How To: Pinning and Tab Pinning

I've spent a little time recently building minis from Knight Models to clear some space in my cupboard and decided it might be useful to do a little "How To" on pinning and tab pinning models to bases. A lot of people will already know these, or at least the pinning side, but there are always someone that might not have asked the question yet.

To assist me in this demonstration, I'll be using two versions of Jason Todd - Red Hood (Arkham Knight) and The Arkham Knight.

Why have I selected these two? Well, apart from being in my To Do pile and being the same character, they're also great examples. Red Hood has a really stable pose, with both feet on the tab and flat on the floor. He could be tab pinned, but he's as close to perfect as you can get for normal pinning.

Arkham Knight on the other hand is in a rather dynamic pose, with only the toes of his boot on the tab. If you were to pin him directly, you would have almost no room for error in drilling through the foot and would have minimal bond between the foot and the base so it would be relying entirely on the pin. Tab pinning allows for a lot more surface area to be in contact with the inside of the base. 

So, what will you need for this exciting adventure?

I personally used this stuff - Clippers, metal file, craft knife, paper clips and a selection of drill bits. I believe the ones I have in the drills currently are 1mm, 1.5mm and 2mm. You'll also want some super glue - I highly recommend Gorilla Glue,

The models I'm working on are metal, but these approaches work just as well on plastic and resin, though if you are gluing plastic to plastic you can probably ignore this and just use plastic glue to bond everything together.

First up, I built the models and applied any required greenstuff to gaps. 

I clipped Red Hood's tab off using the clippers - this can leave an uneven surface, so I attacked it with a file, moving across both feet in one movement so both surfaces stayed level.

Once both surfaces were level, I created a guide for drilling. I scored a star shape into the foot I wanted to pin, with the crossing point in the centre of the heel of the model. Drilling at this point will allow you to drill into the model as far as you are comfortable to drill, without risk of either cracking the model's foot or drilling through the top of the foot.

There is a second advantage to creating this star effect. I use Basius pads to create a lot of my bases, so I'll be gluing my miniatures onto green stuff. 

While the greenstuff is still curing, I pressed the feet of the model into the base slightly where I want him to be standing. By adding the star effect on his foot, this has created the exact indentation on the greenstuff, so you can see exactly where to drill on the base, reducing the risk of drilling in the wrong place. 

Using the star pattern as a guide, I used a 1mm pin drill to drill into the hell. I have trouble being exact with distances and measurements, but I'd guess I drilled in maybe 3mm. 

Once the hole is created, I unfolded a paperclip and glued one of the straight sections into the foot, letting it dry. 

Once dry, I snipped it off with the clippers, leaving roughly 1cm showing. 

I drilled the sane sized hole into the base then applied glue to both feet and the pin before sticking him to the base.

For tab pinning, you don't want to remove all of the tab. I only pin one foot, so I remove all of the tab up to that foot. I then use the metal file to shave around the remaining tab until it is roughly circular and small enough to go into a drilled hole. 

The picture below shows Arkham Knight's tab at roughly the half way point - it's still a lot bigger than the hole in the base below, which was created by drilling using the 1mm drill then expanding it using the 2mm drill.

The tab pin will almost always be a lot thicker than a normal pin, mainly because it takes time to file it down and it doesn't actually need to be as small as a normal pin.

Once you have the tab pin at a suitable size and shape to be used, glue it into the hole as done with standard pinning. 

The end result - two models both secured to their bases, ready for primer and paint.