Mother’s Day 2023

Burning the Toast – a National Breakfast Ritual on Mother’s Day.

This is a Land Of Counterpane style Mother’s Day card that I drew a few years ago in 2016 to send to my Mum, on what proved to be her last Mother’s Day.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/22/happy-mothers-day-time-to-burn-the-toast/

The toy soldier motif throughout the card links to some of the home cast toy soldiers I had made and painted for her collections cabinet full mostly of bears and tiny Lilliput Lane buildings. Hopefully she understood the whole collecting thing.

My Man Of TIN avatar or profile figure salutes some other Prince August 54mm homecast figures made and painted by me for my Mum’s display cabinet, along with a silicon cake decoration mould Fimo Royal Guard bear that I made and painted for her. Maybe more in theme with her collection of bears?

Quite often on blog posts for Father’s Day or at other times, many gamers and bloggers talk about the contribution played by their Dads to their gaming hobby.

I wonder what we would write on the same topic about our Mum’s contribution to our gaming lives?

Besides the obvious contribution of keeping us fed and watered, alive and well, washed and clothed, my late Mum encouraged my gaming hobby in lots of different ways.

Andy Callan’s Hair Roller Armies claimed some of her stock of spare or damaged plastic hair rollers in 1982, her hair rollers still being in regular use as a trained hairdresser throughout much of her life.

The knitted Action Man jumpers and leggings, welcome at the time, are all now sadly gone.

The dark green baize felt underlay on the dinner table which was supposedly to protect the wood. It was also excellent as a games mat with chunky books below for hills, but all due back in place at mealtimes. Short gaming scenarios were obviously the thing!

The mud and muck of garden wargaming, crawling around on hands and knees must have taken its toll on the knees and elbows of our clothes, as well as the washing machine.

I was usually a careful painter, without too many painty accidents on furniture or clothes.

My Mum was fairly good at tolerating the amount of dusty stuff that you accumulate or make as a young gamer, although you did learn to tidy up and stow away to counter the threat of the uncaring Hoover. Hopefully not too many of my tiny Airfix heroes ended up emtombed in a Hoover dust bag. The same Flymo lawnmower rule applied to untidy garden wargames.

One of the best storage items that I gained from my Mum’s time working in a haberdashery department (naturally, being an excellent knitter) was a surplus display storage cabinet for sewing threads or cotton reels, very like this one below but in plastic.

Imagine a clear plastic version of this wooden cabinet, whichever brand it was. This was my childhood storage for many of my ‘heroic’ Airfix, Matchbox and Esci 1:72 / 1:76 figures and probably some of the smaller vehicles that I had.

Heavy plastic as this cabinet was, it solved the problem of having to sort through many mixed up figures before a game.

I remember this clunky but useful cabinet as I sort through some of those same loose painted or unpainted figures in my Really Useful Boxes today. It is probably why so many of these childhood figures survived.

Being see-through plastic, no labels were required, as you could see what figures were there in each of its narrow storage sections on each drawer. However I think I may later have borrowed one of those Dymo handheld signmaking labelling printer devices to label the shelves.

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My Mum had an eye for a bargain and she enjoyed shopping and making up birthday boxes or rainy day surprise parcels for her overgrown children like me and for the genuinely younger members of the family. I still have unmade for a rainy day the odd Airfix plane kit that she found at knockdown prices.

I’m sure we can all list some of the excellent and inspiring books we borrowed from the Branch Library on regular shopping trips or those odd soldier books we received for Birthdays or Christmas. Not sure if it was my Dad or Mum who bought these, but as books seemed very expensive in my pocket money eyes back then in the 70s and 80s, I still have many of them to this day.

Even though our collections did not overlap, I did occasionally very carefully borrow her painted resin / plaster cast buildings by Lilliput Lane (another UK company now sadly gone). After she died, I kept two of my favourite or most versatile of her Lilliput Lane cottages or buildings, whilst the others were sold for a good charitable cause.

I’m sure to my late Mum and Dad, there was some value to me having an indoor hobby such as model making or wargaming. They knew that I was busy at home, warm and safe, albeit probably slightly high on paint and model glue and with occasionally lacerated fingers. Instead of which I could have been out of the house, out on my bike and up to mischief …

***

I’m sure there are many other things that will come to me over time about how my Mum and my Dad encouraged my gaming and modelmaking.

