Casting Report: French Artillery Part 2 of 3 : Prince August Mould Set No. 80-12

The second mould set was as easy as the first one. So I am making it short.

Two hints:

1. The large openings normaly need some time to cool down. If you open the mould to fast it can happen that the a part of the material is still liquid. Don't be to hasty.

2. I forgot this the last time : Drill a little hole through the moulds where the noses of the soldiers heads are. This helps to sharpen the contours of the faces.

 

A failure

Drilling a little hole through the nose.

And voilá, the face has conturs. We can't easily add a nose but we can shorten one if it is to long.

Here are views of the three moulds:

I expected the ramrod to be difficult here. But no...

...the outline of the cuff was the problem. Drill a little hole to the outside so that the air can move out of that dead end and all is fine.

A soldier with a water bucket.

And the officer was also no problem.

Next will be the gun.

Casting Report: French Artillery Part 1 of 3 : Prince August Mould Set No. 80-09

These first three men where made a few month ago before I started this blog. Now I wanted to finish the 54mm french artillery and a casting session later I had all the stuff to show you the three mould sets.  We start with set no. 80-09, three french artillerymen.

The first thing we notice is that the boys are wearing headgear that we don't expect when we think of the napoleonic era. Prince August shows the figures with a hat that the french artillery wore in the first years of the 19th century. The shako for the artillery was, according to Knötel (famous german uniform researcher and painter of the 19th century), introduced in 1810. The artillery of the french guard wore bearskin hats in the later years.

But that's not a problem, because the heads are interchangeable. If you want to represent later periods or regiments, you will find the heads for those in the other moulds of that series. But I stay with this setup. Not everything has to be related to the time of Waterloo.

These are the parts that came out of the mould.

Admittedly, I've only given very little thought about the amount of 54mm figures I am going to create or use so I decided that 3 or 4 guns would be enough for me at the moment. And so three castings from every man in the sets seemed to be enough. 

This mould needed no adjustments..

I made some airvents here : For the hat, the smaller parts and on the soldiers base. The two vents to his left are needed because otherwise the contour of his shoulder would not come out correctly. (Yes, I forgot to insert the plastic rod.)

The same here, some airvents make your life much easier.