Have you ever struggled to paint a miniature without using some kind of handle? Without one it’s often difficult to get a decent and comfortable grip, and there’s always the danger of smudging paint with your fingers. For new painters too, it can often be a lot easier to have something to hold on to to help stabalise your hands in order to improve your painting skills.

There’s lots of ways of doing this, from things as simple as attaching the model to a paint pot lid – but a lot of companies also sell painting handles designed to be comfortable and user friendly.

Redgrass Games recently reached out to us to see if we wanted to try out their RGG 360 V2, which is very soon coming to Kickstarter (March 14th) with their “Definitive Edition”. Redgrass’ 360 V2 has proved to be very popular, and with this new Kickstarter they are adding a couple of new features such as XL caps and Pinning Corks. I’ve not had the pleasure of trying these handles before, So I was very much looking forward to checking it out!

In this review we’ll be taking a look at the handle, how the swappable caps work and how they stack up against some other painting handles I’ve used in the past.

Massive thanks again to Redgrass for sending us the sample over prior to their Kickstarter launching on the 14th March – Make sure to check it out!

RGG 360 V2 Definitive Edition Review

I’ve used a couple of painting handles over the years, some have been cheap 3D printed ones that have hurt my hands, and I’ve also used a number of Games Workshop’s Citadel painting handles – These are great with the mechanism to attach the models to the handle, but are not the most comfortable

The first thing that jumped to me when I picked up the RGG 360 V2 is that it is a very comfy handle due to it’s grip like design. Your fingers curl around it naturally making it great for long painting sessions

It has another cool feature in a metal disk that can be mounted to a desk, and the handle itself has integrated magnets that can snap onto it when in storage. If you have a portable hobby station (Such as the Frontier Wargaming Case I recently reviewed) then you can attach this disk to it to keep your painting handle attached to it while in transport.

Now, one of the things that people will be interested in when it comes to painting handles is how easy it is to switch models on the handle – I tend to batch paint things quickly, so when I’m using handles for other brands I tend to have a couple of them set up ready as then I can just jump from one to the other

Were the 360 V2 gets really clever is the fact that the caps simply pop off meaning that if you have enough caps you could in theory have an entire regiment attached to them and swap them over as you are painting them.

Redgrass has actually expanded the range of caps they do with this new Kickstarter, so I’ll go into detail on what they all do

Swappable Caps are the standard “small” sized ones, and these are best suited for bases of 10 – 50 mm. You get one of these bundled in with the handle, but you can also buy them in packs of 4 to make switching out your models as easy as possible. There’s no locking system like on Citadel handles, instead mounting putty is used to attach models to the stand – this has the consistency of blu-tac but holds much stronger and doesnt leave a messy residue on the model either – It’s also reusable with a little knead making it fresh to hold a new model. You get a block of putty bundled with the handle, but again you can buy more of it separately if you do want to mount a large number of models

Now, I mentioned that the handle has a moulded grip, and the danger of this is that sometimes you would need to turn the handle around in order to get to different areas of the model – However with the RGG 360 the caps actually rotate 360 degrees (Hence the name) which makes this a really user friendly and handy little handle! You just need to use a little pressure from your thumb to rotate it, which means you don’t need to shift your grip on the handle at all. This makes this a really nice handle to hold, and you don’t get the fatigue you sometimes get with other handles

New to this Definitive Edition are some larger XP caps – these offer two features, making the handle usable for models with larger bases (While still being able to hold small bases) but also making the handle itself a little taller – this makes the grip even more comfortable for those with larger hands as your index finger can wrap around the top of the XL cap (just underneath the lip)

I have quite big hands, and personally this was my favourite of the two caps to use. Models still attach in the same way by using a blob of mounting putty, and just like the smaller cases they can also be rotated 360 degrees to get to all the details you need to.

The XL caps also work really well with another of the new features of the new Kickstarter, and that is the Pinning Corks. These are small cork disks with a self adhesive backing that can be attached to either the small or XL caps. Personally I think these work best on the large ones, but that may be because I have large hands. with these you can drill lengths of wire (Paperclips work great as in the above photo) into your subassembles, and then push the other end of the wire into the cork.

If you are painting heads, weapons or fiddly parts of models, this lets you get the best of both worlds by having access to those tricky small parts, which also having the stability of the painting handle. Because the caps rotate you’re less likely to have to endure an uncomfortable position too while painting.

If you are using the XL caps, then these come with a hold drilled in the centre of them that you can use as a locator for these pins to make sure that they are stable and dont fall off while using them.

Like with the caps, these come 4 to a pack, and I think they are a decent investment if you are someone who paints lots of small parts and subassemblies.

Summary

So what do I think of the new “Definitive” RGG 360 V2? Well, I’ve not used the previous version, but having tried both the small caps and the XL caps, I certainly favour the larger ones. Not only do they allow for bigger models, but I think the additional height to them makes them much comfier for painting when you have large hands. Now, your millage may vary here, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with the standard caps, but for me I’ll be picking up another set of XL caps so that I have enough to have an entire regiment mounted and simply pop them off when swapping models.

The cork disks are also very good – In the past I have tended to use corks from bottles, but the problem with that is that they can be a little unstable when standing on the painting desk. With the cork disks attached to an XL cap on a painting handle (And attached to the desk with the magnetic disk) there’s little chance of them falling over and your small parts getting damaged or lost.

I’ve been impressed with these, and will be adding some more caps to my collection in order to replace some of my older handles and DIY solutions such as corks and paint bottle lids!

If you are in the market for a new handle then I’d certainly check these out when the Kickstarter goes live on Thursday

Redgrass Games provided free samples for review purposes. The Kickstarter launches on Thursday 14th March