Anyway, thanks Mum and Dad.

So, treasure your Mum if you still have one or treasure her memory if you don’t.

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, Mother’s Day UK, 19 March 2023.

First Flats or Homecasts Prince August 1980s

These three strange figures appeared in a (school?) jumble sale mix of plastic figures in the early 1980s. I had no idea what they were, had not encountered flat figures and they were surprisingly heavy for their size.

All the lead hollowcast figures had vanished from the family by the late sixties, these lost legions possibly the casualties of parental concern about lead in children’s toys and the new possibilities of plastic.

I had no idea what these were. They had a strange marking ‘HE’ on the base.

1980/81 – This was the days before the Internet.

They were bare metal or grey undercoated when found, at some point they received my desultory painting of red and black, then languished unseen for decades.

Their survival is probably due to having been in the 1980s Blue Box for the next 25 to 30 years or more, where they remained unused in my 1980s Blue Box of odds and ends, as what use were three figures?

Image source from my blog post on the Military Modelling / Battle for Wargamers 1983 Wargames Manual – https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/06/30/brian-carricks-big-wars

I didn’t connect these orphan HE figures at all with the tempting adverts in Military Modelling in the early 1980s for these grown up, hot metal moulds. The moulds and the metal were unobtainable on my Airfix figures pocket money income, even if I could be trusted with hot metal (unlikely then).

Another 25 years pass.

Early in 2005/6 in a small craft shop on a backwater street of a backwater southwest town, by chance I discovered in a sale one Prince August casting starter set and a box of 54mm Traditional Toy Soldier moulds. At last I could cast my own figures.

Being able to cast your own figures whenever you want more and own the means of production still seems a little bit magical to me.

I have not looked back since.

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I sometimes wonder how different my toy soldier hobby life would be without that chance shop find.

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I know now that these three figures are Holger Eriksson 18th Century / Seven Years War moulds, still available from Prince August and I now have some of these moulds in my collection:

I know now that HE obviously is the talented Swedish Toy Soldier designer Holger Erickson. His HE figures from the 1950s and 1960s are still available through Prince August and from Tradition Of London including S.A.E Figures from the Featherstone era.

Brian Carrick’s excellent blog posts on Holger Eriksson:

https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/search/label/Holger%20Eriksson?m=0

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40mm?

This seemed such a weird size when I first encountered these three Unknown figures in the early 1980s. Figures to me back then were Airfix size 1:32 or 1:72/76. I now have a fair amount of 40-42mm figures in my collection and gaming skirmish units, including Pound Store Plastic copies of 54mm figures that have through copying shrunk in size, stylish HE Cowboys and Indians and of course my current STS Little Britons 42mm range Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

I wonder if one day these three stray orphan 40mm HE figures – my first metal figures – will kickstart a small gaming collection of Tricorne and Musket figures? Who knows?

These tricorne figures to me inexplicably have a Gulliver’s Travels Lilliputian look to them. If it does eventually happen, it might be unconventional ImagiNations / Lace Wars Steampunk like this 2007 blog link I found via TMP about 6 years ago. But not just yet …

http://mcristobylacew-abdul666.blogspot.com/2007/09/lace-wars-sci-fi.html

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 15 August 2022.

Man of TIN’s More Men of ZINN

I was pleased to find a tiny surprise parcel from the Duchy of Tradgardland last week.

Alan the Tradgardmastre had sent me some spare surplus home cast 40mm figures that he had picked up along the way. I quickly filed the bases flat, cleaned up the mould lines and got them based on MDF tuppenny 2p from Warbases, ready for painting.

I recognised these figures, as I have a small collection of them acquired at random in an online job lot about five to ten years ago. I was probably being lazy at the time, acquiring some secondhand precast home castings (especially painted ones) instead of casting them myself.

Pre-painted and play-bashed Army Dark Blue 40mm figures in my collection. “You, man at the back, why haven’t you painted your helmet … or your rifle?”

Somewhere I’m sure I still have a silicon mould for the standing and kneeling firing infantryman amongst my randomly acquired moulds collection.

They are old Zinn Brigade moulds 40mm figures still available or reissued from Schildcrot https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Casting/Moulds/Schildkroet-oxid/2-Infantrymen-firing.html

One of Alan’s suggestions was that these figures could be useful for “creative uniform design and tailoring …I thought you might enjoy coming up with some toy soldier uniforms for these fellows.”

