SCAD Prussian Cuirassier - 40mm Semi-Flat

Here's a nice mold, SCAD's Napoleonic Prussian cuirassier.  Maybe the best deal I've gotten yet on eBay.  French eBay in fact, the new mold going for 10 euros with free shipping to the US.  Putting myself in the seller's shoes, the transaction can barely have been worth the trouble to pack the mold and drive to the post office. 

Here's the mold design. 

It casts nicely except for a couple of trouble spots, the scabbard casting short and the reins designed somewhat overly ambitiously in attempting to capture the full detail in thin channels out front of the horse. The scabbard problem I belatedly fixed by cutting a channel down to the base, the reins I'm not bothering to salvage so long as the main portion casts okay.

These molds all come with a painting guide.

And as completed and painted.

I neglected to post a head on view, but the casting is quite thin. For all practical purposes it's a flat although not engraved, but made from a sculpted master.  Stylistically it's closer to a fine miniature than a toy soldier and perhaps that's where SCAD missed the target a bit. 

I'd rather the rider had been sculpted in a more warlike pose with the sword drawn and shouldered, but at least the elegant horse is in motion, and the figure still of some use on account of the style of helmet and uniform being common enough in the early 19th Century.  So I'm pleased with it and plan to paint more in time.

Nowikoff Russian Infantry - 42mm Home Castings

Here we have some examples of the Nowikoff home casting figures. Similar to the Createc Napoleonics ?  Yes, identical in scale and style.  I can find almost nothing about these on the internet although likely there's a connection to sculptor Anatoli Nowikoff.  I welcome comments from any collector who knows more about the rather mysterious Nowikoff line of molds.

So far the only dealer I've been able to find is Berliner Zinnfiguren and although they've discounted the molds somewhat less than the list price for me, no question that at their prices these molds are expensive.  Of course I can always rationalize, there's some economy of scale as - the more you cast the cheaper they get, at least relatively speaking.

No matter, let's take a look.  This blurry photo gives the general idea. The material is somewhat harder than the soft rubbery Createc molds but the casting design is the same, with a simple straight pour into the shako plume and bayonet.  For some reason I haven't been able to get many full casts before the results tail off.  The weakness is incomplete casting to the middle of the musket, as you can see I've cut another channel there and perhaps I'll widen it.  Some experimentation with metal temperature may also yield improved results.

As you might expect, they're thin. Fine by me as it saves lead.  I think at this point it's pretty clear that for better or worse, I'm wed to the flat and semi-flat figure styles.

And as painted.  I do like the Russian uniforms ca. 1812, quite appealing.

I've ordered one more of the marching infantryman pose to speed up the casting process.  I plan to use these for the early 1800's imagi-nations project.  I'm going with historical Napoleonic uniforms to add resale value (when the day comes) but the flags will be imaginary. Next up, the results of my best deal ever on eBay.

Toy Town Soldiers - Part 2

In the previous post, I mentioned that the children's play horse cavalry mounts in this range were not quite to my liking. Thus my attempt to create an alternative.  Using Toob toy horses seemed a possible alternative.  Of course, they have no saddles and other tack for a cavalry horse, bring the Green Stuff into play.

And in comparison to the castings.

This would challenge my modest mold-making skills more than a semi-round figure where all the extremities are close to the center line of the mold halves.  Rather than have something go wrong with the legs recessed into the mold cavity with little visibility as to how to salvage it, I decided to cut off the legs and mold these via a separate drop.  While they cast well enough, I erred in removing the legs with a straight cut. Much better to have cut them in a v-shape to facilitate a stronger bond and easier fit upon assembly. 

So lots of extra filing and test fitting headaches from this mistake. Compounding the problems, the left side of the horse's body cast beautifully but for some reason I couldn't get a clean impression on the right.  The second try was a little better but then I had run out of mold making compound.  So not only is there fiddling with attaching the legs, but now one side of the casting has to be patched with green stuff to salvage the deformed head and gaps in the reins.  Arrgh ! 

