wrist pain - how to stop damage?

[usurpator]

I\'m currently painting a 250 minis dwarf army.
I\'m begining to feel pain in my left wrist when I hold the base of the mini. I can tell that if I go on like this the muscel that links the ring finger to the elbow is going to cause me trouble.
I have a nice system with pinch and screws to hold a mini wiht a handle, but considering I\'m batch painting it\'s no a solution.
Has anybody found a way to hold minis other than by the base (slotta) during batch painting? Paint pots are not really a solution, I work in batches of 20, it would mean having 20 empty pots and I only have 5 of them :-c
all ideas most most welcome, as you can guess!

 

[DrEvilmonki]

Why do the pots have to be empty? If you are anything like me you will have at least 20 pots you wont be using for your current project, just use those.

 

[generulpoleaxe]

it\'s not the muscle, it\'s the tendon.

it\'s caused by small repetative movements.
take a break more often and make sure you move the joints.
i usualy have a cig and brew every hour or two to avoid this sort of stuff.

 

[Sand Rat]

Screw caps from soda bottles works for me - along with a dot of blue tack to hold the mini - but I tend to attach to the slotta then basecoat.

 

[Beelzebrush]

If you aren\'t removing the tabs from the minis... I use a wooden clothes peg with an elastic band bound tightly around the narrow end (ie the bit you don\'t use to grip washing) and a couple of dabs of superglue on each side of the mini\'s tab to hold it all tight... really cheap and easy to make. I think in your case it would help with the wrist pain too as it\'s easier to hold. I would think that it would be sinple to make something to stand the minis on when you\'re painting batches.... a small dowel rail or something?

 

[Evil Dave]

The Emo Method - Don\'t do anything. The pain is the only way you know you\'re alive. Sob

The Manly Man Method - Suck it up, wuss. Don\'t be such a little girl. It\'s only pain.

 

[matty1001]

I get pain just at the base of my thumb if I hold a mini by the base, or something small. Even pin drilling can start sending shooting pains across my hand.

My solution...make a bigger base holder, i use a spray can lid, and/or corks. I can relax my hand more and use a lighter grip, and i never get the pains this way.

 

[EArkham]

Depending on the size of the piece, I\'ll mount it on brass rod and insert that into a cork. In fact, I do this with just about every piece that\'s painted unassembled, ranging from various body parts like heads & arms to rippers and rockets.

For anything that\'s already on a slotta base, it gets hot glued to a 1.5\" x 1.5\" handle of wood. These are anywhere from 2\"-3\" in height. I have dozens of these with figures mounted on them sitting around as I type.

For very large pieces, I have a couple of those wooden pieces drilled right through the center so that they can accept a nut-and-bolt assembly.

Frequent breaks are also a must, lest you be an emo kid or manly man.

Kep

 

[Evil Dave]

Actually what I did in the past was get a piece of 12\" X 24\" copper plating, 1/4\" thick.
I then bent it lengthways to make a 6\" X 24\" 90 degree angle.
I got another piece of copper plating 2\" X 24\", and drilled some holes in it, popped in some screws with wingnuts and basically created a clamp that was two feet wide, allowing me to fit around 8 to 10 mini\'s on at once.

Similer to this:

You can just sit one of these on your painting area without having to hold anything, except your brush. Although you may want to put something under it to give it more height (To avoid back pain.) and add a weight to the back to prevent tipping.

 

[supervike]

Ignore the pain, it will go away.

Actually I had surgery on my right wrist back in Jan....all because of RSI...so really don\'t ignore it!!

But, instead of all those fancy doohickeys...just tacky tape your mini to a screw off pop bottle lid..(or any screw off lid)...THEN...just screw the lid back onto the bottle. If you are using a plastic one, add some water to the bottle so its not top heavy...a small jar, like a jam jar is ideal...and usually about the right size to hold comfortably.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

I made some \'clamps\' that look like giant cloths pins that hold well and are large enough to help not get so many cramps.

I lost two jobs due to this problem. These two exercises helped with the pain and stiffness. GENTLY pulling your fingers back towards your wrist to stretch your muscles/tendons really helps me. Also, make a fist and squeeze real hard, hold it for a few seconds then release helps also. It seems that holding the same position for too long is the problem. Both those exercises helps break that.

 

[Dragon Forge Design]

yeah your getting the wrist paint from holding the tight grip on such a small object. Id juggest getting something to attach the miniature too to hold onto. I use larger diameter dowl rod. Its actually closet cloths rod I bought at the local home improvements store. I just cut it up with a chop saw and sanded the edges lightly.

