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