This creative colour choice is already part chosen for me as the painted figures I have are in dark blue Prussian uniforms, so I have an Army Dark Blue skirmish unit of infantry, cavalry and gunners already.

My trusty old Ladybird Leaders: Soldiers book suggests Portuguese, British, German …

They could stand in for several dark blue coated nations who adopted the Prussian style spiked helmet from US Marines in late 19th century dress uniforms through to Portuguese 1890s, several South American and colonial units.

Some interesting ideas in Funcken, Uniforms – the 18th Century to the Present Day.

Norway, Portugal, Chile, Brazil, colourful Argentina … lots of late 19th century spiked helmets which my Army Blue could be used as, if you want a change from Prussian 1870.

Wikipedia has some interesting photos and snippets of useful history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickelhaube#

“From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the armies of a number of nations besides Russia (including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Venezuela) adopted the Pickelhaube or something very similar. The popularity of this headdress in Latin America arose from a period during the early 20th century when military missions from Imperial Germany were widely employed to train and organize national armies.”

********************

One easy colour scheme solutions for the new unpainted figures would be the late 19th Century red coated British Infantry with spiked helmet.

However looking through my uniform books, I have found several other historical nations with spiked helmets or ones that could also double as ImagiNations uniforms.

Preben Kannik’s Military Uniforms of the World in Colour gives a few ideas.

Red Coat, spiked helmet – a Netherlands 1960s Guards ceremonial uniform which is a tribute to British wartime cooperation with the Dutch.

The traditional Redcoat with spiked Home Service helmet, still in use 1900-1914

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pith_helmet#Home_Service_helmet shows several variations of this including a green rifle brigade and grey rifle volunteer version.

No red coat this time, but a fetching dark blue Colonial outfit c. 1900 from the Dutch here.

I am rather taken with the light blue uniform with yellow facings of the Baden dragoons 1870 FPW, although this could be mistaken for the French uniforms. Army Light Blue ? 

Mixed in with my old painted joblot of Zinn figures were some semi-flat French figures, some of which almost from a distance on the table match the Zinn Brigade / Schildcrot figures.

Amongst the castings was a cheery note from the Tradgardmastre himself, apologising for the lack of horses for the rider figures. Fortunately these horse moulds are available from Zinnfigur.com, although I read on many blogs that postage costs from Europe to the UK post-Brexit is causing issues for some people and firms.

I also already have some Holger Erickson unsaddled horse moulds in 40mm from Prince August, which may prove suitable.

Thankfully I have some pre-painted dark blue cavalry, along with small hollow-cast cavalry.

More kind gifts from Tradgardland of unpainted cavalry riders

The unpainted rider castings from Tradgardland are these Zinnfigur / Schildcrot officer ones

https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Casting/Moulds/Schildkroet-oxid/Cavalry-Officers-without-Horses.html

Some quick and simple repairs required on my old cavalry figures, a head here, a leg there.

These cheap hollow-cast cavalry from bits and bobs box seem a good match or opposition, once repaired. These come originally in red paint … hmmm. Thinks. 

 

I also have amongst my random figures selection some suitable officer figures, standard bearers, fife players and artillery crews from the Schildcrot range with a few Meisterzinn origin 18th Century limbers, horses and guns.

A strange combination of periods but that is the joy of the Job Lot ImagiNation!

Some colourful old 40mm guns and limbers from Meisterzinn.

With the addition of the new unpainted  figures from Alan, this should be good for a small  balanced force of a gun or two, a few cavalry and some infantry for skirmishes.

So lots of ideas but still undecided what colour the new figures from Tradgardmastre should be.

Whilst I think about the new army uniform colour, I have been busy repairing and basing the original blue Prussian painted figures from my past joblot.

Army Dark Blue 40mm figures in my collection. Some rifles  broken or short-cast to repair. I will post pictures when finished …

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN / ZINN, 18 August 2021

 

 

 

“I live in a madhouse …” Home Casting Humour

As well as EBay there are other maker and vintage listings out there, ranging from

the international Etsy with its often expensive ‘vintage’ toy soldier offerings and unusual international toy soldier offerings (great for window shopping)

to the more British based crafting site Folksy.

