Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Not Antietam-y but very Civil War-y

.

Huzzah!




Eighteen years in the making, today saw the completion of a very large and involved toy soldier project, perhaps the meaning behind the title "Toy Soldiers Forever" certainly it often felt like forever.

My recreation, in pewter, of the 286 officers and men of the Third Michigan regiment of volunteer Infantry present on the field at Gettysburg, is now complete.

Half of the regiment was cast from commercially available molds, but the other half were cast from molds I made myself, starting with plastic prototypes, high temperature silicone, and plenty of salvaged pewter.

Black and brown are commercial molds, blue and green are home-made.


The project began in 1993 when I came into possession of about twelve pounds of pewter Christmas decorations.  The museum I once worked at had made, as a fundraiser for the restoration of a carousel, hundreds of pewter carousel horses as Christmas tree ornaments.  It didn't take too many complaints from customers regarding the brittleness of the decorations to have the museum pull all of the ornaments from the shelves and ordered "destroyed".  I volunteered to do that destruction, it took me eighteen years, but I finally accomplished that task.

The carousel horse pewter was not the best formulation of metals so I began cruising yard sales to find cheap pieces of high quality pewter.  Eventually I had more high quality stuff than the brittle stuff to combine them into a perfect blend of low-melt, high-strength, with pliability rather than brittleness.

The amount of pewter, and the variety of decorative items that were melted down makes for quite a trinket shopping list.  "Hey, where's the good bud vase?" "Where's my graduation mug?" "Do you still have that belt buckle I got you in Japan?".  The relative value that we ascribe to things makes for different priorities.

Many Spring and Summer days were spent casting.




Winter evenings found me making prototypes,  pouring molds, and assembling and painting soldiers. 



 The original castings were all made with alternate heads and arms to provide a range of possible stances and individuality of the figures.

 The store-bought molds produced figures which I used straight out of the mold or cut into pieces to make modified figures, frequently combining elements of store-bought figures with my original figures.

This project chugged along for almost two decades of my life, spanning quite a few ups and downs, career changes, and even marriages.  Frankly, I never really thought I'd ever complete it.  I'd do a few figures a year, sometimes a burst of twenty or so with
significant periods of mold-making


 including 1994, 2002 and 2004.







A shout-out goes to the Dunken Company



who has organic rubber molds of the classic 54mm Marx Civil War figures.


  For my original molds I had the help of the fine folks at Alumalite of Kalamazoo Michigan, especially the sage advice of the late Mark Green of Alumalite who tutored me on the ins and outs of basic mold making and pewter casting.  Over the years I've used two different types of their high temperature silicone RTV for this project and their product has been easy to use and provided flawless performance and very satisfying results.

Here are some examples of my originals and the commercially available molds:

My originals, QM sarge and bandanna man on the left, commercial guy on the right.


The hatless shootin' guy on the left is my creation, the Marx figure on the right is from a Dunken mold.

Another familiar Marx pose from a Dunken mold is on the right, my officer, with jaunty over the shoulder sword sash is on the left.


Dunken Marx loading figure on the right trying to keep up with my guy on the left ready to
 "return rammer".

As does everyone else,  I also make plenty of modifications of commercial molds cutting men in half and adding or switching pieces to come up with a variety of poses.



Note this officer running around on an enlisted man's legs.


My originals started their lives as those great old 54mm hard plastic Airfix figures.  I used both WWII Germans as well as Napoleonic figures.  Putting heads, hands, and feet aside I'd sand and file all of the garment detail off of the figure, and build it back up with sheet styrene, putty, or in the example below


 the metal foil from the seal on a wine bottle, in this case to make belts,

The blue silicone mold was cast around this prototype which produced...
this figure, once assembled, primed and painted, that is.


You may recall a short video I put on Youtube on the basics of casting.  Unfortunately I never shot footage (back in those pre-digital days) of the mold making process which is also a fascinating process.

That's the backstory, now here's the result:


The men of the "Old Third" on a dusty, sunny Virginia road, marching to the sound of the guns.



Their regimental flag a constant reminder of the expectations of the folks back home

The regiment deploys as the "long roll" is beat.

 (definately not "off-the-shelf")



Colonel Champlin surverys the field.


Companies form line of battle.


"File-closers" keep an eye on the less-than-stouthearted".



Fire commences along a four-company front.



Oh my, that's a lot of Yankees.  This begs the question "What about the Rebels?"

Well,  fourteen pounds of leftover pewter...




Should get me right around 140 Confederates.


Let's just hope it doesn't take another 18 years!
Heating up the pewter,  just north of Boonsboro,

Mannie

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Something for kids (and imaginative grown-ups)

 .

Time to COLOR

Go here, click "print".

Remember, no one has to "stay inside the lines".


Mannie



.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Fort Donelson and "Iron Valentines"

 .

Do ya'll miss me?

I am still writing, if you know where to look.  This blog should be back up to its usual semi-regularity in early April.

Until then I'm enjoying this opportunity of working for Manassas, though remotely from Antietam, producing material for the NPS 150th social media team (Facebook and such).   I'm really happy to be doing such creative stuff for the Sesquicentennial.


Here's the Valentine's Day entry on the Antietam Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/antietam-national-battlefield/another-kind-of-valentine-at-fort-donelson/245336565549269



Do check out the Antietam Facebook page regularly, and you have kids (or you still like to color) be sure to go to that site every Saturday morning and print out the civil war coloring or activity pages that I'm making up.  And to feel free to "like" and "share" what you see on that page.  Thanks all.

Still pluggin' away, in cyber-space, but still just north of Sharpsburg,

Mannie

Friday, February 10, 2012

Battle of South Mountain: War Correspondents Arch

Hey all 
Don't miss the post at 6:00 this evening about South Mountain State Battlefield. Pix and prose, be sure to "like" and "link" (plenty more where this came from).

Check it out here:http://www.facebook.com/antietamnps?ref=ts





Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Foggy Thinking at Burnside Bridge

.


War is a very simple thing - made up of hundreds of complicated things.
                       Carl von Clausewitz





Odd.

Most artists, far too many historians, and all nine-year old boys insist Ambrose Burnside was fixated on the bridge.

Oh, would that wars were fought by the armchair analysts.

Burnside, knowing the bridge was a bottleneck sent his main attack, in two divisions, upstream and downstream.  The downstream attempt by Rodman was successful.  Finding a ford a mile and a quarter from the bridge, Rodman got his division across and came boiling up on the Confederate flank, compromising the rebel position and allowing the bridge to fall into Union hands.

The war is so simple when explained by artists, too many historians, and all nine-year-old boys.

At least the nine-year-olds may outgrow it.



Your favorite former nine-year-old boy,

Mannie

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Hit "return" or left click




And now, for something completely different.

For the next two months visitors won't find me at the visitors center doing my usual Park Ranger thing.

Instead, I'll be busily working on articles like this for Antietam's Facebook page.  I get to work with a team of very creative people to create electronic media content in the run-up for this year's observance of the 1862 Maryland Campaign in general and the Battle of Antietam in particular.

I'll be pretty scarce at "My Year of Living Rangerously" for a couple of months too although, you may wish to check out Antietam's Facebook page here, some of those posts will have been written by the "old ranger" and I'd love it if you'd hit those "friend" and "like" buttons.

Staying busy, virtually and otherwise, Just north of Sharpsburg,

Mannie





.