Normally, I like to work on only 5 minis in the 28-32-ish mm scale at one time – any fewer and you won’t get anything done, any more and it can get quite overwhelming – but I’m feeling inspired.

The Samhain/Halloween season is still with me in the shape of finishing the basic characters from the Don’t Look Back starter set and I’ve recently managed to score the extended edition DVDs of Peter Jackson’s radically altered version of Not the Hobbit – great fantasy action flicks, but definitely NOT Tolkien  – so I dug (literally!) out some old Mithril figures, a Saruman missing his Palantir, a Black Rider, a Dunlending Chieftain and Meneldor the Eagle.

While not as fiddly as, for example, some Wild West Exodus or Raging Hormones resins can be, the denizens of Northwood do have some rather tiny parts – such as Denise deGraw’s cellphone hand or the Killer’s knife hand and the soft and brittle material requires one to be EXTREMELY careful with the blade when cleaning up mold lines. Supergluing these itty bitty parts without supergluing one’s fingers is also a challenge.

Contrast that with one-piece lead figures: A set of Swiss needle files make the process a breeze, the soft, pliable metal requiring only the softest touch, no need to saber back and forth like with white metal, just rub off whatever minute mold lines there may be and you’re done.

Anyone build a time machine that can tale me back to the 70s or 80s yet ?