Is it a toy soldier or a model soldier? (1 Viewer)

Very interesting posts by Ken which gives collectors an insight into what goes into producing figures. I produced some figure kits about ten years ago and remember carefully costing everything along the way. A very significant factor was the development/sculpting/design costs as that had to be factored into the price very carefully. For example if the sculptor charges $2,000 and you are only making 100 then they cost $20 per piece before you actually make the item. Then when you have them made there is how do you
sell them ?!
Some may have seen the first Forces of Valor 1/16 scale King Tiger that came in a wooden crate about 4 years ago. There were only 2,000 made and I remember doing the maths based on what I knew the wholesale price was and guessing the development costs and thinking it was a loss making item. They would only have made money on the second one a year later. So they must have had deep pockets to set up their production.
In relation to calling them miniatures, toy soldiers or models etc for me the person who buys them is the one who decides what he calls them when discussing with his mates.
When talking to a person who has no previous experience of them I tend to use the term collectable handpainted figures/soldiers.
Brett
 
Ken,
I hope you can get back to this thread when you have time from your busy schedule.
Mark
 
Hello All!
Where in the world does all of the time go? It has ben pretty busy between shows, sculpting deadlines and the usual details of life in general.

The first three points I mentioned under category B have been touched upon earlier in this thread:
1. Marketability
2. Ease of Manufacturer
3. Price Point

This brings us to number 4... Durability.
This is probably one of the single most important factors that really sets the miniatures created for categories A and B apart.

The durability of the items created for category A, or the museum, film and art models, is rarely a consideration. The models and sculptures will usually be fabricated by one individual or a small team and these items will usually be hand carried to the end use location.
Once delivered they may be set in a long term display, be used short term and then be discarded (movie use) or will be acquired by a collector that often will hand carry them to a location to display them in a protected environment.
All of these conditions allow fragile miniatures that can be fabricated with a multitude of small parts and dissimilar materials.

This is far from the case for the items that fall in the B category. As mentioned earlier, almost every pre-decorated historical miniature falls into this category. In most cases these products must survive handling in several locations by several different groups of people.

The personnel that package the product at the factory
The bulk shipping by unrelated shipping agents
The breakdown of the bulk shipment to fill retails orders
The shipment by various vendors to retailers
The unpacking and display by retailers
The handling by prospective owners
The transport to the final location
The unpacking and packing for storage

Most manufacturers will think about this in the design of their products to minimize damage at most of these stages. damaged products can relate to a loss in a sale, reduced profit or a damaged reputation to the brand.
Most well designed packaging will protect the contents in drop tests at the factory before the final product is approved. Often the item must survive falls of two feet and the jarring of impact. This is why die cut foam and vacuum molded plastic is commonly used for commercial packaging.

Even with all of these precautions in packaging design, the product itself has to be durable enough to make it from the factory to it's final home...

To be continued soon,
Ken
 
so to continue...
In order for the figures to arrive to the various collections in a reasonable condition the protective packaging is paramount, but what about the figures, animals and vehicles in them?

Most of the items currently available use one or more materials to duplicate the original design in a small to medium production run. These can range anywhere from as low as 35 sets to 2500. Some of the most common materials encountered today in historical collectibles include but are not limited to:

Spin cast White Metal Alloy.
This can be a mixture of basic metals including Lead, Tin, Copper and other trace metals to improve flow. Although Lead was once the principal metal in the alloy, Tin has replaced it as the material of choice for several reasons. The near elimination of Lead in many of the current products minimizes the liability of exposure to the metal.
Usually the weight of a figure, or the dull thud sound if tapped on the base will indicate if there is a fair amount of Lead in the alloy.

Resins
This material is often used for larger castings where white metal may be prohibitive in cost. Typically the vehicles produced today will have some, or all of the larger components made from this material.
There are two principal materials commonly used today.

Polyester Resin: This material is usually used with some inert filler such as marble dust, micro balloons, powdered metal and any other number of materials. Today some manufacturers will refer to this as polystone.
The telltale sign of this material is often the oder from off gassing when the item is first opened from it's packaging.
One of the drawbacks to this material is the shrinkage from prototype molding to casting... sometimes as much as 7% depending on the filler. This can make the engineering difficult as the locator pins, if used, may shift during curing. The other problem is that the material is often brittle and prone to chipping or even more catastrophic breakage if dropped. With that said it is still the material of choice in bringing low production vehicles to the collectors at reasonable prices.

