The Middle Earth Bug.

The lead Rot Cure!

 Well over Christmas I pulled out my trusty old toothbrush and set to work trying to fix my lead rot problem.
 I first brushed all of the affected figures down, I did this over a sink so I could see just what was coming off them, turned out quite a lot. Poor old Mengal Manhide gets a good scrubbing to remove the 'rusting' lead.

 The moment of truth, After mixing a small pot of mineral oil and pure turpentine (50/50 mix) I dipped the figure into it. I only made a small pot as a kind of tester. It turns out it's all I needed to do the whole lot.

 The dipped figure went a nice deep tone and already looked a lot better. Once wiped over it looked even more healthy.

 The dipped figures were then placed into a cardboard hospital to dry.

 Old night elf before.

 Old night elf after.

 It was interesting to note the difference between the before and after of the process, the mini's did look better after a dip.

 I even gave the very worst affected a dip and I have to say he is probably savable now. After a good paint job he will be able to limp back onto a battlefield.

 Everyone relaxing in the hospital after the op. Some will be scared for life and others are less noticeable.

Here is a close up of the medical team.

 So far so good, the figures look much better for their dip and as far as I can see the rot has been stopped. I will keep an eye on the figures in the future just in case, but I am quite confident the problem has been sorted. If anything happens I will update you.

 She elf takes the plunge.

 Another look at the worst affected figure and his result after dipping.

Early Saxon Reference

Early Saxon Reference

Just some quick reference pictures taken from the inter-net. Researching new eras is really fun and can be full of surprises. I am amazed at the range of colours used and the bright spear shafts will be a nice touch to my rather drab army.

Arthur takes a break

The Warlord Arthur takes a break and enjoys a squirrel lunch, times are hard...

Making Early Saxons from Old

 West Wind Saxon heads really come into their own when trying to re age these figures.

 Since taking these pictures I have sculpted furs and cloaks. Nothing says early Saxons more than a cloak and some fur on the shoulders. I think it sets them apart from the later look, something tells me I will be going crazy with the green stuff.

 Here are some of my old painted Essex minis, the bare headed ones are fine but the nasal helmet guys will have to be changed.

A large base with around twelve figures on it, I intend to use Footsore miniatures for the leaders and command as they are some of the best sculpts on the market. My old Saxon figures will back these up.

Sutton WHO?

Early Saxons

This new year I have been playing around with getting a base of Early Saxons painted up for Dux Bellorum. I have around a hundred old Saxon figures from Essex Miniatures I painted back in 1998. A lot of these figures are for a late Saxon ( Hastings) range but can be easily used for early stuff too. I have bought some extra heads from west wind productions and I'm in the middle of cutting off the nasal helmets and replacing them with earlier designs. Single heads are great for conversion work and West wind do a nice range, they will come into their own now there are lots of plastic ranges to play around with.
 Anyway, I thought I would give you all a heads up as I have been sitting on these old Saxon figures for a while with no chance of using them. I did use them once many years ago in the Roman campaign as Germans, but that was the only time.

I'm not going to stress out about painting another army with these guys, I've given myself the task of doing one base (one war band). This way I won't start feeling bad when other projects start to mount up. I see this as a very long on going project I can dip in and out of when the mood takes me. It's nice to revamp the old figures and get them into units I will use.

One of the main pulls for this project is the chance to do a large unit on a single 120mm x 80mm base. I had planned to do the units on the standard 120 x 60 bases but looking at them it didn't give me enough space. I'll do one and we'll see how it turns out.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here’s to the next one!

I hope you get what you want 😋

The Terror Of Lead Rot!

 A couple of weeks ago I read someone talking about the horror of lead rot, I myself had never heard of it and in a naïve way thought it might be an American thing to do with their leads etc. Anyway, this blog post stayed with me and started to haunt my darkest dreams. So, after a few days of worrying I thought I would check for this made up terror and to my horror It had found my collection. While I had been sleeping, Chaos had crept in to the upstairs bedroom and started to decay my Dark elf army right under my nose. I was horrified and quickly searched the Inter net for more information on this figure curse.

 I mean lead rotting...rotting, who has ever heard of such a thing? Well it turns out quite a lot of people actually and most of them tend to be the professional collectors of larger scales of lead soldiers. I have gathered a small army of notes and remedies from the net and I will let you know more once I have tried some. What a horror!

Anyway, let me tell you a small bit of what I have learnt over the last couple of days.

There are two factors to Lead rot, firstly moisture and the second is air tight boxes. If you put your old figures in air tight boxes then any moisture trapped in there will start to react with some of the alloys in the lead and it will start to 'rust'. This only affects old figures made during the eighties for us fantasy heads and it's due to the huge boom in fantasy figures back then. The Nottingham lead belt companies struggled with the massive demand and with high lead costs started to mix their lead with other alloys. It's these 'other' alloys that cause the problem. One company's gain is another mans lose...be it many decades later. I have some Pure gum spirits of turpentine and some Highly refined medicinal mineral oil on order, once these two are added together in a 50/50 mix it should stop the rot. Luckily I only have a few figures that are beyond repair and the others are just starting so I'm hoping this elixir will stop it in it's tracks. I will report later on this.

 Here we see the Dark elf collection has rejected the infected and is attempting to push them off the cliff to save the greater good. Lead rot is not contagious so don't worry it won't spread, but once you find it in your collection, change things or the rest will soon succumb.

 The infected cry out for mercy but the mob are too scared and are in no mood to listen. ( note the wizard that has had his hand and staff rotted off)

 This was the reason for the out break, I had stored them here in a plastic box that with other boxes stacked on top, made an airtight seal. Some of the bottom figures had crumbled, leaving piles of lead dust, the odd hand and weapon too. It was sad for me as I had always been quite proud of my old collection and to see them ruined was a bad moment.

 This picture shows my knee jerk reaction as I read more info on the net, I placed the collection in a cardboard box wrapped in tissue paper. To stop them sliding around and wearing away I placed small wooden boxes in there. On further reading I changed this again, as some woods can give of gases that can start the rotting process. Where will it end???

 Below is the final choice for safe figure collecting. Acid free Really useful boxes. I have ordered some Silica gel sachets to spread around to soak up any moisture and the large box should stop any build up of gasses. Well that's my scary journey so far and it's not quite over yet. However, after learning all this stuff I do feel like a better figure collector and I have gone up two experience levels at least. Also the story is bad but not as terrible as it could have been, yes I lost a few figures but the bulk can be saved and the main horde will be survive through their sacrifice.

IRONMITTEN TIP#466: If you have old Citadel collections or anything from the lead boom in the Eighties and they are up in the loft where temperatures can be extreme. Get up there quick and check them over. Otherwise you could be the proud owner of a box of poisonous dust instead. Also be careful not to put them in anything air tight...let them breathe.

I have also put a  rubber anti-slid mesh on the bottom of the box, again to allow air to circulate better. After this I rushed to my other ancient old Eighties collections and although much better, there was a slight hint of rot so these too will be dipped in the elixir, just in case

. The good news is that around 1990 the Nottingham companies changed their lead formula and the later mixes do not rot...thank god eh.