William had an agenda as well. He wanted to make the 19 figures necessary to form a third Charge! company and a regimental command group to round out his Wiegenburg regiment. William has chosen to use a uniform pose for all three companies, the advancing figure from Prince August mold i903:
I've considered the question of whether I want to keep my regiments uniform that way. My first two regiments were uniform in pose, but I'm thinking that my third regiment will have three companies in three different poses. This would have the advantage of keeping the companies easily distinguishable in smaller games when we're using the company as the morale unit.
Here are the results, minus William's company. We could have done better with a third pair of hands; carefully venting the new molds was taking quite a bit of time, though I was pleasantly successful in getting all of the molds to work after venting.
Well done, Gentlemen. Well done indeed . . . and now on to the paintbrushes.
ReplyDelete-- Jeff
Yes, sigh. Even on a bad day it's pretty easy to cast faster than you can paint...not that I'm not looking forward to painting, but many of these will be in process for a while. Some are likely to be farmed out to newer club members, though, which will be good.
DeleteLooks like a good session. Be careful when you straighten the officer's sword.
ReplyDeleteNext time you are casting fox hounds, would you do a couple for me?
A good crop of figures !.
ReplyDeleteYes, on to painting now...
DeleteCan you tell me where you get the metal for casting? I did some back in the 80s and we were using tire weights, which was not that great. Is there a reasonably priced source, or do you scavenge suitable metal?
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking about buying a basic musketeer mold and an officer mold. I want a long term project for when I retire.
My most recent metal batches came from Nathan Trotter, a specialty metal dealer in Pennsylvania. (www.nathantrotter.com) They'll ship. While I use some scavenged and recycled materials (including old figures and found tire weights and fishing sinkers), I start with ingots of 63% tin/37% lead. This is the "eutectic" alloy, which has the lowest melting point, and therefore stays molten the longest as it flows into the mold.
ReplyDeleteI looked at their website and was kind of confused. I couldn't find that alloy. Is it a special order?
ReplyDeleteI guess while I am asking questions, how many figures do you get from a pound of metal, approximately?
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the help.
No problem. Actually, it's so common they don't list it specially. On thier products pages, they have pictures of the 1pound bars under 'solder'. If you want to order, they have been pretty nice about talking on the phone; one can just call and ask.
ReplyDeleteWith the relatively high tin mixtures, we sre getting about 9 Prince August cavalry figures or 18-20 infantry figures per pound.
(pardon typos; having interface difficulties this morning)
I contacted them, but they were wanting to sell me something else warning me of the dangers of lead. I may try Rotometals on the West coast.
ReplyDeleteI have molds coming. :) Now I need a hotplate as my wife has strongly urged me to not try this in the kitchen.
Bill
I ended up buying the alloy from Rotometals on the west coast. They have free shipping on orders over $100. The cost for 9 pounds of 67% tin/33% lead alloy was $107.
ReplyDeleteIf that gets me around 170 infantry figures, that sounds good to me.