The saga of email problems continues…

It seems that several different ISPs are blocking our emails (email going out from our provider fits the SPAM profiles). That and we still are losing inbound emails.

So, in an effort to improve email communications, I’m trying out a new email address. You can now reach HistoriFigs via a new Gmail account:

Lets see if this helps with email communications.

Our HistoriFigs email accounts are still active and will remain active – However, I’ll be transitioning to a reply from the new email account.

Here we are 12 July and no News update yet…

Well, the big news here is that we have cleared the backlog of orders (ok, one or two that should have been done by now remain open, but will be closed by end of the week). I’ve a small logjam with custom work, but not too bad; I’m still close to being on schedule with the current batch of projects.

We’ve been toying with the idea of changing our “standard” turn-around time for orders for the summer months. After working in the shop on Sunday, where the temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit most of the day, I think we will make an official posting quite soon. Two factors play into our decision to set a new “Standard” for order processing. The first is that since Alison does the bulk of everyday production work, her schedule is dependent on what Liam is doing. When school is out she has fewer hours for production work. The other factor is that it can get darn hot in the shop and it is not easy to keep the shop cool (or perhaps, just not cost effective). So, we are thinking of changing the order processing time for Scruby miniatures to a minimum of 2 weeks, with an expected 2 to 3 weeks for processing from May through September (I could see going to 3 to 4 weeks for the summer months). Anyhow, look for some changes in this area of the business…

Other than getting caught up there hasn’t been too much going on here at HistoriFigs HQ. Operation Hoof Mold is under way, and figures are and will be heading out to painters for painting. Most of the easy figures have been put into new molds – many of the remaining figures need some work – broken masters or missing patterns. So, it may be another few weeks before the next batch is ready for molding.

The hot days and nights have allowed me to go and hide in the basement…
The basement is where I have my painting desk – so I’ve finally been painting miniatures. I had started by painting N-Gauge Ancients, but got sidetracked with 30mm Colonial for my Mafrica project. So, on my desk right now are about 30 Fuzzy Wuzzy, 40 British, a dozen camels (with Fuzzy spearmen), 15 (old) mounted Arabs (notched horse and all) plus several misc. bits and pieces. The preceding is in the process of being painted and based. I still have a few hundred 30mm (Colonial) and 40mm (ACW) figures to base.

Speaking of 30mm colonial figures and war games; work has begun on a game for the upcoming RockCon. I’m working with Randy Frye to create a fast, fun game for the convention. The theme will be Arab vs. Legion. Most of the figures will be Scruby, Cox and Munro creations. We are still in the early stage of scenario and game design, but we are shooting for fast and fun for 6 to 8 players. So, if you happen to be attending RockCon this year, be sure to look for our game.

Next week, Alison will start setting up the photo studio, so we can start taking photographs of painted figures. After that I’ll need to figure out how to best present these on the web. Stay tuned for details.

One of the problems with running a miniatures company is that it is far too easy to be distracted by your customers’ projects. Another thing that causes distractions for me is discovering some lost treasure from our war gaming past.

My latest distraction is sailing ships. I thought I had all I need when we completed the 24 Hour Fleet project. Well, I guess I was wrong about that! I’ve been eyeing some older sailing ships that Scruby produced before he began producing the ones in current production. I don’t know the history behind these models, but I do like them, so I figured why not build a new fleet using these older ship models? Since I already had a few ships from Jack’s fleet I had a start. After searching through my boxes of masters and patterns I found patterns/masters for the three ships in the range. So, now I was all set, just needed time and mold space. A few weeks back I had a project that I thought was ready for molds, but when I sat down to make the mold, I found some problems with the patterns that I had missed in the first pass review, and the problems were just big enough that it would take several hours to correct (Or maybe even cast new patterns), so since I had things all set to make a mold I pulled out the ship patterns and set out to make a production mold…

Jumping ahead a few days…

Time to cast ships! I’ve now cast a few dozen ships and have started painting them for my war games.

As you can see from the pictures, the ships models are not up to modern standards for style, etc. but they are still nice little models. I think the thing I like the most is that I can paint as little or as much detail as I want.

The pictures show ships from Jack’s collection as well as a ship or two that I’ve recently painted (I’m trying to match the existing ships in style). In the background you will see a pile of unpainted ships.

To celebrate Kamehameha Day, We have the following specials:

All orders for Hawaiian products (N-gauge or 15mm warriors/armies) will received a free package of Tiki Gods or a 54mm Hula Dancer.

All orders for Hawaiian products (N-gauge or 15mm warriors/armies) will receive free shipping (US only).

These two special offers expire midnight 12 June 2007 – postal orders must be postmarked by midnight.