather than sharpening the blades, I\'d suggest you go for a weapon swap instead. You could use plastic ones, or better yet, order some weapons packs from Reaper.

 

[flim]

Watch out

A father of a fried of mine, used to sharpen the blade sof his Skaven minis, untill he cut himself badly. Think about that...

 

[Sturmhalo]

I know what you mean. Some sword blades look like baguettes! I don\'t tend to take the blades down, but I do clean up their lines with knife and file so they\'re a bit \'sharper\' looking around the edges.

Mark Copplestone\'s figures he did for the now defunct Grenadier had very nice sword blades. Not too thick, pretty realistic, and not weak. Perhaps if more sculptors looked at actual weapons before they sculpted their preposterous weapons of doom!!! lol

 

[shris]

example

The \"Tyden the Barbarian\" mini from Reaper is a good example of a fat, stupid looking blade. The length is fine, and the width is fine, but the thickness is plain dumb. It looks like the rattan sticks the SCA uses for swordfighting practice. It has to be that way for durability, I know, but it just looks dumb.

I bought her, and I like the size of the sword, except for the thickness. I could thin it some. I\'ve never done a conversion, so I\'m a little leery of messing with swapping parts, especially little dinky ones like weapons.

 

[Sand Rat]

Thinning of the blades

As long as you did it uniformly and avoided the sharp points, you should have no problem - as I see it you want to thin the blades, not sharpen them. I\'d do it with a file and just be sure that I wasn\'t thinning things out too much - the newer pewters are pretty strong so you don\'t have to worry about them just dropping off like some of the older lead ones would if you messed with the thickness. Just go slow and careful, and watch the thickness of the final product.

 

[GoatsDen]

I agree completely with steelcult. Whenever I can I thin the blades down. Don\'t sharpen them ridiculouly or anything, just enough to make them look like a sword instead of a wooden plank.

 

[Yom]

Thinning of weapons

Personnally, I even thin some pikes and other parts of the mini when I see it appropriated. for example, I just finished preping one of the Noise Marines, that has lots of spikes everywhere, and it definitely looks better to have sharp spikes than bulky ones (quite ridiculous for a chaos marine to have unsharpened edges !!). This sure was quite a lot of preping at the end, but it definitely was worth it (2 or 3 hours with molding lines removal...)

 

[Flashman14]

Flim - is that an urban legend?

Perhaps I have a poor imagination but I can\'t conceive of someone actually slicing themselves on a sword or something.

(I sharpen when nec)

I can imagine a puncture but not a slice - on accident? Can\'t see it as being likely . . .

 

[shris]

cuts

Well, speaking as one who has received cuts from the *back* of a commercial knife, I think it\'s possible to get cuts from a sharpened \"white metal\" blade. I suppose if you\'re remarkably unlucky, you could bleed like a stuck pig for a little while, too.

Naturally the sharpening ends by deliberately taking the edge back off. I suppose the question should have been \"do you thin your blades\" rather than sharpen. Whatever. I got the responses I was looking for, for which I thank you all.

 

[Lai]

well i injured myself with the point of a goblin lance from the old warhammer fantasy game box...little greens with thiny lances...GRRR!

 

[Goodwinpaints]

Only the ones I use for gaming purposes. It is a known fact that they fight better that way! lol

 

[Chrispy]

I beleive at one time on the net one of the \"You know you\'ve been playing Warhammer too long...\" is when you sharpen all your goblin spears to threaten your opponet.. Personally, I dont think the primer would stick too well to a really sharp edge. So I cannot see the point... pun intended..

 

[Burzmali]

Old credit cards, they sharpen up quite nicely...

But I have enough problems with my armies falling to bist in the box, without making all the swords \'wafer thin\' (Meaning of Life... \"but sir it is only \'wafer thin\'...\" sorry) and hyper breakable. so display/random minis only for me...

 

[Badaab]

I\'ll generally replace the weapons if they\'re too fragile, or \"stupid looking\" (watch out, technical terms here). Plastic works well.
One example of a badly designed miniature would be the Reaper \'Luther Baldwin.\' He\'s a nice looking fig, and the sword is realistic, its just too damn thin, and not attached to the hand well-enough to last. So I chopped it off and gave him a sword from a Bretonnian I had laying around... kind of working the opposite, but I wanted a big, scary-looking weapon, something a hero might lug around.

Joe