Artillery Equipment Is Coming Soon!

Artillery components (L-R Top Row): French Valliere 4-pdr; American-cast 6-pdr; British 6-pdr; and 3-pdr Galloper.

I have already posted pix of the artillery components over on my Facebook page, TMP and my own Der Alte Fritz Journal blog and realized that I had not shown them here. Doh! The pieces are at the caster now and production moulds are in process, so it shouldn't be too much longer before we have inventory and are ready to ship from our growing artillery park.

Fife & Drum artillery will initially include:

French 4-pdr (Valliere System)
American cast 6-pdr
British 6-pdr
3pdr Galloper gun (includes limber chassis "C" in pix above)

We will also have a two horse limber team, a driver, an amusette with wooden mantle, the British artillery limber, and the galloper limber chassis, all of which are shown in the second row above from left to right. Below are a couple of pictures of the component greens loosely "assembled" so that you can see how they might look when assembled.

American 6-pdr components, as assembled.

Galloper gun horse and limber plus the 3-pdr cannon. The limber piece attaches to the gun trail of the cannon.

Finally, I would encourage everyone to click on the Follower button on the left hand side of this page and become a follower of the Fife & Drum blog. Each month, I will make a random drawing from the list of followers and the selected name will win a Gift Certificate good for $50.00 worth of Fife & Drum Miniatures.

Artillery Crew Greens Have Arrived!

British Artillery Crew - Loading Set (4 figures)

Reverse view of the Loading Set

Yesterday I received pictures of the artillery crew greens that Richard Ansell has been working on recently. There are 16 new artillery crew figures, 8 per side (British and Continental) and divided into crews of 4 figures. There will be one set of loading poses and one set of firing poses for each army. Figures will be sold in sets of 4 figures, rather than as single figures.  I expect that the artillery figures will get into production in June 2012. So it is not too far away...

The Crown Forces

British Firing Set (note the two men covering their ears).

Reverse view of the British firing set.

Continental Artillery Crew

Continental Loading Set (4 figures)

Reverse view of the Continental Loading Set

Continental Firing Set (4 figures)

Reverse view of the Continental Firing Set

Artillery tools sprues that are included with each set.

You will note that the figures come open handed so that you can choose from a selection of artillery tools (port fire, linstock, water bucket, rammer, scoop, worm and trail spike). At least one figure in each army is standing around kind of doing nothing but holding something. This was done so that I could increase my own artillery crews to 5 or 6 figures by borrowing this figure from one set and adding it to another set. Also, there are numerous conversion possibilities with the open hands. You could have the figure holding a musket instead of artillery tools or maybe pulling on a drag rope made of wire.

Finally,  the artillery equipment is on the work bench as we speak and I expect that it should be showing up on my doorstep fairly soon. My plan is to have crew and equipment in production by the end of June 2012.

We are also working on a web site so that you can order your figures on-line via a shopping cart widget. I will make an announcement on the site and its address once it is up and running.

What's Next?

The results of the poll are in and I want to thank the 92 people who voted. Here are the results:

1. Artillery crew (both sides)   39 votes
2. Dragoons (both sides)          23 votes
3. Personalities                         22 votes
4. More Militia                         14 votes
5. Continentals variants            12 votes

For most of the voting period, artillery and personalities were running neck in neck in what appeared to be a tight race. But then, the artillery had a strong finish and the personalities faded to third as the dragoon votes caught them at the end.

So here is what will come next - we plan to add two sets of four crew for both the Continentals and the British. Once crew will be in firing poses, while the second crew will be loading the gun or positioning the field piece.

There will also be a pair of limber horses and some civilian drivers.

And finally, we will have the limbers and start off with 3-pd and 6-pd field guns for both armies. However, it is not my turn in the sculpting queue yet, so I would estimate that we will bring the artillery to market around May/June 2012.

After that, who knows? It will either be Continentals in hunting shirts, dragoons or personalities.

British Mounted General - Painted

I spent about three hours last evening working on this new British Mounted General from the Fife & Drum range of AWI miniatures. He was fun to paint, and easy too, and I really liked the way that he turned out. Now I just have to figure out how to make a vignette on the base, either with another figure on foot, say, a drummer or officer, or a pile of rocks etc. Since his face has a "I mean business" look to him, I might christen him as Major General Charles (No Flint) Grey in Howe's army during the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777.

 Rear view of the general, along with some foot Guards for perspective.

A comparative picture of General Grey and Colonel Cadwalader of the Philadelphia Associators, again for perspective purposes.

Now I have to start on the officer/ADC holding his hat in his hand.

New Fife & Drum British Grenadier samples, painted

I couldn't wait to tuck into these little beauties on Friday night, so I stayed up late painting four sample figures of the new British Grenadiers so that I could see them in full painted kit. I hope that you like them as much as I do. Now off to paint the whole converged battalion!!!!

Note that the Grenadier drummer in bearskin can also be used as a centre company drummer too. I also have the same fellow wearing a brimmed campaign hat.

British Centre Company & Officers Pix

British Centre Company Figures & Mounted Officers

Fife & Drum British Regiment Preparing to Get The Prime of Their Lives

Here are a couple of quick photos of the actual lead figures. I washed 16 Grenadiers and about 32 Centre Company men plus the two mounted officers in a bath of rubbing alcohol to ensure that any mould release was cleaned off. The castings are very clean and crisp with nary a spec of flash. I did a little bit of filing underneath the saddles of the mounted officers, using a long rat-tail file. One or two swipes of the file and the figure was ready to be glued onto the horse.

In the picture above, the officer on the left hand side, holding his hat, is mounted on a Minden Miniatures standing horse. The officer on the right, with his hand on his hip, is mounted on a Fife & Drum horse. I plan to add more officers' horses in the future, but for now, I'm concentrating on getting the basic infantry, artillery and cavalry sculpted and into production. My objective is to have all combat arms done by this time next year.

I also affixed 16 of the marching grenadiers and the two others (at the ready or advancing/standing firing) onto temporary card bases, for priming and painting. So they are not shown in this picture. They are out in the garage getting grey primed. I plan to start on the first 16 grenadiers tomorrow, so I had to get them primed and ready for the brushes. The line companies will get painted next week. I'll have to rush off an order to GMB Designs for some British flags.

Well, I'm off to bed now, so good evening.

The British Have Arrived!!!!!!!!!!

STOP PRESS! British AWI Figures Arrived

I came home from work today and noticed a rather large and heavy box waiting for me in the front vestibule. I knew in an instant what it was -- the arrival of the British centre company and grenadier company figures from the caster.

Oh sweet monkeys -- these are gorgeous!!!!!!

I don't have time to post pictures this evening, for I'll be sorting figures and assigning stock numbers to each pose. I will post the stock numbers on this blog  tonight.

UPDATE: new stock numbers posted in right hand column

You can actually scroll down the page of this blog and see pictures of the greens.

More later, I've got some work to do.