"Sculpting weapons for 10mm minis?" Topic

Any hints/tips for doing this out there?
I have the feeling that I'm going to have to improvise by filing/cutting copper wire to shape (mostly muskets & swords), but want to see what others' experiences are.
This is going to be fun for my eyesight… ;-)

What weapons are you thinking of?

For my 10mm East Africa WW1 figs, if I need to replace a rifle, I can use a large staple of correct width. If I want to go really obsessive and get a bayonet: superglue very small thin staple to underside of existing rifle after carving away any rifle strap. Masking tape & lay fig on side. Now use toothpick to place slow set epoxy below staple for new rifle strap and bayonet. When glue set, use fine tools on hobby drill to shape strap and bayonet. Takes a lot of time & skill, but the result will be extremely strong and look perfect.
I often use a bit of slow set epoxy to strengthen skinny legs of 10mm figs. Again, use the hobby drill to sculpt epoxy on the legs when it is hard.

Did some experimenting tonight. Bent the end of a piece of copper wire & flattened it to make the butt of a musket, filed it into shape, came out decent. Couldn't scribe some lines on the top for the barrel, so filed both sides of the forward stock to be the "width" of the barrel. I'm going to file the underside to make it more slender, then plan to run some epoxy along it to build up the stock & leave the barrel exposed along the top. Then it's just a matter of sculpting on the (tiny) hardware.
I'm going to leave wire on past the barrel to act as a sprue, as I'm going to cast up more copies (along with other weapons I plan to build, so's to have some variety…;-) So far, so good…

Yes if you run slow set epoxy under the wire and then sculpt with hobby drill down to .5mm bit you can get nice strong rifles that look good and will not bend. Can also for simpler job run a little epoxy under any fig's existing rifle that is too skinny and sculpt the epoxy to look like a rifle strap. this will greatly strengthen rifles that come on the figures.

LOL checking actual musket lengths, some were almost as long as people were tall back then. For 10mm minis, a 50" musket would come up to eye level (I'm basing that off me. ;-) So I'm going to do different length muskets for variety (those should 'scale' well with the 10mm armatures I'm going to make as well…)

oops ;-) I meant 60" (5 feet) to eye level…

Well, trying my hand at sculpting my own. ;-) The muskets are decent (no bayonets) but the pistols are more 15mm than 10mm size. Sword blades are much easier to do. Tried to look into 3D sculpting them, but none of the programs are compatible with my computer.