Ressurrection of Long Lost Figures I have put back into Production this year.

I also have a number of original TROPHY Figure Moulds and a numer of Under two Flags items being casted again.

For the avoidance of doubt, we own the Rights (to those specific) sets NOT to the entire trophy range !!!). I DO own the entire U2F Range however, except for the Airfield buildings

What Under Two Flags figures are you considering redoing as I am interested in their British and Indian Army handlers and mules?

Hi NZ SCOTS.
A wee river has flowed beneath the bridge since we posted the original albums.
Initial hopes have turned rather sour......

We purchased the surviving tooling from the now closed own N Z Fleurbaix TS Company (Abraham and Anastasia Simon). Or "so we thought"......

I did make a first run casting of U2F, and we have a "Mould" containing Indian Colonial and British Colonial Pith Helmeted figures, and some Mules. But they fail to cast up without flash and mould lines, and roughness. I have tried experimenting with counterweighting on the tooling, with moderate success.
I got a few as castings being deburred and cleaned up, but not a complete run of a full set....

THE U2F MOULD'S SURVIVING

There are some Camel Riders and R.C.M Police, a Colonial Gun Crew, Mounted Colonial Troops, a water wagon, Egyptian and Sudanese Infantry (with British Officers). A few of these MIGHT (I say MIGHT, I can't promise) cast up alright with some minor tinkering....

But "rough" figures are generaly resulting, not "interesting", which take hours and hours to pare away the flash and heavy lines and heavy oversized thick sprue gates made by A N OTHER non-original toolmaker.

I have cast up some Egyptian Sudanese soldiers, and a Colonial Gun crew team in Pith Helmets (not the same as the other Mountford ones). The stuff is badly flashed, with heavy join lines and takes an age to clean up....
This effectively means IF we sell any that are GOOD (we are putting together painted display models we might also sell one day), they are alas not likely to be very cheap....but rather expensive....

Sadly, upon delivery, though "sold the full range" and catalogue showing it all, and "all rights" rather a lot of the U2F items were missing (Masters) and the Moulds upon earlier first casting runs manifested severe warping and bending due to carelessness during the cargo shipping (which took fifty days and there was an incident of theft and pilfering of cargo contents.

They threw all the Moulds back inside, and they were not flatly stacked or stored after this, resulting in severe damage through twisting and bending.

Some of the stuff was so cracked and broken that it has been sadly written off. We had to inform the Insurance Investigator that the quantity of bent and broken, or plain stolen "missing" items has resulted in the Business simply not being rentable or able to make a realistic return of profit in this state.

Many Moulds and figures were stolen, leaving great big holes in the product range, impossible to now make again.

My wife and I have been terribly badly burned financially by all this, and we informed the N Z Police. It's left us some Thousands out of Pocket. For no positive gain or return commercially or even personaly.

We are pursuing the Cargo Theft and Pilfering Damage through an Insurance Investigator.

Many Moulds are bent (rather like the sellers and or shippers !!) and sadly can't be used seriously in production.
The actual number of merchantable figures or kits is so low from each run that it will never cover our time, effort, energy, or materials.

Re-making EVERYTHING (all moulds, all masters) is not a realistic, financially viable option; we did not purchase a scrap salvage operation, but a genuine, bona fide Business. This quite simply was not the case, and we finally bought what turns out to have been really a lot of leftover rubbish.

Sadly, this has proved true for DUCAL, ROSEDALE, and MOUNTFORD as well, with broken, smashed, incomplete Masters, Damaged Moulds, Missing Mould parts "Inserts" and a number of identical, but inferior, non-original non professional moulds. This is especially poor in the 120 mm larger figure series.

Other Moulds "painted over" turned out to be a mixture of Brian Wallace's Music in Miniature range and some Ducal tools.....another disaster we did not want to find. So the Music in Miniature range is all mixed up and far from what it was purported to be as well.

Other Moulds are NOT ORIGINAL but are substituted items made by somebody else (likely after Gregg Simon had an unexplained fire ). Many of our toolings are copied moulds, not balanced properly, stuffed full of mixed-up parts (some contain 120 mm and 54 mm parts), and just trying to get enough parts to assemble or make up a figure set or kit is a real nightmare, taking days and days and weeks of trouble.
We find Medieval mixed in with Victorian, 54mm with 120 and 100 mm, and many incomplete kits and figures that just can't any longer be made anymore as the mould masters are gone.....

If we CAN put together a GOOD set of the Mules and Figures you would like, we will let you know.