Here I spotted and bought this rather apt fridge magnet that home casters might enjoy.

https://folksy.com/items/7160996-I-Live-In-A-Madhouse-Magnet

Luckily I tore off the Folksy maker’s name from the invoice and stuck it roughly in the back, so I could find them again.

I thought it goes well with the contents of a recent mostly Schneider vintage metal mould casting session and some very cheap Pound Store conversion plastic soldier Boy Scouts.

Eagle eyed readers may spot two ‘half casts’ who were missing heads, so these colonial flats got a plastic flat head modern Fritz helmet from the Specia forces figures.

(Small) World Domination plans

It reminds me of a rough sketch outline I did for a finished postcard in a local art event in the anonymous Post Secret / Secret Squirrel confessions postcards project:

Rough sketch by Mark Man of TIN – based in Prince August 54mm toy soldier moulds

This postcard blog post from my first month of blogging here in 2016 with some thoughts on homecasting https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/

Blog posted by Mark, Man of TIN on 8 May 2021.

Home casting figures – functional repairs and old toy soldier DNA

Useful tools of the repair trade – pin vice and file – to repair a miscast musket.

Miscastings or half castings that are not too bad do not always go straight back in the ladle.

To avoid fumes and mess, I restrict my casting to days outside in warmer weather with no threat of rain; hot metal and moisture make an explosive mix.

As a result casting days (or days when I have time and feel like casting) are infrequent enough that I save the 90+ % figures that are ‘nearly all there’. I can then do some simple repairs on missing musket tips and other fiddly bits. Even missing heads can be swapped …

“Where’s your head at?” Missing a head, why not try swopping one with a Pound Store figure?

Such repairs that I make are usually fairly simple ones, such as drilling out a miscast musket to insert a short piece of wire.

Second casting session a few days ago – a few missing musket tips, heads and bows to repair.

On the repair tray where missing musket tips are replaced, heads swapped and bows repaired …

The perfect casting, the half cast musket and a masking tape, wire and glue repair.

Old Toy Soldier DNA

You might notice from photos that I often drill, file and repair over sheets of white A4 paper, which I have folded into four and unfolded again to make a cross shaped crease.

This is because I keep the metal filings, drilling ‘swarf’ and trimmings from old Hollowcast figure repair, roughing up the base when rebasing or cleaning up home castings.

From time to time during repairs, I carefully slightly fold the crease-crossed A4 page and slide the metal filings and trimmings into a small lidded pot.

Why do I keep this toy soldier ‘magic dust’ mixed together in a small pot of this “old toy soldier DNA“?

It not only keeps the workbench of my roll-top desk clean but it also means that I can then add a minute pinch of this unique and special mixture from time to time to the casting ladle when home casting.

Each new shiny casting might then have inside it a tiny nano-percentage of an old Britain’s hollowcast casting or old flat tin figure.

Each shiny new casting then might have a small part of all the accumulated bravery, courage and adventure from the countless battles that the old damaged hollowcast veterans (from various makers and owners) have been through over the last hundred years or more.

Reinforcements for Tradgardland, Lurland or Afrika?

A small number of these unpainted Schneider castings of pith helmeted Colonial figures and fierce Natives will soon be heading towards Alan Gruber at the Duchy of Tradgardland blog as reinforcements for his interesting Lurland and Ost Afrika campaigns.

http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/search/label/Afrika

http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/search/label/Lurland

Alan has sent me some interesting spare figures and heads to keep me busy throughout Lockdown, so this is a small thin flat thank you heading to the Duchy of Tradgardland Post Office.

Fight well my tiny men, you have the brave DNA of old toy soldiers in you!

Previously on Man of TIN …

Here is one of the first blog posts that I wrote back in 2016 “type casting”. My WordPress avatar / host page @26soldiersoftin is still named after these famous “26 soldiers of Lead” of Gutenberg (or whoever first said this quote).

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/typecasting/

We finish with a fine picture of a dapper, almost Duke of Edinburgh looking Donald Featherstone, casting away on the kitchen stove in his cheerily enthusiastic 1960s book Tackle Model Soldiers This Way.

“In the author’s house, everyone slaves over a hot stove”. Note the plate drying rack and safety equipment of a shirt and tie. An inspiration to us all!

