Taking A Rest

This last few days have seen me take a rest from pouring molten white metal into rubber moulds. One needs to back off now and again or else the smell starts to permeate the house. Not too sure it does my lungs much good either.

But really all I have left to do now is the rank and file, and I already have around 80 of those done. The rest can wait, perhaps until after Christmas and the New Year.

In the meantime I have been enjoying watching our little one learn to tie her own shoelaces, a task which has resulted in many tears and angry tantrums on her part.

I've also been reading Charles Grant's The Battle of Fontenoy, which as Jean-Louis pointed out in a comment earlier, is the natural follow-up to The War Game. Let down only by a lack of photos, it is nevertheless an excellent book and great fun to read.

Other than the normal household routine, and getting soaked taking the little one to her Stage School on Saturday, I have been cleaning and undercoating a few 30mm Spencer Smith and SAE metal figures, and basing some of the plastic Spencer Smith Rebels that John Preece kindly swapped me a few weeks ago. I have managed to mislay my usual green basing paint somewhere, so they remain unfinished.

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.