Pewter is Hard (to pin)

 I love my retro 40k army, an army that I mostly collected ~25 years ago but only was able to paint to my standards in recent years.  I love the classic beakie armor and the bit of wimsy some of the sculpts bring to the grimdark.  I love the Rogue Trader era.  I love that almost every model in my army is entirely or largely metal, and I got them back when they still made them that way.  I like the heft, they feel sturdy.  (They say that people tend to associate weight with value.)

I HATE trying to drill into pewter though.  Its super hard and takes forever.  I was dreading it and dreading it, and sure enough, it was a pain.

I got through it, but not without problems.

This is another drill bit that was ruined.  The other end is still stuck in Chappy's armpit, probably to remain there for a long, long time.  To be honest, these drill bits have always had problems (maybe they were made for wood or plastic?)  And they also seem too long for their diameter.  I'd really like to improve this skill and gain the right info/tools, especially since I have a bunch of classic Grey Knight Terminators with a bunch of tiny metal weapons/arms to assemble.  I think the bit was only 0.5 or 0.6mm.

So anyway, the hole I was drilling probably didnt need to be so deep, and even after I broke off the drill bit, there was still some hole depth that I could use to pin the arm with.  I do worry that it is much weaker now, but not sure how to fix it.

Then on the other side I went with a bit that was much larger, and that came with the Army Painter kit that the pins came from.  Seems at the larger diameter it would be less likely to break, and I was also hoping that maybe also it was for sure designed to be able to drill metal miniatures.  I think I went with the 1.2mm bit.  Anyway, it worked, but it seemed like I was drilling a crater by comparison.  And it was really, really, really hard.  Pewter is hard, and I was trying to be as gentle as possible to be careful with the paint etc.   The real lesson is to drill everything before painting.  I guess that didn't occur to me because I wanted to paint disassembled, but of course I could have at least drilled and maybe even prepped and saved off the pin somewhere to glue later.  Welp thats why I'm here right?  Write down these lessons so that I do it right next time.

Anyway, Chappy here is almost done, and since he is all about reciting litanies of hate, it seems appropriate that I recited some too while putting him together, ha!