Inspired?

If you want to have a go at casting, these companies sell new moulds and casting equipment:

Prince August (Ireland / UK/ EU) do some great starter sets at their website

https://shop.princeaugust.ie

or their official eBay shop mouldsandminis https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/mouldsandminiatures?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

Berlinner Zinnfiguren (Germany / EU) https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Casting/

In America, Rich at Dunken has now acquired several old manufacturers’ collections of moulds https://www.dunken.com

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 17/18 April 2021.

Army Red and Blue home castings simply painted

Twa  Bonny Lads – homecast Highlander firing, repainted Britain’s Highlander charging

 

Back around January the 25th (Burns Night) I tried out some new vintage metal home cast moulds including this Highlander firing.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/burns-night-casting/

He got stuck in the mould, despite using release powder, but cleaned up nicely.

The face is not very detailed but he has a fine vintage toy soldier look. There is a distinctive casting line but not too much flash.

The original Highlander home casting. 

There is not much fine detail in the mould, whatever type of casting metal is used.

Simple paint scheme to suit a simple home cast figure. The Britain’s Highlander has a repaired rifle, again using the shaved cocktail stick method. 

I like this Highlander enough to want to cast more. A row of them firing would look a fine addition to any wargames table or garden skirmish, despite the casting line running across and obscuring any facial detail.

Another vintage metal  mould casting on the same day was this curious greatcoated steel helmet figure, a little in the small side at about 50mm.

Again this was a figure with some casting problems (hollows in the chest or backpack) but with lots of conversion potential, especially if heads were exchanged. There was more flash than you would expect from a modern home cast silicon figure, requiring a bit of filing. The rifle also failed to fill out on one or two castings.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/more-homecasting/

The Homecast steel helmeted guardsman. 

Army Red and Army Blue paint options of this Home cast figure. 

The steel helmet is oddly cast enough that it could with little filing be turned into a bush hat, or a head swap or replacement arranged.

Superb as the Prince August 54mm multipose 54mm traditional toy soldier range are (choose the head, body and arms you want)   I also like the simplicity of a single figure mould sometimes.

The slightly hollow pack in one  and chest on the other can be seen here. 

A useful and versatile figure to cast more of, and one that suits a simple gloss toy soldier paint scheme. I imagine he was intended to be painted khaki.

Not sure of the Home cast manufacturer.

Blogposted by Mark, MIN Man of TIN blog, March 2017.

 

Tintin and Imagi-Nations Games

 

One of the things I like about Tintin are the interesting ‘Euro’ nations and enemies that Belgian author and illustrator Herge created as foils for his intrepid young reporter detective Tintin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin

Great uniforms amongst enemy troops, but as a child I couldn’t work out why the Police in Tintin for example of what I took to be a supposedly British / English setting for Captain Haddock of Marlinspike Hall looked so odd.

Had Herge (I wondered as a child) never been to Britain? Slowly as I got older I realised that Herge was drawing mostly European / Belgian settings and that the books are translated all over the world.

This  ‘Glocal’ World (both Global and Local) of Herge in translation has strange villains and fake euro Imagi-Nations such as Borduria in the Calculus Affair and the regime of the villainous Kurvi-Tasch with his strangely fascist moustache logo on his very Nazi looking generals, troops and 1950s looking tanks.

Even though Tintin goes back to the 1940s, to me his books are the ‘Funny Little Cold Wars’ of the 1950s and 1960s in graphic novel / comic strip version,  akin in style and feel to the early 1960s James Bond movies with the suave and stylish Sean Connery and his menacing enemies.

A range of plastic Tintin figures / key ring figures is available online in various sizes.

Great inspiration for some enemy troops as shown with generic enemy  “red troops” or “red guards” in my Back to Basics DIY figure making blogpost:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/back-to-basics-toy-soldiers/

 

Unfinished faceless hordes of red guards based on a 1950s US Barclay podfoot dime store lead figure representing ‘enemy troops’, defending the secret base of whatever enemy regime or Imagi-Nations you choose (photo/ figures: Man of TIN)

Tintin should prove equally good inspiration  for some paint conversions of Pound Store Warriors from modern / WW2 green / toy army men.

So why not make up your own Imagi-Nations, uniforms and all?