Urethane Resin: This material will also use similar fillers but has far less shrinkage than the Polyester Resins. This can be as low as 1% with certain fillers and smaller castings. It is generally easier to work with, and environmentally more manageable in the manufacturing environment. This is the most commonly used material for prototyping and kit production in North America.
The downside is that the material is more expensive than the Polyester Resins and as a result it is not generally encountered in much of the offshore manufacturing at this time.

Photo Etch:
This is a type of Chemical milling using acid to remove unwanted areas from a metal plate. The flat artwork for a part is transferred to a plate that is prepared with a resist. It is then submerged in the Chemical bath for a specific amount of time to create parts, often very delicate for detailing. The resulting parts are then washed, cleaned and removed from the remaining metal. This process can create scale profiles and small parts, but are usually delicate enough that they arrive damaged in even low run production runs.
The common metals used are Brass, Copper and Stainless Steel. Dies are often milled from Magnesium.

Molded Urethane Foam:
This can be referred to as Reaction Injection Molding, and chemically is similar to the Urethane Resins. This material is useful for large projects such as ship hulls and larger scenics. It is available in different densities and is lightweight. The downside is that it also has a distortion factor because of the way the material forms, so it is not useful for detailed models that require precision.

So all of the materials have their strengths and their limitations.

As white metal is the most common material used for casting figures and animals we need to take a closer look at these alloys and how this basic material can effect the look of your collectible.

To be continued...
 
Almost of the of white metal figures and animals we currently see on the market are centrifugally cast, often referred to as 'spin cast'.

The original patterns are duplicated as mold masters, these in turn are used to create a vulcanized rubber mold for production. This can be Room Temperature Vulcanized (RTV) silicone material for low production or heat and pressure vulcanized rubber for large production. The latter is very much like the material your automobile tires are made from.

The molds commonly used for centrifugal casting, have cavities of the item to be produced evenly placed around the mold with gateways to them radiating from the center.
To cast them, the mold is clamped in place in a casting machine and then spun at a speed appropriate for the alloy mix being used. The molten metal enters in a center hole and quickly flows to the cavities placed around the outer areas of the mold producing copies of the original pattern. The mold fills in seconds.
The mold continues to spin as the metal cools enough to have it opened and the parts removed.
This whole process is repeated over and over until the production run is completed.

The castings as they come from the mold must be removed from the runners and gateways, cleaned of any 'flashing' that might occur where the two mold half's meet and be organized for the next stage of production.

The quality of the casting is dependent on several factors:

The design of the original pattern
The number of parts that the completed item will contain
The gating and venting of the mold
The condition of the mold
The alloy mix used
The clamping pressure used in the mold
The speed that the mold is spun
The correct temperate of the alloy used

Mistakes in one or more of these areas can affect the quality of the castings, thus compromising the finished product very early on.
Although very delicate parts can be centrifugally cast these are often confined to commercial kits because of durability of the very parts or the assembly as a whole.
Some of the finest casting available today are made for the Model Railroad Industry. When all of the small parts are cleaned and assembled the fine scale realism can be amazing.
The military miniature kit market has also offered some amazingly detailed kits over the years consisting of large main castings and a number of smaller detail parts to add to the main casting. The finished assembly can be very impressive.
Although a wonderful scale figure could be made from just white metal alloy castings, there are usually compromises made for the pre-decorated collectibles market for sound business reasons:

Cost control in design, sculpting and engineering
Time management to insure new product flow
Ease of part duplication and assembly
Ease of decoration
Ease of packaging design
Durability of the finished product in shipping and handling
Long term durability of the finished product.

These things... and others will invariably effect the final appearance of the pre-decorated collectible miniature to some degree. This is also the reason that most of the figures in the smaller scales we collect (1/35th to 1/28th) have true scale issues separating them from the models created in category A.

To be continued...
 
Hi Again!
As I mentioned earlier all of the materials used today to create miniatures have their advantages and their weaknesses. White metal alloy is still the traditional material of choice for most pre-decorated military miniatures offered in scales between 1/35th and 1/28th scale. Scales smaller than this are usually undecorated castings and larger that 1/28th are specialty products beyond the core of collectors today.

For the moment I will choose 1/32 as a scale size and relate it to some real world items, or 1/1 scale. As you will quickly see a dead on scale figure with all of the equipment can be quite fine in cross section and as a result they are often modified to an aesthetically acceptable adjusted size to be durable enough to survive all of the shipping and handing mentioned earlier.

As a model maker and sculptor I often start with the correct proportions of the weapons and equipment on paper and then adjust them in size and proportion to be more viable to the process and end use of the miniature.

