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| Contiuing with putting figures together, as well as making it possible to produce the spearman from the chariot set as a figure in it's own right. |
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| Same sort of thing with the missile troops, as well as enabling me to produce the chariot archer in numbers a lot easier. I also took the opportunity to include the scythes from the Seleucid scythed chariot, SES1. |
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| For the Egyptians, basiclly a need for decent production moulds in the first place - probably still need to do another one eventually. |
The nitty gritty of moulding, moulds etc always interests me, good to see what goes in one to maximise its use.
ReplyDeleteDifferent moulds for different purposes with cost being important! Basically 2 kinds of mould - master and production. Pretty obvips really - make a master figure, put several masters on one mould, then the first few batches you cast from this give you multiple figures to put on master moulds. If you know you will produce masses of a particular figure you might even make a mould where all the figures are the same; cost comes into this though. You could also block groups of figures - command groups for example. Given a choice, those three moulds would have been six, with far more figures of one type on the mould. It's cost!
DeleteYes - Family moulds vs single figure moulds (or small groups.) I sometimes think it's a "dark art" figuring out which to do. Somebody once told me 1 figure = 1 mould (with 12-15 of that figure!) but as you say: that is expensive! A Family Mould with one or two of each figure is no good if the cavities fail. I suppose that is how some figures historically have been "lost" in various ranges/manufacturers - the cavity won't make good castings anymore and the master has disappeared. I know of one small business who was selling figures spun from the master mould - no money to make production moulds and never expected the range to gain much interest (though it did!)
DeleteThat's why you need to have a useable master mould, plus a good idea to hold back a few examples of the first products of that mould as future replacements if new moulds are needed. I have boxes of old figures that are there for just that reason. Sometimes only having two of a particular figure on a production mould is needed - I reckon I need to use/sell about 170 figures from a mould to make it break even - lots of the moulds I make aren't even going to get close. That's the 'hobby' side of the coin!
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ReplyDeleteCan't claim credit for making the moulds :)
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