Wednesday 28 October 2009

40mm Home Cast Fictional Lace Wars

I've toyed with the idea of abandoning this time-consuming project and selling these moulds off a few times now, but finally made the decision to carry on. The argument winner here was that not long ago, I managed to find two great moulds; the Marching Foot Shouldered Arms, and the Marching Grenadier Shouldered Arms.

These are two iconical Holger Ericsson poses, made famous in their 30mm Spencer Smith manifestations in both Brig. Young's Charge and Charles Grant's The War Game.

I also dug up some old style HE Cavalry Command moulds; the Trumpeter and Standard Bearer, as well as a generic Mounted Officer Pointing with Sword.



Thus armed with my new enthusiasm, I went on a casting spree and knocked out most of this little lot in a couple of days last month. It's still a very cheap project. I have around a hundred weight of white metal, which was boosted by our gardener finding around 20 lbs of roofing lead in one of our flower beds out front.



The figures at the front are the Marching Foot, Shouldered Arms. I've not cast any of the Marching Grenadiers as yet, but don't anticipate any problems, as the mould is unused.

I had originally settled on units of 20 (including Drummer, Standard Bearer and NCO), plus the Colonel. However, those small battalions seem to lack presence on the tabletiop, even for 40mm figures. So now I've settled on units of 24, including Standard Bearer, Drummer and NCO, and a Colonel, 25 in total.

I've decided on squadron sizes of 16, including all command, for the Cavalry. That's really a compromise as they are large figures and take up a lot of room on the table. Artillery will be a gun and six figures per battery.

2 comments:

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Very interesting project you have ging there. Glad you've decided to keep going with it. Love your choice of the Prinz August figures. I've always wanted to have a crack at casting up scads of them, but the actual casting process itself has always put me off. Neat to watch you do it though.

Best Regards,

Stokes Schwartz
Grand Duchy of Stollen

Poacher said...

Thanks for you kind words, Stokes...

The casting process itself is not too bad, as long as precautions are taken.

Cleaning the figures up is a major effort, though. I need to find a way of cleaning the files I use, as they soon clog....