Grace Spinster

by Adrian Hopwood Company – Tales Of War / Ron & Bones Price – £8.75 Scale – 30mm Material – White Metal Code – TOWRB06005 Sculpted by – Ivan Santurio I do have a liking for girlie figures, and the posing of this sculpture oozes femininity. It’s one of those that catches the eye, and the sculptor has pulled of quite a feat for a figure in this scale. Just for the moment, I’ll ignore the casting, because if you’ve looked at the pictures first, then you might be a little put off, just bear with me. Sculpting, - well, I’ve already said that it’s posed well, the actual details are quite well done, although the face is tiny and you’ll need very good brush control to get it looking like the box art – someone is very good who painted that. Painting is eased by the fact that the arms ( with weapons ) are separate items, and I’d advise that they are attached once the body has been completed. The sword is distinctly fantasy in origin, although trimming it down to a scimitar or even discarding it from the fist-guard down and replacing it with a wire to make it into a rapier would be an option. Otherwise, there’s nothing I can think of changing. O.K. the casting. The example I’ve got there has rather a lot of flash on it. It looks a lot worse than it actually is, and it’s where the metal has found a very small gap between the two halves of the mould. This gives a very good visual example of where a mould line is, and I can use it here to show that if you laid the model on a flat surface, then the mould line would be on a level with that surface, and about half way up the depth of the casting – see what I mean ? This is the easiest way to find where a mould line should be on a white metal casting that’s come out of a two part mould. Lay the component on a flat surface, and your find where the mould line should be, no problem. So in this case, it appears pretty horrendous. DO NOT WORRY if you get a casting like this. The metal that’s crept out of the mould is very thin, and it’s far, far better this way round, than not having enough metal go into the mould – that way, she’d be missing parts, and you’d have a lass with a wooden leg…….Let’s not go there shall we ? So, clean-up. Well finding the mould line was made easy, cleaning it off just takes a sharp scalpel and a file, plus five minutes of your time. O.K. I’ll even be exact. I cleaned this one up in…….4 minutes and 35 seconds. That might need a little more work once a primer was applied, but there would only be some small refinements. Fit of parts is O.K. too, the ends of each arm are rounded to let them fit into sockets in the sleeves, so long as you get the angle right for the arm to flow through and look natural, I doubt that there would be a problem, and the joint on each arm shouldn’t requite any filler. Overall then, a nice little figure, one of a range of pirate themed pieces that go with a game system from Tales of War, and is available from them. Thanks to Matt and Celine at El Greco Miniatures for sending this along for review, the model is available from them at the address below, or by visiting their website. Adrian. El Greco Miniatures 63 Glebe Drive Brackley NN13 7BX United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)1280 840364 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Home Page: http://www.elgrecominiatures.co.uk