Before you play with glue on your nice dinner table (or any table you aren't prepared to toss in the trash), set up something to protect your work surface: I recommend a cheap polyethylene drop cloth, which you can cut to a perfect table-covering size, use several layers, fold it up when you're done, and re-use it almost indefinitely. Be careful when you use tools, because the drop cloth won't protect your table from sharp objects.
a. Adhesives
There are 2 adhesives I recommend for assembling miniatures: "Hot Stuff" cyanoacrylate glue, and "Green Stuff" epoxy putty. Both of these materials have very different purposes and are challenging to work with, and I'll go over them separately.
If the miniature parts fit together tightly, use Hot Stuff. "Hot Stuff" is so named because it can handle high temperatures. It's a clear cyanoacrylate glue with additives to make it viscous, almost like honey. Cyanoacrylate is the active ingredient in "Krazy Glue." It bonds quickly (in about a minute) and it is quite strong, but it can get all over your fingers and STAY all over your fingers for about a week (yes, I've tried nail polish remover). It claims to fill gaps, but it's not that good at it. It sticks to metal miniatures eventually, but it takes its sweet time doing it (that's a LONG minute you're holding those tiny parts together), and your parts will likely fall off a couple times before the glue actually sets. You buy Hot Stuff in tiny 2-ounce bottles, but don't worry; you won't use it all up before it turns solid in the bottle. Also, the glue tends to turn solid in the nozzle and clog. Needle nose pliers may help to crush obstructions in the nozzle. You may be tempted to use actual Krazy Glue or Zap-A-Gap, but Hot Stuff's higher viscosity makes it much easier to work with. I should also warn you that Hot Stuff (and any cyanoacrylate glue) will give off suspicious and probably toxic fumes as it's curing, so I should recommend you do this in a well-ventilated area, but to be honest I don't do this and right now I'm considering setting up some kind of fan. Another relevant feature of these cyanoacrylate glues is that they are very penetrating, so wood and cardboard tends to soak it up like concrete soaks up engine oil: leaving a ugly dark stain; you may need to apply glue to the absorbent surface, then wait for that glue to cure before adding more to bond to your miniature.
If the miniature parts don't fit together so well, use Green Stuff epoxy putty. Epoxy typically consists of a resin and an oxidizer; you mix these compounds together to start a chemical reaction which slowly thickens to form a very solid body. Accordingly, "Green Stuff" comes in 2 separate blue and yellow putties (usually in side-by-side ribbons), which you squish together to make one green putty. I say you squish it together, but this squishing process takes several minutes of effort, and you must keep your hands wet constantly when handling this extremely sticky putty. It is very much like sculpting with chewing gum from Planet Krypton, and when it sets, it is extremely hard and strong. It has a longer shelf life than Hot Stuff, and it takes longer to set (about an hour), but it has a substantial body to it. Most miniature scupltors create their works out of Green Stuff, and these initial sculpts are referred to as "Greens" accordingly. You don't want to use Green Stuff for tight adhesive jobs, because it is the body of the Green Stuff putty that holds the parts together; if the gap is hairline tight, there is very little putty to hold the parts together. You can find cheap epoxy putty at hardware stores with a colored resin and a whitish paste oxidizer; this may give you good practice for working with Green Stuff, but the hardware store epoxy putty is intended for big jobs and typically has a somewhat granular consistency which does not lend itself to miniature work. There are other epoxy putties popular with miniatures sculptors, such as "Brown Stuff," but I have not tried it and I therefore cannot advise you regarding its use.
b. Pinning
Sometimes an adhesive is not enough; if the parts are particularly heavy or expected to get rougher treatment, you should consider "pinning" them. Pinning is an unpleasant chore, but it really works. It involves slowly and painstakingly drilling a hole through both parts and sliding a metal rod (typically brass or copper) through them, and then using glue to hold everything tight. The drill is typically a bit with a holder, which you turn manually with your fingertips. With metal minis, this is painstaking. With vinyl minis, it's worse: the rubbery vinyl "grabs" the drill bit, so you need to pull the bit out, drill it back in, over and over again.
c. Reshaping
Your miniature may also be bent out of shape. If your miniature is metal, you can bend it back into shape with your fingers; and if the miniature has a long sword or narrow ankles, you will likely need to bend it back into shape lots and lots of times. That's just the nature of tin miniatures. If you want these bendy parts to be less bendy, consider pinning them or (with a spear or a rapier) replacing them entirely with sturdier metal pins (see above).
If your miniature is vinyl and bent out of shape, you have a trickier problem: you must heat the miniature, and hold the miniature in the desired shape until it cools. Sometimes heating the miniature will cause it to bend into its original shape all on its own; using boiling water when cleaning may help with this. Many people dip their vinyl miniature into boiling water in order to heat them, then pull the miniature out and bend it into shape. I tried using a candle to just heat small areas, but I couldn't avoid the burnt-marshmallow effect; the miniature would get soft, then toast and catch fire. My favorite method is to use a Wagner Heat Tool; this is basically a hair dryer that can get hot enough to melt the paint off your walls. First (before it gets hot!) I attach the concentrator nozzle, I set the heat tool to about 450 F (which is one of the low settings) , then I only heat up the part I want to adjust, and I pull the heat away when the vinyl gets soft, hold the part into place, and blow on it until it cools. You can also use a heat-and-adjust technique to slightly realign your miniatures to be easier to paint, or to arrange limbs so that each member of a squad of identical miniatures looks slightly different and thus more naturalistic.
d. Pedestal
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| Miniatures on working pedestals; a little extra effort saves a lot of frustration |
Before you prime your miniature, I really recommend some kind of working pedestal. This is something which will allow you to move, rotate, pick up, and otherwise "handle" your miniature without actually touching it or its (wet) painted surfaces. The pedestal should change the center of gravity such that you can tip the miniature at an angle so that you can prime underside and other hard-to-reach areas.
I used to use a loop of packing tape to stick the bottom of my mini to an old CD, but paint and primer tends to pool near the bottom where the mini sits on the tape, and the wide CD makes it difficult to access underside areas.
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| Close-up of miniatures on pedestals |
Some painters use Krazy Glue to stick their miniature to the head of a nail, and carefully snap the miniature off the nail when they're done.
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