The melting pot cometh!

Good news from my brother - the little elf who is busying away with all the clever production stuff that I don't understand! Thank goodness for a technically minded bruv who is taking possession of a Lee Production Pot!

He's been making some terrific progress with his investigations into metal casting and has even tried out the process with a commercial mould made by Prince August...

Ian picked up this Prince August mould on eBay quite cheaply and the
quality looks superb. Believe it or not he used a second hand pewter
tankard as the source of his metal!

However, ever the perfectionist, he has decided that the ad hoc 'kitchen hobby' way of doing things wasn't the way to go and he wanted something a little more sturdy for working with molten metal (and something less likely to end up setting fire to him and his house)! Hence the Lee pot.

The eventual goal is for him to cast 'Harry' in metal. Obviously this is a long term project as poor Harry hasn't even got arms or a head yet - but knowing my brother he will spend a lot of time now perfecting his new skill until he is satisfied with the process and the quality of his castings.

...In my head, though, I am starting to think of the prospect of a metal Molaterian regiment! One can but dream.

Arms shipment arrives - French rifles

"The Office of the War Department of Molatero is pleased to announce that it has just taken delivery of some of the very latest rifles in order to evaluate their suitability as the new standard infantry weapon. The Lebel and Berthier rifles exemplify some of the latest technological advancements in infantry long arms and will complete with other designs to become the sole model of firearm that will replace the diverse, and in some cases obsolete, infantry weapons that currently make up our army's inventory." General de Brigadă Mustăți-Mari, 1907. 

Today I received a small package from Reedees Miniature containing two packets of their 1/32 resin model rifles. As normal, before I go trying to scratch build anything I like to examine a commercial example of a similar object first so I can get a sense of scale and level of detail required.

The Reedees Minatures 1/32 scale resin rifles; top is the Lebel
and bottom is the more modern Berthier.

The two rifle sets I received were the 1886 Lebel set and the 1907 Berthier set, both representing state of the art French rifles from the turn of the 19th/20th century. To be frank, the only reason that I sourced these French models was that I could not find any other 1/32 scale model rifles - I would have preferred a Mosin-Nagant or a Mannlicher style rifle if I could have found one.

However, these lovely Reedees models are very fine examples of the model makers art and will do just nicely for my purposes. I have a good idea of scale and can work on a Mosin-Nagant of my own, taking the scale measurements from the Reedees guns.

I'm not sure if I will be able to match the Reedees models for quality, but they do give me a target to shoot for!

There are two rifles per pack, and the packs are £4.50 each - prices, as you might guess, are really for the ardent display modeller!

Links: Reedees Miniatures (UK)

> Wikipedia: The Lebel M1886 Rifle
> Wikipedia: The Berthier Rifle

Putting the boot in on Harry

Harry has some new boots! And thank goodness the addition of the sturdy footwear has transformed my figure's looks from Christmas elf lookalike to something a little more soldierly.

I finally feel this sculpture is coming together.

Next job will be to sand down the boots to give them a nice smooth polished finish and also add some folds of material where the trousers tuck into the boots. But we are getting there folks!

Thinking ahead, I have to start to work on arm poses as, obviously, Harry will be holding something eventually. My plan is to do two versions of Harry, one with his walking pose as is and then an alternative where he is standing to attention.

From here - with these two generic leg poses - I can model a variety of standard military stances, by making a variety of arm sets, such as;

• Shoulder/slope arms
• Port arms
• Present arms
• Order arms
• Sling arms

Link: Refer to this British Army basic Rifle Drill Positions web page (Opens in new window)

If I want my soldier to be firing his weapon I will then have to consider modifying Harry into a third leg/body pose - with body angled and legs apart. So I would end up with three figures in the 'Harry' series:

• Harry - relaxed pose (at ease), walking or marching.
• Harold - attention, and basic rifle drill position.
• Henry - dynamic, firing pose or field gun loader, etc.

Luckily, once I have Harry's body done - and duplicated in resin - it will be an easier job to simply convert his body into the other two poses. This should give me the basic tool box I need to make a variety of soldiers.

The uniform's usefulness
I should mention something about his uniform and boots design to finish with. I've tried to pick a fairly generic looking uniform design, one which could be easily used to represent a wide variety of nation's soldiers. Obviously the addition of the high jack boots narrows this universal usefulness, I would - for example - have to modify the figure's trousers if I wanted to depict British Army style infantry (but that would be very easy).

But for a continental European army the jack boots will be a fairly common and useful dress addition. You may be able to visualise that Harry could be the basis for Germanic soldier, or American CW trooper, or - as I had in mind - a soldier of the Balkans. The key to all this universality will, of course, be the headdress - a series of which I will eventually be designing too.

Onwards and upwards dear friends!

The Nordenfelt machine gun

Source: WIkipedia

I have a particular fondness - if that's the right word - for primitive hand-cranked machine guns, the Maxim gun is a little new fangled for my tastes! Being that Molatero is a tad behind the times and it's army desperately in need of modernisation I imagine there are quite a few of these peculiar weapons still in service.

Of particular note is the European manufactured Nordenfelt. I became aware of this gun in a novel by Douglas Reeman about the Royal Marines during the Boxer Rebellion called 'First to Land'. What struck me was the notion - expressed in the book - that the British sailors and marines apparently preferred the old hand-cranked Nordenfelt to the Maxim, which was then just coming into service (what serviceman ever likes 'new' things).

Anyway, I was trying to describe the operation of this antique machine gun to my brother - badly - and have been in search of a video that better illustrates how this five-barreled  wonder worked. As usual YouTube has come to my rescue with this very informative little segment by (appropriately) 'Forgotten Weapons'...

Small things...

Creeping progress on Cuthbert, but some progress is still progress. I've been working on his arms and his pose and also on a small pair of binoculars.

Still some putty work to finish off but that's about it. So that's the four crewmen for my heavy field gun team

I've really enjoyed this set as they are such little characters, which makes me think that I'd like to focus on making the rest of my soldiers little characters too.

This means continuing with a similar style of face or head sculpt. I know this may mean my toy soldiers may be more caricatures than historical miniatures, but I find this more fun.