"Khurasan Miniatures alloy...lead-free?" Topic

Hi,

Long ago I asked KM if their figure were cast with lead-free metal.
The response was that it depended on the mold since different casters had the different molds and some used lead-free alloy and others not.

Recently, I tried emailing via their website and did not get a response after two attempts…

I know they post here often and hope that I might get an answer re: these sets (even if the answer is…"We are not sure and don't worry about it")

ZOMB-1 (modern zombies)
ZOMB-100 (survivors)
LC-200 (imps)
PLA-HU4 (rednecks)
PLA-HU1 (containment protocol)
MYST-201 (zombies)
TTC-1403 (Heroes of the SV)
TTC-3002 (citizens)
TTC-3003 (citizen dependents)
TTC-3004 (scientists)
TTC 3005 (police bots)
TTC 1901 (villains)

TMPers…
Why do I ask? I have pretty cramped quarters here and thus must do my minis work inside the home; I've been asked to keep my lead filing to a minimum. I understand the data on lead poisoning and am not promoting eating figures or their filings so please don't bother with the lectures. :-)

Thanks for your time.

Just from my experience, and I have most of those sets, I would say that it's cast with a lead-free, or very low lead content, pewter.

But that's just my experience with different metals, and I may be wrong.

Jon was a bit tied up with TS Sandy, but he appears to be back posting.

I have Heroes of the SV and the Mystri Isle Zombies – both are pretty "hard" so I am guessing low lead content if any.

I also have the rednecks – some of the long rifles are bit bendy but that could just be how they are cast

I dont know about the lead content, but I have never in 3 years used more than an x-acto blade to clean up these Khurasan figures. They are ususally very clean castings.

You should be washing your hands after handling bare metal minis and before handling food regardless.

I'm interested in the answer to this as well. I have a baby daughter who loves to put things in her mouth, and staying lead-free is important to me.

Even though I keep my minis locked away and out of sight, you never know what might transpire.

You should try email again. Jon was hit by Huricane Sandy and was offline for days/weeks.

Having said that, I believe Jon does not do most of his own casting. most of his vehicles are mostley Resin with some metal detail (think barrels or the sensor pods on the Doe). I imagine the lead story could very well vary over time and figure line.

Jon's figures are very crisp and need almost no filing to begin with so I can heartily recommend them on that basis alone.

In short: mail and ask Jon (again) and then tell us.

Do not eat.

@ Karaz123
I will try again.

Long ago I asked this question and he responded that he used different casters and some used lead-free alloy and other did not. He told me to give him the name of particular sets and he would get back to me.

The more recent pre-storm emails I sent were done so long after his initial response. I will try again for in a while as I'm sure he is overburdened just getting things back in order.

@ Wellspring:
I hear you. Incidentally, I asked Mike at Rebel the same question long ago and he stated that Rebel Minis were cast with a lead-free alloy. I told him he should have that noted on his site (I've not seen it posted there though). If I make a new order, I will ask again as this can change and without it noted on the site I think it is best to get it confirmed directly.

@Blithecat
Thank you.
Your sage wisdom is only surpassed by your pithy brevity.

I have never heard of a case where a gamer or children have been damaged by lead figures. Growing up my brothers used to melt down lead fishing weights to make miniatures. I played with them all the time as well as all my friends.

Now lead paint is another matter, since it often chips and children swallow it. I suppose if your child were to swallow a lead figure, that would be a problem, but it would also be a problem if it was made out of any type of metal.

lead paint is another matter, since it often chips and children swallow it.

And the lead compounds that went into paint register as sweet on the tongue, encouraging the eater to find more.

Metallic lead has a fairly low bio-availability by comparison. It takes a lot of repeated exposure on the skin that somehow gets transfered into the body (such as not washing your hands between handling miniatures and eating) to get lead poisoning this way, and tin and zinc are only slightly less dangerous for this scenario.

The upshot is that the specific metal content of the minis matters less than your hygiene after handling them.

ALERT: Possible Urban legend…There was one ugly divorce & custody case in NY from the 80s where lawyers on one side argued that dad's lead figures were endangering the children with potential lead poisoning. The press grabbed a hold of it and the hullabalou around it caused minis companies to start moving to lead-free alloys.

Numerous well-documented studies link degrading lead paint exposure to childhood lead poisoning. There is no study that I'm aware of where lead alloy figures caused problems. None the less, I will still seek the answer to the original question.

Hello All,
I emailed again on 11/29 after seeing Khurasan making lots of posts on TMP.
Again, no response.

Khurasan,
If you see this, please feel free to respond here.

To be fair, I think that Jon and many other of our 15mm mini vendors use multiple casters, and change casters at times too. Although they can request their casters to use lead free materials, they probably have little control of what is actually used, and no easy way of telling what is in the final product. If you look at how big Khurasan's catalog is, and consider that some of his stock may have been cast years ago, it maybe a mixed bag of lead-free, leaded, and unknown for a particular item. Anyways, maybe it is good incentive for us all to get those minis painted and sealed ASAP. Once you get a coat of primer on them it would probably reduce your chance of getting any lead contamination dramatically.

I just ate a finecast miniature, and I feel awful…

ALERT: Possible Urban legend…There was one ugly divorce & custody case in NY from the 80s where lawyers on one side argued that dad's lead figures were endangering the children with potential lead poisoning. The press grabbed a hold of it and the hullabalou around it caused minis companies to start moving to lead-free alloys.

