What to say? Well, gee I’m not sure!

April has come and gone – and it was not a good month for us. Alison went to California to help her Dad get setup in a new place, but then had to stay an extra week. Then when she finally got home both she and Liam were sick 🙁

Shortly after that it was my turn to be down for a week plus (and neither Alison or I are back to 100% yet). So needless to say we did not get very much done in April!

Alison did get our photography “area” setup, so now we can get going on some long over due photography – I have a table full of figures for Alison to photograph, so we can release them. What we have is a mix of “lost” or old Scruby figures in 30 and 40mm and some new 15mm “Bloodaxe” as well as some recently re-done 25mm “Bloodaxe” sci-fi figures.

The sci-fi figures are being released under our new brand: “Blasted Planets” – this just happens to be the name of Lance’s sci-fi skirmish game rules. The rules and the line of figures will be supported by our new website: http://www.blastedplanets.com The website is still under construction, but you can still visit! I expect regular updates over the next week or so until I have the initial release of figures fully covered. After the initial release, we will release new figures (or vehicles or whatever) every month (at least until we run out of new “stuff”). Anyhow, checkout the figure and checkout the rules (a free download) and have a blast!

Back on the historical side of things we have a bunch of new stuff (just waiting on photos). Lance’s Russo-Japanese War (the Japanese are done), along with some old Scruby 30mm 18th Century infantry (again, just waiting on photographs) and as soon as I fix a couple 25mm masters we will have some of the older Scruby 25mm 18th Century Infantry in Tricorne back in production.

My daughter Liz is in town this week, so we won’t get a lot done, but we do plan to post “lots” of pictures middle of next week: Scruby Fantasy, Scruby 30 & 40mm plus the 15mm Russo-Japanese War and Blasted Planets figures…

One more piece of news on the historical front is that all of the Scruby 40mm ACW figures are now in new molds! finally, it has only taken about a year and a half, but I’m done with these molds, so look for updated figure listings in a few days.

Jumping to the subject of websites; The main HistoriFigs site is still out of date and is being re-worked and updated, but this is a slow process, so please bear with us. I will try and keep the existing site up to date with the latest news and figure listings. Coming with the new Blasted Planets website will be a new site for the Bloodaxe figures – bloodaxeminiatures.com – will be the new home for news and figure listings for this line of figures. Look for this to appear sometime during the month of May.

Since this is May and my birthday is in May, our specials for May/June will include many of my favorite figures (I should have the list up by tomorrow). These will include, but are not limited to: 25mm SYW & AWI, 28mm Spanish in the American Revolution, N-Gauge 30YW, 45mm Napoleonic and 40mm ACW…

I think that about catches up up to “today” We hope to be more on top of things this month and through out the remainder of the year (and going forward too).

OK, one last item: Painted versions of our Scruby figures have been becoming more and more popular, so if you have an interest in purchasing pre-painted Scruby miniatures, please let us know – we can offer deals that are hard to beat!

We are in the process of prioritizing the re-molding of the N-Gauge ranges…

We would like your feedback:

1) Which ranges are of interest to you?
2) What if we had even lower prices?
3) What is your preference for the order in which we re-mold these ranges?

Oh, and don’t forget, the 30YW range was re-molded last year

Anyhow, drop us an email info@historifigs.com and let us know what you think.

And look for a printed N-Gauge catalog in late spring/early summer.

It seems that my organizational skills have taken a serious turn for the worse – Well, maybe not completely, as it seems that I have done a better job organizing things that I didn’t have organized (before the move), but the things that I did have organized, have gone into disarray! Also, I thought that I had caught up on all my “lost” email messages, but I keep finding more, I’m hoping to be caught up 100% by the end of the week…

I am hoping that with the arrival of spring that things will start to fall back into shape, as I will again be able to resume work on the construction/organization of our workshop. Once I have this sorted out, we will be able to better streamline the production process. As for back office organization,- we are in-between about three different systems. Alison is still working on our database system, and in the meantime we are switching over to my new order entry/tracking system. The problem with my system is that it is split into two or three systems that are not neatly tied together (better than things were, but not quite right). With a bit more code, I should be able to tie the systems together – nothing like a little duct tape and baling wire to keep things running!