Was it worth the hassle ?  Let's take a look.  In comparison with the standard horse, on which I cut the wheels off and shimmed the base a little.

And relative to an infantryman:

Pickets of the Celtican Chasseurs à Cheval.

 

 

 

I painted the eyes for a more toy-like look but overall I'm not sure if the chunky proportions of this pony hit the mark for a light cavalry horse.  Seems like he'd make a better mount for the cuirassiers but perhaps I can file the legs a little.  Then too the rider's boots should at least be level with the horse's stomach but perhaps our rider is a bit short-legged because overall he looks reasonably in proportion with his mount.

I'd like to get your opinions on using this horse or Eureka's.   Honestly, I'd be tempted to just go with Eureka here but for the marked shortness of the toy horse fore & aft. 

PA Cavalry Conversion 2: 40mm Home Casting

Finally got around to painting the first casting from the modification of the Prince August cavalry figure.  Conversion on the left, original on the right:

The verdict ?  I have mixed feelings about this. The horse and the rider's coat show minor improvements.  But to my eyes, it looks like bulking up the hat was a mistake.  In the abstract, it wasn't a bad idea to fix the rider's flattish tricorne.  However I missed something when enumerating the figure's flaws:  not only the horse's head is too big, so is the rider's. What I did here only accentuated it.

Still an okay figure but I'm not excited about it.  May hold off for a bit to see what Prince August unveils in the new range of 7YW molds, hopefully some nice cavalry is in the offing.

Cloning a Clone: Plastic Army Guys

Everyone has seen them, those ubiquitous bags of cheap plastic made-in-China clone soldiers hanging on the rack in seemingly every supermarket and drug store in the US.  Do kids even play with these anymore ?  Maybe just big kids like us.  As often as not, they're 35-45mm knockoffs of their 54mm plastic army men brethren, the Airfix or Timmee roots clear to see. I've posted about them before.

Inspired by the engrossing series Jono's World at the Archduke Piccolo blog, I decided to to take another crack at these.  In this case, I modied one of the figures for the evil Tan forces. The raw materials in this bag are two main types of soldiers.  The Vietnam era guys seem to be copies in the Timmee style. But others look like British WW2 infantry from the neck down, capped off with US M1 style steel pots.  This helmet had a good long run from WW2 until the Fritz in the mid-80's, wore one myself (now over 40 years ago, wow !).

Here is the candidate figure, selected for his appealing and useful assaulting pose.  The main change was was substituting an AK for his WW2 rifle (Enfield ?), brass wire for the barrel and green stuff magazine and front sight.  That and giving him boots for a more Russian sort of look, plus a rucksack to cover the old-fashioned web gear.

And for added strength and repeatability, made a mold to cast the figure in metal.

The result ?  Not too bad and he certainly meets my needs.

The BMP in the background is a cheap and simple paper model. More about this in a subsequent post. For now, I'm belatedly painting the first example of the modified cavalryman.

PA Cavalry Conversion: 40mm Semi-Rounds

I had hoped to show more painted results of the latest figure conversion but had a setback in the mold making stage of the process, more about which later.  For now, the story begins with Prince August cavalry.  While we're relatively spoiled for choice with the infantry, there are four main cavalry trooper figures which can be cast.  First we have good old PA11 and the identical pose in its newer, more fully rounded version:

This seems to be the hands down favorite, and we also see a very similar figure as the mainstay of everyone's Spencer Smith cavalry arm.  I like this one but he looks very Swedish to me in style and the hell-for-leather charge was probably not the norm for most armies' cavalry doctrine of the era. And of course we have the pistol wielding PA48 and the nice, but rather static dragoon PA41. 

