This is a tutorial for pinning resin figures. For the video and pictures, I’m using a 1/16″ bit and 1/16″ brass rod as the pin. Pinning is an important step in resin figure building as the resin is fairly heavy and to simply glue the parts of the kit together does not offer enough strength to hold the parts together. The pin acts as a load bearing device that helps alleviate the stress from the resin weight. The pin also gives the glue more surface area to grab on to and in the end, a much stronger bond is in place.

The glue I use is an epoxy type glue, and comes in two parts that must be mixed in equal amounts. I choose this type of glue over CA Glue (Super Glue) as it has tensile strength and can flex to a certain degree without the bond breaking. CA glue (super glue) is too brittle once it cures and there is no tensile strength, small flexing stress will break the CA glue bond.

Not seen in the pictures of videos is a quick surface prep step of soaking the parts in an industrial cleaning solution to dissolve any residual mold release agents. The mold release will work against the proper bonding the the parts as well as the later stages of the build which will incorporate gap filling techniques. The parts were soaked for a couple of hours, then rinsed in warm water and completely dried prior to the pinning session.

Below is a video showing the process of drilling and pinning.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

There are several method for aligning pins correctly in the above process. There are cases when two mating parts do not have guide holes so some creativity in alignment is needed. A simple method is to place a mark with some paint on one piece and press the two pieces together which transfers the paint mark to the corresponding piece. The marking then becomes a guide for pinning the parts. Another methods to mate the two parts together, then drill from one side through the other side, the draw back to this process is that the drilled out holes need to be filled once the pin is in place; but this method allows for the most precise pin alignment.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.