I have three weapons close to my bench at the moment that we can measure and then scale at 1/32. I will keep it to a few smaller parts to make my point for now:

WWII German K-98 manufactured in 1937
Barrel diameter at muzzle is about 5/8" at full size
This would calculate out at .019" or .496 mm

Cleaning rod diameter at about 3/16"
This calculates to .005" or .148 mm

Sling thickness (one layer of leather) at 1/8"
This would be .003" or .099 in 1/32 scale

British new land pattern musket manufactured between 1795 -1803
Barrel diameter is about 7/8" at the muzzle
This would be .027" or .694 mm in 1/32 scale

Ramrod diameter at 5/16"
The scale size would be .009" or .248 mm

US Rose pattern NCO sword 1795-1820
The blade thickness is 5/32" at midpoint
The scale thickness would be .004" or .124 mm in 1/32 scale

Just with these few calculations it becomes clear why the pre-decorated figures that are currently offered are usually inaccurate from a scale point of view. In most cases we cannot even justify calling them scale models. If we held the dimensions to true scale most of the fine details would most likely be destroyed in the simple shipping and handling required to bring them from the manufacturer to the collector.

The models built as one of a kind competition, art or museum models are often much closer to actual scale, but even here the smaller scales may need some cross section adjustment. In some cases this is even done for aesthetic reasons as some true scale items can appear too fine as a miniature.

A rifle or musket barrel may be too small at a given scale to be viable for a pre-decorated mass produced product.
The K-98 barrel scaling at .019" or .496 mm in 1/32, or even .020" or .529 mm in 1/30, will probably have to be increased in size.
This is done to insure that the mold cavity fills consistently and that the part will not get distorted or broken somewhere along the line, all the way from factory to the collector.

The simple problem is that there are proportional issues that must be taken into account if the barrel diameter is increased significantly. If it grows very much then many, if not all of the other parts of the weapon must be adjusted to maintain the look and lines of the real world item. This can also translate to the length of the item... if the barrel is bigger in diameter then it might appear too short if the scale length is held to.
This has been done so often now that to some eyes a true scale weapon may even appear too small.

So most of the products currently offered in the pre-decorated category B are semi scale miniatures. They give the impression of a human being or an animal in a particular time and place.

These same issues of real scale communicate to almost every aspect of what we accept in our collectibles too.
These size adjustments in weapons and equipment can affect the size of vehicles, buildings and scenics to keep some kind of continuity.
Another example is the base that must be on almost any figure for it to stand up. This simple element will distort the size relationship of the figure when placed next to a vehicle that rests directly on its wheels or tracks. The figures can look too tall or the vehicle too small.

Real proportions are almost impossible for most of us to achieve and this is very apparent when creating dioramas.

Typically a model railroader interested in following a true prototype will learn this early on and just accept the limitations. This is almost always a selective process tough, with some items being very close to true scale and other things, especially the distance between items selectively compressed.

This is not an attack on what we are producing and collecting, just a realistic evaluation. Many of the things that make some of the one of a kind miniatures so attractive in the competition and custom sector of category A are just not practical from a business standpoint. Even with limited runs in category B, the product will require many different people, often at great distances from the end users. This has always been the Achilles heel of any mass produced collectible when directly compared to custom made works.

For those of you following these ramblings... Thanks!
To be continued soon...
Ken
 
Following the ramblings with interest Ken, as always. Very informative.

Cheers
Simon
 
Hey Ken,
Any chance of continuing this.I know how busy you've been the last 5 months (and probably still are) but this was really interesting.
Mark
 
Hi Mark!
You know it crossed my mind the other day and I was a bit worried that too much time had passed to pick this up again.

We have been so busy for the past few months that time has just flown by. With the catalog deadlines, the Chicago OTSN and Williamsburg shows, and yet another catalog to start the new year, it seems like only yesterday!

Perhaps I will recap this subject and dive back in in a few days. It is pretty clear that the two disciplines seem to be merging closer together after a long time drifting apart. These developments have been pretty rapid, and in some ways have caught many collectors and manufacturers off guard.
Thanks for the interest,

All the Best,
Ken
 
Thanks for repling so fast Ken.For myself and probably others the inner workings of our little hobby hold great interest.Looking forward to seeing your posts.
Mark
 
Hello everyone!


Thanks for the good and well information and Thank you for your posts. I find them quite interesting. Please continue when you return. I await your future posts and i will be back soon..
 
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