If Tintin is not your gaming thing, then there is of course Asterix and this fabulous wargaming Asterix and the Romans website http://romansgohome.blogspot.co.uk

Fictional Enemy, Threat or Aggressor Troops  

Making up your own enemies, uniforms and all isn’t that far from the truth.

The Milihistriot Website (c/o Sheil family USA website) has an interesting section with coloured plates of threat, enemy or “aggressor” troops with adapted uniforms from military exercises:

 

Green crested helmet enemy troops as just one example of some colourful training enemies from a 1964 MIlihistriot article soldiers of Never-Never Land by James Glazer,  based on US troop manuals. These are archived at: http://www.thortrains.com/online/aggressor1.htm

Examples of 30-101 / these US troop manuals can be seen at:

https://ia600302.us.archive.org/4/items/FM30-101/FM30-101.pdf

http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/Trigons/FM30_101_1959.pdf

The fictional (Esperanto speaking!) aggressor troops had a white ensign or badge with black triangle.

http://www.thortrains.com/online/aggvehicles1.htm

These manuals have obviously inspired many of the imaginative paint finishes and uniforms on the Sheil range of vintage home cast Toy Soldier Art figures. More have been created on the same principle at their Spy Troops page: http://www.thortrains.com/online/spytroopies.htm

 

Herald infantry (like those from my family collection above) had ready made plastic ‘enemy’ troops made briefly in what the Sheils call ‘Berlin Gray’, http://www.thortrains.com/online/berlinggray.htm

http://www.thortrains.com/online/Berlin%20Grays%20%20and%20Spies.htm

Atlantic 54mm plastic soldiers, a junk shop find. (Figures / photos: Man of TIN)

Back to Tintin and Imagi-Nations

The Tintin / Calculus Affair  Kurvi-Tasch troops also have a look of the strange Atlantic modern troop figures that occasionally and erratically  appeared in shops in the 1980s, featuring an odd sort of  Euro army appearance. They looked strangely foreign, even futuristic on occasion (not quite American, not British and not German). Only later did I discover that they are meant to be Italian / Euro troop types. Atlantic figures and their strange box art are well covered in the Airfix’s Competitors chapter of my much-thumbed copy of  Airfix’s Little Soldiers by Jean Christophe Carbonel (Histoire & Collections publishers, 2009). Some of the Atlantic figures were recently reissued by NEXUS.

Happy Imagi-Nations Gaming!

Posted by Man of TIN, June 2016.

 

 

 

Home cast antique and gilt paint finishes

A very long time ago as a child I was bought a jumble job lot  of toy soldiers, mostly plastic but amongst them was this trio of metal soldiers.

I painted their hats, coats and boots but never finished them. I had no idea what they were, who made them or what to do with them as they were 40mm tall, bigger or smaller than my other figures. So no real use or match. On their base I could just make out the letters HE which meant nothing to me at the time.

Fast forward to ten years ago: poking around a craft shop on a trip to Cornwall, I discovered a tiny cache of Prince August moulds for making traditional toy soldiers which I bought straight away.

I had seen as a child intriguing adverts for this company in modelling magazines but the dangers of hot metal and shortage of pocket money as a child  meant that I never bought any.

Looking through the Prince August  online catalogue, I recognised these strange random trio of figures, their designer’s name HE (Holgar Eriksonn) and sent off for some PA moulds to find out at long last how they worked. And to give this three man patrol  some company  to pick on of their own size.

http://shop.princeaugust.ie/h-e-40mm-scale-military-moulds/

I found these figures are Prince August PA17 Musketeer, PA23 Musketeer standing and PA24 kneeling.

Playing around with paint finishes

There are many possible finishes for these shiny Prince August castings.

One suggestion is pewtering, an idea from their cast your own chess sets ‘antique finish’. Black acrylic paint is painted over the figures, then fairly quickly wiped off with a cloth or kitchen roll before fully dry.

Another alternative is the simple gilt or gold paint finish.

I tried out the gilt finish on another home casting, an American sailor drumming,  from a metal mould of a different much older (American?) manufacturer.

The older type of metal home cast moulds (usually German or American origin) have much more flash and casting lines, requiring more time and filing to clean up than a modern rubber Prince August mould.

Another gilt finish home cast Schneider mould figure in my collection with mould half.

