Stands
- Thread starter Renny
- Start date
Can't imagine its more difficult then any other flight base using model...
Insert rod into base so that the rounded part of the base is facing upwards, and the thicker end of the rod enters the base. Interest the thinner end of the rod into the peg hole at the bottom of the ship.
Insert rod into base so that the rounded part of the base is facing upwards, and the thicker end of the rod enters the base. Interest the thinner end of the rod into the peg hole at the bottom of the ship.
The ball goes into the socket head, the socket head goes into the hole in the ship, your choice of short or long stem goes into the ball, and the base goes on the other end of the stem.
If you just want the ship to stand perfectly level, that's about it. If you want to use the pivot head to put the ship into a banking pose while on display (or to put it at an angle in classic ST:TOS style when it's dead in space), you may need to sand the ball down a little - personal experience with these stands under B5:ACTA ships is that the ball is a very tight fit and won't move unless it has been sanded first. But if you overdo it, the ship will never sit level. This is less of a problem with smaller, lighter ships, so if your Heavy Cruiser won't stand straight, use a pin or something similar to extract the ball and put it into the socket under something like a Frigate instead.
If you just want the ship to stand perfectly level, that's about it. If you want to use the pivot head to put the ship into a banking pose while on display (or to put it at an angle in classic ST:TOS style when it's dead in space), you may need to sand the ball down a little - personal experience with these stands under B5:ACTA ships is that the ball is a very tight fit and won't move unless it has been sanded first. But if you overdo it, the ship will never sit level. This is less of a problem with smaller, lighter ships, so if your Heavy Cruiser won't stand straight, use a pin or something similar to extract the ball and put it into the socket under something like a Frigate instead.
Iron Domokun
Mongoose
Garth, I understand that the stands are detachable but some say that doing this too often can cause it to break.
IraShaine1972
Mongoose
Iron Domokun said:
Oh no. You don't need to do it often. Once or twice is usually enough.
I have never in many years of gaming met a plastic flight stand that wasn't fragile.
Iain McGhee
Mongoose
I think that's more of an issue with larger metal minis rather than the stands themselves, never had a problem with plastic or resin models on "traditional" plastic flight stands (even foot-long FA battleships) myself.
The idea with the ball-and-hat stands is that you glue the ball to the stem and the hat to the model and simply unplug it for storage. Unfortunately I've found that there's a tendency for the joint to get slack over time or sometimes for the hat to split when plugging/unplugging, so I now either glue the ball into the hat (so you can just pull out the stem and base for storage) or forget about the hat altogether depending on the model. YMMV.
The idea with the ball-and-hat stands is that you glue the ball to the stem and the hat to the model and simply unplug it for storage. Unfortunately I've found that there's a tendency for the joint to get slack over time or sometimes for the hat to split when plugging/unplugging, so I now either glue the ball into the hat (so you can just pull out the stem and base for storage) or forget about the hat altogether depending on the model. YMMV.
That idea never occurred to me - the only glue I use is to stick the hat to the ship. I can certainly see how repeatedly removing the ball from the hat and putting it back again will cause damage, given the way the hat is moulded. So I unplug the stem from the ball instead.Iain McGhee said:
The only times I've glued the ball into the hat were if I overdid the sanding and it was a model of something clumsy which shouldn't be doing banking manouevres anyway, so it doesn't need to be able to pivot.
None of my stands have been damaged so far.
(A couple of stems are now a bit loose when they plug into their bases so I may need to glue those, but that won't stop me from removing the whole stem/base assembly from the ship/hat/ball.)