Both these latter figures certainly have their uses, but sticking to sword-armed cavalry it comes down to Molds # 11 or Mold # 935 painted in his "Wild Geese" livery in the top photo. # 935 seems to be not nearly as popular, perhaps in part due to difficulty in casting the sword fully.  Further, there are things about the figure which are not quite right. The horse's head looks oversized, the hind quarters a bit skimpy and angular, the pistols oddly mounted forward and too low on the body instead of up near the saddle.  But I do very much like the pose, so let's see what can be done here:

As can be seen in the comparison shot, what I have done to the rider is bulk up the flattish tricorne, also give him a fuller coat and cuffs.  I beefed up the sword a bit to get a stronger cast, with the intention of filing it after casting.  The horse and tack get some attention as well: among other things, filed down the head a little, added more definition to the hind quarters, amputed the pistol holsters and replaced with green ones.

So far so good, I think.  Last weekend I made a new mold with eager anticipation of casting and painting this new figure.  The first half came out fine. Unfortunately, had a bit of a disaster where a small portion of the second mold have stuck to the first despite the use of mold separation cream. Evidently I missed a spot. And this damage fell right across part of the horse, ruining the castings.  Why not just re-do the second half, you ask ?  Good question !  And I would have done so but for the lack of sufficient RTV compound. Rather than taking the sensible course of ordering more and waiting, I tried patching the 2nd half, would up cutting extra channels in the original half as a work-around and to sum up, botched the whole thing.  So we're a week or two away from seeing this figure actually painted.

In the meantime, I've also started on the infantry command figures. The standard bearer is finished, the drummer just under way. I'll soon show these in subsequent postings.  

Backdating a PA Grenadier - 40mm Home Casts

Readers of this blog will know my mixed feelings of joy and frustration when it comes to the Prince August range of 40mm semi-rounds, as in this previous post: War of the Polish Succession.  Holger Eriksson's many excellent figures are a great tribute to the Swedes of the GNW, but not necessarily ideal for all among us with designs on using them for other armies both real and imaginative.  When it comes to toy soldiers and music, my tastes run more to the Baroque than the Classical.  Aside from the old-fashioned shoes/stockings and hair styles, the PA's remind me more of Frederick the Great's Prussians than WSS era soldiers.

And as the Irish Prince August mainly perpetuated more Karoliners with recent additions to the 40mm home casting range, it's high time to take matters into my own hands.  Quite belatedly, I have discovered the utility of Green Stuff, and even more recently - mold making.  I took the plunge last month and bought a hobby molding kit from Reb Toys.  It consists of a wooden mold making jig, two jars of Quick-Sil, "RTV jewelry molding rubber" compound, and a container of Castaldo mold separation cream.

My first mold-making experiment made use of a Spenkuch semi-round as the master.  The failure was comically bad: the poor fellow's lower body and legs cast nicely but his headless Swiss cheese upper body looked as if he'd walked into a perfect storm of grapeshot.  It was readily apparent that more pressure was required during the mold curing process and that's probably what those two wing-nuts on top of the jig were for.  For test Mold #2, I emulated Tony Bath in using a flat Zinnfigur as the master.  Not perfect but definitely better.  In the interest of maintaining harmonious relations with Germany I'll say no more about it when sooner or later a battalion or two of these guys shows up here on the blog.

Now that I'd established that I could indeed create a functional mold, it was time to move on to the objective of modifying a Prince August figure.  For this, I selected the grenadier mold PA20.  He is one of the older, flatter original Eriksson creations. It's a good and simple figure with the musket casting directly on the centerline.  As can be seen in the top photo, all I did here was to file off the turnbacks and bulk the coat and cuffs with green stuff.  My mold is nothing fancy, using very similar flow channels to the PA original.  The wing nuts on the jig soon stripped out, but I found the brutal expedient of setting a 3-ton floor jack on top of the jig during curing compresses the silicone rubber rather effectively.

Here I've painted the figure as an Austrian grenadier, suitable for 1700-1735.

And next to his original, more 7YW-looking cousin.

Soon to follow, a more ambitious and exciting conversion !