There has been some nice progress in the area of new releases – The Russo-Japanese War range is ready to release the Japanese figures (molds done and stock is in the stock bins). We also have several Scruby re-releases that are almost ready to go. First up, we have at least 5 SYW/AWI figures in 30mm waiting in the wings. These are backed up by the first of the 40mm SYW figures (Prussian, Standing Firing). Jumping to Medieval, we have two “lost” 30mm figures which have been “”found” and are nearly ready to release (Man at Arms, with Sword and Man at Arms with Axe). From here we slip into the Fantasy realm – The entire range is now in NEW molds, Additionally, we have added a second Goblin figure – Goblin, in Morion, with spear – 20mm tall as well as an additional Dwarf figure – Dwarf, with Sword – 25mm tall. In the works are some new Dwarves (more dwarf-like) – these (new Dwarf figures) are on the workbench now and should be completed by the end of the month. They will be cast without shields, and will be supplied with separate shields. The mounted Elf, mentioned last time is coming along – the base figure is nearly complete, and the modified ebob horse is progressing nicely (slowly, but nicely).

As soon as the new shipment of mold blanks arrives (any day now) We will begin the process of remaking the molds for the 28mm Spanish (American Revolution era). We will also resume work on the molds for the RJW – Russians and the WWI Bloodaxe figures. In April we will prepare the first of the new Bloodaxe Science Fiction figures (watch for more news as we get closer to production).

As a closing note, I’m looking for a few Scruby castings to aid in the “fixing” of masters or to use as a guide for the creation of missing parts. So, if anyone has a 25mm “maxim gun” we would like to borrow one for a week or two, so that the master can be properly repaired and so we can “get” this back into production. Another part that I’m looking for is the Musket for the 40mm SYW figures. The mold is in bad shape, and all of the muskets I have have already been attached to figures – I’d like to locate an unattached musket. Once I have one of these, I’ll be able to complete work on a few ore of the 40mm SYW figures (Id anyone happens to have any unassembled 40mm SYW figures, let me know – I’d like to borrow or purchase some of these, so I can be sure that I’m doing these correctly.

Time to draw this mid-month news update to a close – I’ll be attending the SYWA Convention on the 24th and 25th of the month, I’ll have some samples with me, so be sure to look me up and checkout some of the re-released Scruby figures.

Not a good way to start off our re-launch!

Late news, late website updates…

But, our shipping is getting faster! Well, a little bit faster anyhow…

For some reason, I just can’t get the website updates completed. I’m about halfway done – you just can’t see the pages, as I’ve not yet set links to the new (replacement) pages.

We have our new, faster internet connection, but our internal network is down – can’t figure out where the problem is. As soon as I solve that, I’ll be in good shape.

I think, I’ve solved our email problems – mail was coming in just fine, just not getting back out (I had been batching everything, and the batch process was going down and taking all the messages with it).

Well, I need to solve these problems, as we are getting ready to launch a new website to support the upcoming NEW Bloodaxe Science Fiction range. The new site might well be two sites, one for the science fiction range and the other for overall Bloodaxe Miniatures line. There should even be a (PayPal) shopping cart when all is said and done.

I’ll be posting new specials for March/April in a few days. I’ll also have the listing for our NEW Bloodaxe release – Russo-Japanese War: Japanese. The molds are done, stock has been run, so I just need to post the listings and Alison needs to complete the photos, so you will know what the figures look like. Russians are next, followed by WWI Russians and Germans. And somewhere in there we will start releasing the new Science Fiction range. For the Science Fiction range we will release new figures each month until we run out of new “stuff”.

On the HistoriFigs side of the coin, we have some bad news – several of our new molds went missing in the move. These contain all of the new Spanish figures (AWI ear Spanish). So, I’m working to replace all of these.

On the Scruby front, there are some more new molds for some of the 25mm SYW and N-Gauge WWII ranges. The failure rate for these old molds has increased, so more new molds are in the works, in the meantime, delivery times for some Scruby figures will increase (lots of work involved when working with the old (failing) molds.

Well, I think that brings us up to date. I hope my April to have thing running smoothly once again….