Carla's finally assembled! While she'll need some gap-filling before I prime & paint her, one of the difficult parts is over. Since I haven't worked on a miniature of this scale before, I haven't needed to use the pinning technique during assembly. However, since I'm oh-so-high-tech, I decided to use staples as pins (try not to judge me here). I would have liked to use my Privateer Press pin rods, but they seem to have been misplaced in the move/flood repairs. In any case, I was going to assemble Carla come-hell-or-high-water (Ack. Too soon!). Without further ado, here she is all put together and mostly-matching her flawless box image:
The miniature assembly process is both stressful and calming to me. Filing and cleaning the miniatures is a mindless process for me and I can take my time while listening to music on my noise-cancelling headphones. Drilling small sections of a miniature is straight-forward too: identify where they need to match up, drill carefully, insert correct length of pin rod. However, the actual gluing process makes me want to pull my hair out (and I like my hair).
I used two sizes of pins-- one for her sturdier bits (neck/head, legs) and a smaller one for the more delicate pieces (arms & hands). I was extra-careful to drill accurately and very slowly and I enjoyed that part! Once the pieces were all drilled, I matched up the sections and used the Loctite super glue to carefully bind it all together. Here are a few pictures of different stages in the process:
Checking the depth of the drill hole:
Once everything matches up, it's time to pin, glue, and sing to yourself while you wait so you don't freak out and second-guess yourself. Or maybe that's me. Yep, just me.
I had to be extra-careful when drilling more delicate and detailed pieces like the wrists & hands:
We'll play with green stuff next to get those gaps smoothed and filled. Despite having a tiny meltdown and shouting at myself after having to attach/clean/reattach one of her arms three times to make sure her hands lined up, I'd call that a success! When I jump right in and try new techniques, I expect to make a few mistakes (even though the perfectionist in me hates it). However, I'm no longer afraid of pinning like I was before I assembled this miniature and I'm quite happy about that. On to the next stage!