What's the plural for a group of moulds ? *

 

Prince August was doing a 3 for 2 sale on their 25mm Napoleonic moulds , so I had to pick up a few more that I needed ! . This afternoon I had a go at casting from the French Artillery moulds . The crew cast well as did the barrel and the carriage - however the wheels were a right pain ! . Casting spoked wheels in homecasting is notoriously difficult and it took me numerous attempts (and much bad language) to get the two I wanted .

The finished gun and crew ready for undercoating . I will be using these figures for the Prussians as well - with suitable conversions .

*sadly there doesn't seem to be one 

The earliest toy soldier !?

 

Found this on the Interweb, it's in the Walters Art Museum and is a bronze model of a knight about 800 years old and is assumed to be a toy - the measurments are 37mm x 43mm x 17mm so would mix with 28mm modern figures .

The lance is a modern extra , I think it is rather cute and reminds me of 15mm Peter Laing figures .

The Author as invisioned by AI

Messing about with AI , and as it sees me !?

 

Toy Soldiers in the sun .

 

One of the bi-products of my cleaning has been the finding of several Prince August 25mm moulds.

Also a prodigious amount of spare tin, either old sample figures, failed projects or figures gifted to me by my wargaming colleagues .

Put the two together and you get (yet) another wargaming project. The problem is you only need the advancing figure in the middle of the mould which has taken a bit of practise to get to work - note the extra vents cut in this mould to get it to cast correctly.

The God*of casting can be fickle, here we have a load of miss-casts which had to be melted down again. .Sometimes you have a good session casting other times not !

The end result , a Battalion of French Napoleonic Infantry .

A better photo. I'm not sure where this project is going but the figures will be from the Prince August moulds , a rather strange range from the Waterloo era but with quite a few missing figures - ie no Prussian Cavalry etc. , so there will have to be some conversions done . I'm looking forward to this project - I have the moulds (just noticed Prince August are doing a 3 for the price of 2 sale at the moment) , I have the tin and I like homecasting ! , so we will see where it goes !

*PS Prometheus maybe ?

It MUST be true - it's the result of an Opinion Poll !

 

I have long suspected this ! - and now it is proven by an Opinion Poll !

PS I have a very poor opinion of opinion polls - nobody I have ever know has taken part in one and a girl I knew in London used to supplement here earnings by going around asking people their opinions for various polling companies, said it was common practise to make things up to make sure you got your quota in .

'The Cleansing'

 

I've been busy tidying up the wargaming room - ("my husband's toy soldier room") as my wife refers to it ! , ' The Mother of all Cleaning' or 'The Cleansing' ! , think I have got rid of 50% of my rules and rules paraphernalia - the hard back stuff has gone to a charity shop the others to recycling - some I have kept for sentimental reasons but I have only kept the rules I regularly play with . My C&C board games are also much more accessible now ,

The far side of the table is now accessible without breaking your neck - more tidying is due on this side as well.

Then I braved 'under the table' !!! the boxes will be restacked and labled so the ones I use regularly can be found easily - again a lot of stuff has been got rid off - mainly damaged scenery items not worth repairing.

Got some new box files to help the storage situation.

And even had time to set up a game ready for 'S' calling round tonight - a battle report will be forthcoming soon.

The very model of a modern Major General - well in 54mm .

 

I've got around to sorting out the six mounted figures I bought and here they are resplendent in the sunshine. 

I didn't repaint them , just touched up any damage - which there wasn't much and gave them another coat of gloss varnish.

I had to think of a way to add bases to them as they fall over very easily on 'the Tabletop of Mars' . I've tried several different methods , none of which were a success - then I hit on this idea , which I call the 'Carousel' method - I drilled a hole in the stomach of the horse and fitted a cocktail stick , then I drilled a hole in a sutable base which the stick is glued into . It seems to be working so far .

This chap has a rather purple face - to many ports maybe ?

Another view of the 'Carousel' method of basing .

This figure is I think a modern recast as he is solid metal - had to use a bigger base to fit the horse . Someone has taken a lot of trouble adding the flowing feathers to his Topee from thin pieces of metal foil !. These figures will be appearing in various guises of command in the future on 'The Tabletop of Mars'