A while back (Thanksgiving weekend) we received an email from long time customer, Gary Zaharek. He was looking for along out of production, 25mm Colonial figure: “25mm Sudan Native advancing w./ shield and short spear held up high” to quote Gray’s email. After a bit of digging we narrowed this down to J-22 (I don’t have the original catalog description for this one and the hunt was on…

Days and weeks rolled by with little luck in locating the original master or any of the original pattern figures. Finally on Saturday morning, after loading the week’s firewood onto the back of the truck, I was able to locate the last two boxes of 25mm Colonial gravity molds (stashed int he corner of the pole barn). I loaded the boxes into the cab of the truck and carried on with the remained of the days chores.

It wasn’t until after dark that I had time to unload the truck (stacking the firewood first) and bring the boxes into the shop. Another hour or so went by while Liam and I were looking over a newly acquired map of the [Warhammer] Old World. With Liam occupied, reading yet another book, I took the next half and hour or so to sort out the contents of the boxes (of gravity molds). I hit the jackpot in the first few minutes of sorting when I uncovered an envelope labeled: “NIP – 25mm Sudanese Native Advancing with Spear and Shield“.   Opening the envelope was even better; This mold had been properly stored as the mold was not empty… Inside was a casting of the object of my search – J-22. The casting was fairly good. The was the usual flash, not too bad and easily cleaned. Since this was an original Scruby casting the metal is a lead alloy, which just made things even easier. Working with actual lead figures makes restoration of details as easy as pie…

OK, more on how I go about restoring these old figures to production in another post. I’ll even try and post the story as a sort of photo essay, so you can better see what I’m wring about.

For now, I’ll leave you with the first picture of J-22:

I now have three boxes of gravity molds for the 25mm Colonial line. The third contains the other lost figures I found while searching for J-22. More on this subject in the coming weeks.

As soon as I have an open slot in a Pattern mold I’ll start the process of adding J-22 to a production mold and will return what Gary refers to as “…the best of Jack’s  Sudan native figures…” to production.