If you can find that, empty sewing thread spools or large corks work well too. The idea is to get something the right diameter that fits comfortably in your hand.

I use that 2 sided foam sticky tape made by 3M to attach the miniature base to it and peel them off when Im done. You can also use poster putty to attach them.

 

[laurence]

Some sugestions...

Hey man, sounds like you\'re doing an extraordinary amount of painting. I would suggest that you firstly make sure that you have a really comfortable area to paint in. It\'s important to take regular breaks while working on miniatures and to relax your hands while painting. You\'ll most likely find that you\'re too tense in certain areas on your hands, arms and shoulders while painting. I often find that I\'m tensing up muscles and tendons that I don\'t need to put any strain on while painting. You\'ll find that you paint better when you relax your brush hand and holding the mini hand. It just takes practice to discipline the body to relax while painting. Say bye bye pain and hello sweet looking miniature army

 

[dauber22]

I learned to paint with my feet. No more wrist pain and my minis actually look a far sight better

 

[Greg Ellis]

When I\'m working with Reaper-style \"brocilli-based\" minis, I white-glue them onto dowels, and slip the dowels into holes I\'ve drilled in a block of wood, like this:

That makes the minis easy to pick up and put down without ever touching the paint, plus the long handle means it\'s easy to flip it upside down and every which way to paint the various nooks and crannies with minimal strain on my \"holding\" hand.

It\'s a bit of a pain with the slotta bases, since the bottom is not flat, but I\'m sure you could work something out by shaping the top of the dowel.

I\'ve seen people use a similar technique for whole armies, often using large nails in place of the wooden dowels.

 

[generulpoleaxe]

so that\'s how reaper grow their minis lol

 

[Wren]

I mainly use paint pots, using full pots of coloured metallics and other oddball shades when I run out of empty ones. But there are some other great suggestions here!

I\'ll chime in and agree with the people saying not to ignore it. I\'ve had moderate pain and weakness in one wrist for about 20 years after excessive time spent deathgripping a mouse to play games and a pen to write long-hand. Switching to a trackball and other ergonomic stuff kept it from getting worse, but it\'s never really gotten better, and doing any activity with strong gripping or lifting a fair amount of weight sets it aching for days. I really wish I\'d paid attention to the problem much more quickly.

I got acupuncture and manipulation exercises at a chiropractor for it a few years back. It did seem to help loosen everything up, but the down side was it never fixed the problem, so I had to keep going back. I don\'t know if it would have helped more had I gotten treatments in the early stages.

 

[Legacy Account]

Blocks of wood (lids, corks, ANYTHING YOU CAN FIND!!) and Blu-Tac.

Blue-Tac is the nadgers for holding a based mini to anything while painting.

 

[tomusannonymous]

i have a little set up with a round slotta base stuck into the end of a cardboard tube (from a roll of glad bags), the tube is then stuck through the bottom of a plastic cup (so i can put it down without it falling over),, i just slot the mini into the base (which is glued and secure in the end) ... it works quite well. for minis without slot things i just glue them to the top....

__
1 1
1_1
/ ___\\


^ thats a bit what it looks like lol except its more straight...

 

[fortunesfool]

I agree with what most people have been saying so far. I do the same with my models except I use rare earth magnets and metallicized wine corks.

As for the actual problem of wrist pain, the most important thing you can do is to open your palm. When you hold a miniature for long periods of time you\'re compressing the carpal tunnel, maintaining hypertonicity in the muscles which blocks fluid flow to and away from the hands, as well as teaching the bones of the wrist to assume improper positions (specifically the lunate). A result of this is that the transverse ligament thickens and tightens thereby increasing the carpal tunnel syndrome.

By opening the hand (stretching gently so that all fingers and portions of the hand go backwards and begin to form a reverse bowl) you counteract all of these problems. If you\'re capable of finding your lunate then some pressure applied on the back of your hand towards the palm is also excellent. Last thing I would recommend is excellent breathing. Your lungs are the pump that helps draw all of the fluids back to your heart. If your breathing is shallow than the pump isn\'t working. That\'s not to say that you should hyperventilate. Just breathe deeply.

There are loads of other good things to do (like forearm massage) but these are good enough to start with.

me

p.s. although a valid option, carpal tunnel very rarely requires surgery, just someone who knows how to put things back together anatomically and physiologically.