Use clay to hold things together when gluing

My favorite model-building tip this year has to be this one that my brother-in-law Tyson Watkins pointed out to me. I'm sure it's old hat in a lot of modeling circles. But I was having trouble gluing arms and such onto miniature figures, and he suggested using a little blu-tac or poster gum to hold the parts; I used clay, since that's what I had handy. Now I use this all the time, because you can mold a hunk of clay to provide robust support for a part like an arm or a weapon, and then walk away and let it dry.

This'll work nicely in a lot of model-building situations, because typically the parts are not very heavy.