Casting Material

For the forseeable future I will be casting in a metal mixture obtained directly from the supplies of Reaper Miniatures. My experience with this metal has been positive, with strong castings that have both excellent detail and some flexibility for adjustment. Many longtime collectors have found my castings to have better detail and quality when compared to the originals. I credit this fact to the metal, my own quality control and the superb molds of former Heritage master moldmaker Willard Dennis.

A note to lead addicts:

Some have requested that I cast in pure lead and I have chosen not to for legal and safety related reasons. I have even been accused of devaluing the collections of some, but my modern castings are easy to differentiate from vintage lead. A serious collector should have no trouble telling them apart, if anything the vintage pieces often don't look as good. I've actually been selling my own loose vintage lead minis from the lines I own to replace them in my collection with my own castings. Most of my masters do not have original base markings and I am making an atempt to have the original base markings of others removed. I prefer pewter to lead for several reasons. Lead is a soft metal and I've had occasional issues with dented figures & loss of detail with minimal contact. The vintage figures in my collection were cast from many different lead mixtures, some of which were of the lowest quality of scrap the manufacturer could obtain.  Some, like my later Heritage Dungeon Dweller pieces are extremely brittle and break easilly. Others like my vintage lead Archive & Grenadier Solid Gold Line pieces are extremely susceptible to lead rot and corrosion.

One thing I've learned about collecting is that it's like beatuty: the value is in the eye of the beholder. Overall I'm sure most of us got into collecting because we liked the sculpting of various miniatures. That was and still is what motivates me the most. I'm not interested in the metal in which a figure is cast as long as it's the highest quality copy of the original sculpt possible. Loose minis I hope to someday have painted and mounted for wargaming use. Once painted the composing metal won't matter to me. I have some sealed packs in my collection for nostalgic purposes. Seeing the sealed packs of vintage minis and the individual sculpts are what brings back the warm and fuzzy memories for me, not the metal in which they were cast.

Some collectors have different opinions, many of which are very strongly held. Some collectors, like David "Dungeon Dwellers" Campbell, I can joke with freely about his devotion lead. Others have pro-lead opinions so strongly held and vigorously advocated they remind me of the most extreme political & religious fanatics in history. This group is splintered like many of the world's religions. Some want lead castings and don't care when they were made, others must have lead that was made "back in the day" by the original manufacturer and nothing else. The most ardent of those with whom I've spoken seem to have replaced their original  love of the sculpt with a single-minded & stronger devotion to the metal in which it was cast. I know that some like lead for being easier to work with in figure modification and other simply hate the "look" of the raw pewter figures. Each to his own and I have respect for everyone's proudly built collection.

A note about recasting:

The industry standard definition of a recast is a figure made from a mold of an original production figure. This often results in a loss of detail and a slight loss in size, a common phenomena when making a copy of a copy. Some have claimed that a recast is any figure made after the original date of production while others attribute the term to a figure made of a material other than the original, neither of which is true.

I worked hard to legally obtain the lines that I own and address my battles with illegal recasters on my "Warning!" page. For the lines I own I prefer to utilize vintage original molds of good quality and new molding made from original masters to ensure a product that is as good if not better than the vintage mass produced lead original. In some cases original molds and masters have been lost or destroyed. In this case I must "recast" an original production figure and go to great lengths to obtain the best possible examples, even if it means opening sealed pcaks from my collection. Thanks to the craftsmanship of moldmaker Willard Dennis the few recast figures that have been molded so far are indistinguishable from the originals, either in size or detail.

As I state on my "About Us" page I am casting because I love miniatures and I enjoy sharing them with fellow collectors. Unfortunately there are lines of minis that are dead, in other words the molds and masters are destroyed and and there is no current owner of the line or the last owners let the meterials rot to uselessness. That situation applies to Heritage Fantasy/Fantasy Fantastics, Fantastiques and Star Trek. All of these lines ceased production years before Heritage went under and they were not sold at the Heritage auction. Former employees told me specifically that the Fantasy/Fantasique line ceased production becuase it was considered outmoded and when the company switched locations shortly thereafter the molds were dumpsterized. All that survived are a few cavities in Heritage master molds.

Thankfully I ended up with some of these precious molds and I am making available limited quantities of these figures for collectors. While I don't "own" these lines myself, that last owner is a company that has been defunct for almost a quarter century and that company destroyed the molds themselves. As a collector I don't want these magnificent figures to disappear into darkness forever. By all means, I truly believe that if figures are being produced they should be bought from the parent company to support their efforts, ownership should be respected. When there is no longer a legitimate, legal owner, the collector and preservationist in me takes over to insure something special is not lost for good. I legally own everything else I produce, but felt I needed to address my limited production of these pieces.