My Prince Has Arrived!

The order from Prince August, that is...


Over the past two weeks, my orders from Prince August arrived here and there. When I first ordered the SYW molds, I did not intend to immediately get into casting. That was rather foolish of me.

After the first of two packages arrived, I immediately realized how silly I was and ordered some metal from Prince August. Five orders later, I now realize I should have just ponied up the dough and ordered 50 bars...as though my budget could afford it.

Now, I went through most of my first eight bars today and I have ten more that should arrive any day now (I expected them today).

I had my mate, Brent, come over and we cast up some figures to test things out. Oooh.. the bug has done grasped on to me. Yowtch!

As the Prince August hotplate is only for EU use, I had to order a Lyman casting pot, usually used for melting lead for bullets. I went large and got the 10 pound capacity, nearly going with the 20 pound pot. I am glad I didn't as it would have been a chore to get the molten metal out. I probably should have gone with the bottom poor version, where I would not need a ladle, but I wanted to start the old fashioned way.

Here's my box of molds. I've the SYW Prussian set, plus a SYW Austrian Fusilier and Grenadier mold, and a Hessian officer mold that I got on sale. I also have the SYW artillery mold set, with molds for crew, guns, and carriage.

A few of the infantry. I could have gone for me, but we chose to give the artillery piece molds a test.

The barrels are beauties. This is the result of the very first pour on this mold. Perfection!

And so our "test" turned into a "plan." We've got a large convention coming to our town for the first time, in January. Brent and I wanted to put on a game, so.....We're going to run Maurice at 40mm.

The game will be smallish, only 8 battalions (16 figs per), 4 squadrons (8 figs per), and 2 guns (1 gun and 4 crew per) for each side. Um.. yeah, so those are the guns and carriages that we cast up. The infantry had a bit of flashing around the barrels and bayonets, but we can easily clean that off with a hobby knife.

I did have all sorts of trouble with the wheel for the gun carriage. I just could not get all the spokes to form. After a bit of experimenting, I realized I had too much pressure on that part of the mold, from the clamp. I shifted the clamps around and they cast up perfectly.

The only problem is that I think the molds are missing a piece. The gun carriage looks as though it is meant to have an elevation block, as there is a slot for it, but the piece is not present in the mold and the gun barrels will now be far too elevated.  I guess some green stuff will have to make do.

I asked and Prince August told me that they expect to release the cavalry molds soon. However, unless the are available before December, I am going to have to use their Wild Geese or Karoliner cavalry molds.

If someone knows of another alternative mold that fits well with these, please let me know.

In all, I'm going to need to cast up 208 infantry, 16 officers on foot, 16 standard bearers, 16 standard bearers, 64 cavalry (including command), and 16 gunners. I already have the guns done. :)

At approximately 5 infantry figures per bar of model metal, that's a lot of metal, just over 51 bars in fact. So, with the 40 bars enroute, I will need about 12 more to finish off the infantry. I expect I will get maybe 2 cavalry figures per bar, and so another 32 bars, with 2 to 3 bars for the artillery crew. Of course, I will need a mounted general per side, thus another bar or two. Say an even 60 bars of metal to go.

Sadly, there is not a local source for metal alloys, otherwise I could probably save some money on the metal.

40mm figures at approximately $1 per infantry figure is not bad. These should be fairly quick to paint up and base; we're going old school on the bases, so no flock needed. 40mmx60mm bases for the infantry and cavalry, and slightly larger for the artillery.

Painted up in the colors of a couple of my ImagiNations and it will be a nice way to play a game.