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i have a confession to make about how i clean the bottom of the bases being fed with nearly cutting my fingers off with stanly knife i now take them to work . being an engineer ,i just touch the bases on the side of a bench grinder (dont try this at home folks) they come out with perfect flat bases i can do sets in a few mins
I normally take off as much as poss with sprue cutters then the bit that is left with a Swann Morton scalpel. The horse bases would probably benefit from your treatment. Have you tried it with a sanding belt? They look very handy. First I need a new bench then the bench grinder - maybe later this year.
I probably take about 1-2 minutes on each one. The base is OK as I don't attack the whole thing on an even frontage, but slide part of the knife hard at an angle and it slides out the side. The remainder is then easy to take care of and neaten up.
The rest of the model always needs a bit of trimming - there have only ever been about 5 figures (ever) from Italeri that needed absolutely zero trimming.
I guess I'm a perfectionist, but what else I am goin to do in a British winter?