So here at Bayonets & Brushes we are working concurrently on a lot of different ranges, building them up as we go along. As the person who decides the direction which we as a business are taking the buck really stops with me. I’ve always been that kind of person that when he starts a collection… he has to have ALL of the collection and that has carried over to Bayonets & Brushes.
When we release a range, I like to be sure that we have practically anything that a gamer would need if choosing the army that the range is representing… and most importantly at a variety of scales.
Requiring models to be available in multiple scales is challenging to say the least and sometimes requires that the artists go back into the models and prepare a number of versions. Of course, it goes without saying that this can be time consuming.
The best way forwards that we have found is a combination of detailing, correct resin choice and quality of the printers being used.
The resin has to have flex and low shrinkage AFTER curing to prevent the fast deterioration of the model structure over time. ABS like resin is the best option for this. It has good flex and post ‘knock’ integrity, a decent purchase price and retains superb levels of detailing at small scales.
The printers are another matter. Ill keep what we use to ourselves but they are readily available commercially and the one thing I will give away is that the micro-etched surface on the build plates is an absolute game changer. The failure rates of our prints since we used these build plates combined with ABS resin has dropped to practically zero. It does still happen but now its usually an operator error and not a printer, temperature or resin related error.
Where the models themselves are concerned we have to have a really REALLY close eye on the level of detail that’s being produced. Some of our former contract artists have tried to pull ‘fast ones’ where tracks have had no detail at all and wheels are just extruded cylinders with no detail anywhere on them.
…It actually blows my mind that they would ever have thought this would be accepted. Anyway, we decided as a collective that the best option would be to model for 28mm and scale down on printing other scales.
Why would we do something like this? Don’t the models become too fragile?
Yes, they could! But that’s where experience comes in. We’ve been doing this for years now in preparation for launching the company and each of us has our favourite scales. I’m a 15mm obsessive whereas the majority of my colleagues are all 28mm whores with a passion for Bolt Action and such like.
Usually, we will attempt down scalings of submitted models and see how they work out. With ABS resin the detail is retained right down to 1/144 from 1/56 in almost all cases. Its here that the rivets start to disappear, which at this scale is a non-event. Other things like gear sticks in open vehicles are now so fine that they are easily removed if desired although you can just as easily leave them where they are.
Anyway, so in something of a circuitous route we come to the reason for the post.
We found out that Battlefront were about to release their mid-war Pacific army book, with some great looking army box sets and I said to the team “OK guys, lets down tools on everything else and make a big push on the Japanese range” in order to release the range in May concurrently with Battlefront’s First Wave.
This range is our biggest to date with over 150 vehicle options all at different scales, although I think our Italian range, unreleased as yet may actually be bigger once we finish up with the artillery range that I want released with it in due course.
Anyway, the modelling on the range is coming to a close and one of my close personal friends who has a hard on for heavy metal made a personal request to see if I had any of the German late war stuff ready to release. As it happens the German range is nowhere near a level I’m happy to publish at BUT its already closing on 80 or so vehicles.
He asked for a number of vehicles for Bolt Action Late War Fallshirmjager. Now I’m a big fan of the Green Devils AND I hadn’t yet had an opportunity to do some late war vehicle test prints so I said to myself “Self! We can use this opportunity to do some photographs of some scale comparisons of the finished production models”
…and so ladies and gentlemen let me present to you some Late War German monsters presented here in 1/56, 1/100 & 1/200.
Take a look at the retained detail from the 1/56 version right the way down to the 1/200. Even Im stunned by the detail that’s been retained… so much so that I said to Chris “Chris! Pick the Bulge or 21st Panzer in Normandy… we’re doing a 1/200 campaign!”
First of all lets take a look at some prints of one of the Jagdtigers. This gallery contains a number of photos from each of the scales. When you open the photograph it will give which scale the model being photographed is. Lets see if you can guess before you open it?
OK, moving on then, lets take a look at some Panther tank images. This is an Ausf D. which didnt carry the bow machine gun incase you were wondering…
…those little white specks? Thats what happens when you dont protect your IPA from direct sunlight. Good job these were a non-commercial job eh? Othewise we would be doing a second print run right now!
…and moving on, we come to the Ferdinands:
…and finally we come to one of my favourites; the King Tiger!
So there we have it! Pretty wild eh?