 

This is a 1910-20s gilt finish early British lead toy soldier in my collection (Photo / Figure: Man of TIN)

Sometimes I find stray home cast  figures in junk shops and online lots that are quite crude, often overpriced such as this cowboy type figure from another metal mould (in this cast in quite soft and bendy lead).

They have a simple charm and many conversion or paint possibilities.

I have now tracked down a three figure (Schneider?) mould No. 56 of this cowboy and two Indian figures to produce more. At some point worth casting enough for a Close Little Wars home cast skirmish of settlers versus natives maybe?

Plastic Postscript 

This “fake pewter” or “antiquing”  technique can also be tried with some success on silver plastic figures from pound stores.

Compared to the original plastic figure:

Posted by Mr MIN, Man of TIN, June 2016.

OBE repaint figures #1

 

OBE figures are what Wargaming Miscellany blog author Bob Cordery calls “Other Bugger’s Efforts”, being figures painted by others that you have acquired and their credit shouldn’t be claimed by yourself.

This bunch of six repurposed or repainted Airfix WW1 British Infantry picked up in a £1 mixed bag of bashed painted OO/HO Airfix figures from a favourite second hand shop in Cornwall. (This shop  is only occasionally open when I visit, being that sort of shop, a big like the erratic supply / production of Airfix figures themselves).

Dissecting this “Airfix owl pellet”, the mixed remains of someone else’s spare or unwanted figures, I found these interesting troops.

I like their blue and red “Imagi-Nations” sort of uniform and look forward to painting them some reinforcements.

These give me some paint inspiration for Schneider home cast metal figures:

Watch this space!

Posted by Mr MIN, Man of TIN.

Typecasting

Home cast metal Schneider mould No. 80 figures beside a 19C. paper mache / composition figure (Photo / collection Man of TIN)

Type casting

“With these 26 soldiers of lead  I will conquer the world” is a saying attributed to many famous people from history and world leaders from Gutenberg onwards to Benjamin Franklin and Karl Marx.

This quote’s origin  is explored more fully in this interesting typography blog:

http://typefoundry.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/with-twenty-five-soldiers-of-lead-he.html

“… I am the leaden army that conquers the world: I am type!”

The 25 or 26 soldiers of lead are of course the lead print letters of the alphabet in a printer’s case.

From a 1960s Ladybird book The Story of Printing

The 25 or 26 soldiers of lead also remind me of Hans Christian Andersen’s story The Steadfast Tin Soldier, where the source of metal is an old tin spoon, melted down to make almost 25 soldiers, including  one incomplete soldier with one leg and a complicated love life.

“Prowl the car boot sales, you can probably pick pint mugs up for around 50p” is Iain Dickie’s advice in sourcing old pewter mugs to melt down for soldier metal in Wargaming on a Budget (Pen & Sword, 2010).

Iain Dickie talks wisely about the dangers and safety measures around melting and moulding lead on the kitchen stove or table, where food is prepared.

Other writers like Theodore Gray in Gray Matters on the Popsci blog in the USA talk more about the apparent and often disputed risks of lead casting toys of the past: http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-01/getting-lead-out2

The classic book War Games (1962) by Donald Featherstone, ex-wartime tank sergeant and peacetime physiotherapist, had a short section on how to make your own model figures in plaster of Paris moulds.

Proper DIY figure making in Donald Featherstone’s Wargames  (Stanley Paul, 1962)

“One part of printer’s type, which can usually be obtained from the local printer, who usually has a considerable surplus of cuttings and small pieces“, Donald Featherstone says.

These scraps of lead from printers as a source of lead was obviously from the pre-computer days when Fleet Street and local printers still used lead type faces. Vanished world …

I remember when this technology change happened in the 1980s, when suddenly loads of printers’ type trays were on the market. Not sure if they were UPPER CASE or lower cases.

At first sight these trays looked good display frames for figures but were quite shallow and  without a glass cover, you’d be forever dusting. Another manly household chore to add to “slaving over a hot stove” as Donald Featherstone mentions below.

I love this photograph, and this is how I always think of Donald Featherstone; I always feel underdressed and under groomed when casting, compared to this. Note the nifty plate warming rack and lack of safety goggles. This photo is in Donald Featherstone’s  book Tackle Model Soldiers this Way (pub. Stanley Paul, 1965)