A couple of weeks ago, on the first Saturday in July, Sarah and I took the Baccus factory tour - organised once a year on the day before Joy of Six, the war-games show that promotes 6mm games and that runs on a Sunday.
As we are now based in the North, it was an easy run down from Bradford to Sheffield and the Baccus HQ.
Peter on the factory floor
The tour took us through the history of Baccus, showed us the factory building and the process of making all those lead soldiers. It was really interesting, with Peter and one of his casters giving a great lecture and fielding our questions in an engaging and enthusiastic manner.
Here's how the process starts - a single soldier is sculpted:
Four of these become a strip, a series of strips and components (especially for WWII) are then put in a pink mould to create the right number of highly detailed miniatures needed:
This mould has WWII vehicles and various earlier soldiers. Once 24 strips of 4 figures are ready, they are put in a production mould. The mould is heated under pressure to create a dull black mould that is ready for high speed production. If you forget to dust the two halves of the the production mould with talcum powder, they fuse with all your figures inside. Apparently all casters have done this at least once!
This is the casting - molten metal is poured into the mould as it spins.
The finished product - shiny new soldiers
