Heute sicherlich nicht nur in meiner Post...
Neil and I have spent the last couple of weeks reorganising the racks of blister packs here at Foundry in sunny Saint Ann\'s*.
Stock has been under pressure over the last couple of months as Ronnie (caster, mould maker and sculptor Ronnie) has often been pulled away to do other things.
Our plan was to make sure that we have at least eight blisters in stock of everything: even the not terribly popular codes, so we set about gathering moulds for the missing models and piling them up around Steve and Ronnie\'s casting benches.
We\'ve only been working here for a month or two, and so it was interesting to discover all the models that we had never looked at properly before: and the ones that we hadn\'t even realised existed.
There is no current printed Foundry catalogue, so we were using old A5 size catalogues (perhaps 10 years old), and, navigating by catalogue it was soon clear that the contents of the packs in huge sections of the range had changed.
We knew that a number of packs from Foundry ranges had been withdrawn and replaced. But we were very surprised just how many packs of models have disappeared and had their place taken by often rather mundane substitutes.
Even small ranges have had a dozen or so packs removed; while hundreds are missing from the larger ranges (mostly those sculpted in the golden age of the eighties ). Despite its legendary status, enormous popularity and miraculous depth, even Michael and Alan Perry\'s marvellous Napoleonic range has been ripped apart and its ranks invaded by somewhat wonky imposters.
It\'s hard to see how all this has come about.
Neil insists that it can only be the work of dark forces.
One end of our building; the end built in red brick in 1861, used to be an abattoir (really). When Foundry first came here there were still old blood gutters running down to the big doors that lead to the street.
Neil\' theory is that the combination of ancient dried blood (who knows from what source) and molten lead (that once sheathed the roof of eldritch temples) has drawn satanic creatures to our factory. Terrified Foundry staff must have been forced to participate in dark ceremonies; where boiling blood and bubbling ladles full of molten Napoleonic castings were offered to arcane daemonic creatures lusting after molten lead from only the very finest 28mm scale models, and thus denying those models to the human population of the Earth for eternity.
This is a very fine theory indeed, but I feel that we must look for a simpler explanation and solution; probably involving finding the moulds for the missing packs and putting them all back into production.
So, that is now our plan. We have indeed found a huge number of moulds that haven\'t been run for years, and there are a whole ranges that have been discontinued.
It\'s possible that some moulds have disappeared, and it is likely that some moulds might have worn beyond the point at which we would be comfortable selling models that had been cast from them, but we will almost certainly be able to get hold of their original master moulds and recast the masters. Recasting will be interesting as we now have more sophisticated techniques for casting masters and can produce more three dimensional, crisper models.
We will almost certainly start with Napoleonic\'s and, daemons permitting, we hope to get started next week.
There will be a delay between us having castings available and getting them on our website, but we will announce which models we have available on this page, so you will at least be able to order them by phone as soon as we have them cast.
Neil and I will set up a scheme that will allow you to order any models from any of our ‘discontinued’ ranges that we have a mould for.
We will be spending a lot of time going back and forth gathering up the old moulds for the casters and getting the reissued models on the hooks.
So, if you give us a call and tell us which models you need, we\'ll organise picking up the moulds for your models too, and when we have enough for a stack, we\'ll stick them in an oven, get them to temperature and hijack a caster to run them. This may take an extra day or three.
Ring us on: 0115 8413000
We can only apologise for all this and set about making the missing models available to you again. It must have been incredibly irritating to have been unable to finish regiments and armies when we switched the packs on you.
By the time you get this, hopefully the link below will lead somewhere interesting.
British Napoleonics
Marcus Ansell
*\'Gun crime capital of Britain\': apparently.