Actually, one of my regular customers was a witness called at the very court hearing that wound up ruling against the State of NY's "environmental tsar" who'd ordered the lead miniatures ban. The gentleman was both a hobbyist -in which capacity he testified- *and* a lead abatement expert for the state of NY.

Yes, according to my regular customer, it was indeed a case of nasty NY politics involving a double-salaried political appointee grabbing on to a nasty pending NY divorce case to try and justify said double salary to NY taxpayers at the expense of our hobby and the folk who try and make a modest living as figure manufacturers from same. The press got ahold of the story because said political appointee probably made darn sure they did so as to show the NY taxpayers how this "environmental tsar" was "protecting" NY's children from the evil figure manufacturers out to poison them with lead-based miniatures so often deceptively labeled "NOT A TOY!"

What the now long gone political appointee hadn't counted on was GAMA actually hiring a lawyer and gamers who were not just a bunch of maternal basement dwelling geeks and stooges providing clear and verifiably accurate testimony proving to the judge's satisfaction that lead-based miniatures were *not* the toxic safety hazard to our children that the political appointee claimed they were. Too bad that the damage was already done, and that a major distributor who by that point in history had most of the West Coast market sown up decided unilaterally to ignore the facts of the case and refuse to continue to carry lead-content figures. This unilateral decision forced figure manufacturers to shift their production to lead-free alloys, while RAFM Miniatures of Canada had to launch dual production infrastructure to avoid losing the half the US market while still satisfying demand in Canada and Europe where such abjectly cynical political buffoonery was not in play as far as war-game miniatures were concerned.

Yes, Virginia, this sad tale is as far as I've been able to determine, is true.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

@ Logain: I see that; I would just rather read it from Khurasan if that is the answer.

@ billthecat: "Citadel" finecast are made of resin. I'm not sure to what extent your body can break it down. In as much as the pokey bits don't puncture or abrade too much, I imagine that eating the figure is preferable to grinding it into powder and snorting it.

@ Leland R. Erikson: Was this the impetus for GW and RPE to change over to lead-free alloy?

I worked at reaper when this went down. It was the deciding factors. Distributions demand for change as well as the markets demand. Eh that's the price of biz….

"I just ate a finecast miniature, and I feel awful…"

Well I just nailed one to my neck and I don't feel so good either. I notice a definite stinging swollen sort of throbbing ache…in my neck. And I'm sure that it wasn't there before I nailed the finecast mini to it. Hmmm. I'd better call my lawyer.

@ Leland R. Erikson: Was this the impetus for GW and RPE to change over to lead-free alloy?

I can only relate to you what I was told at the time by a friend who had regular business dealings with GW; one of their bigwigs my pal spoke with about the "NY lead trial" broke out laughing when my friend brought it up, declaring, "Hah! Hah! Hah! This is just another excuse to raise prices again! Hah Hah! Hah!"

GW had just raised their prices a short time *before* the news of the "NY lead trial" broke, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Actually, has this question ever been answered?

Was there ever a salient question?

Or I believe the answer was Maybe.

Another mystery fo X-files then.Look for the truth its out there ,,MEABY,,,Mine kids are not allowed to touch dadies toy soldiers.

You know, the only QRF casting-house employee that ever tested positive for lead exposure wasn't exposed to lead vapors in the casting house. The employee's exposure was from living next to a major highway.

Yes, this was back in the days of leaded gasoline. There hasn't been a positive test for lead exposure since.

Lion,

I have done business with RAFM Miniature for decades now. Under Canadian law they have to have their employees tested regularly for lead exposure; AFAIK not once have they had anyone come up positive, and they still AFAIK have dual production lines for lead and lead-free alloy miniatures ever since the NY lead scare went down, as the major distributor for the West Coast unilaterally declared that they would no longer carry any lead-based alloy figures, the science and trial outcome be damned. The net result of that particular decision was to force manufacturers to switch alloys, and in the case of RAFM Miniature to fire up dual production lines so they wouldn't lose the US market and still stay competitive in the rest of the world, especially Europe.

Now mind you, that was quite a few years ago, so I'll have to shoot RAFM a query and see if anything has changed since that ridiculous NY lead trial… I do know our Silent Death minis are lead free for the reasons I've already explained (and the fact they are far less easy to file and cut than the original production runs! Grrr!).

John McEwan of Reviresco (the man that made Starguard!, Mustangs & Messerschmitts, et al) has been producing lead-tin alloy figures for nearly half a century or more. When the NY case broke he went out and had himself tested, as John as old school a cottage craftsman as they come. The results: zero, zip, nada.

As I stated before, one of my regular customers testified at the NY trial. he was at the time a certified lead abatement expert employed by the State of NY. He knew his trade inside and out, he knew how lead exposure actually worked, and he was a hobbyist. The gentleman told the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth, and it is a matter of public record. The case was travesty, a political point scoring expedition, a manufactured scandal looking for proof where none existed, and it crashed and burned in the courtroom accordingly, even if a single distributor with a near monopoly on the West Coast market unilaterally decided to refuse to sell anything but lead-free miniatures, as they already preferred to sell CCGs as this hit right around the time that Magic the Disease was peaking as the latest new thing in gaming, and said distributor was making far more money off of simply rerouting palettes of Magic cards from the publisher to the retailer, and didn't care less about the ripple effect that their decision was going to have on the miniature manufacturers whose products they carried.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Supposedly, they sell little test strips, so you can just wipe a figure with one, to check.