Monday, October 10, 2011

Knuckleduster Miniature Review



I just placed a purchase a few days ago for my first round of miniatures from Knuckleduster Miniatures to start playing Legends of the Old West.

Why I picked this company:

1)      Price, hands down works out to about $1.66 per figure giving you the most bang for your buck. Most other companies charge on average between $2-3+ a figure.

2)      Approachability, Forrest at Knuckleduster was very prompt to respond to my inquires (by email and on his blog) and answered my questions about his products in a professional quality and was a very “down to earth” guy.

3)      Discount, Knuckleduster offers sales at times and gives a general %15 off when you hit the $100 order mark. Shipping is also very reasonable and local to the United States.  He has even taken the time to sign on an overseas distributor as well to allow savings to carry over to the other side of the pond to compete with the other products over there.

Mailing/Packaging:

Order was placed October 2nd, processed on October 3rd and arrived on October 6th (it was mailed on the 4th). Everything was boxed up well and arrived in great shape.

Each set of models is in a simple “zip lock” style baggie with a single staple through the middle with the Knuckleduster cardboard and baggie. With a quick pop of the cardboard cover the baggie can be used to store the figures until your ready to work on them.



What struck me later was how the package was already set for a retailer to add it to a peg board for quick product stocking. The size of the bag takes up minimal space to allow someone to merchandise their store to maximum effect for space.

Quality:

Knuckleduster uses the “white metal” for their miniatures and what they use seems to be of a stronger than average variety. Sometimes you get some models made of white metal and they seem to bend very easy or don’t seem to be very strong.

Cleaning so far has been very minimal on most figures. I only had to trim a few mold lines and clip a few items of flash off. Most of the worst spots are around the inside of the legs and any small points around the elbow that may have a small gap there. Pictured below is a model that was a bit tough to get into. I had to use a round file to remove the flash inside.

As with all metal figures there was some bending of a barrel here and there back into position, but the quality of metal that Knuckleduster uses was both tough and was able to deal with a slight bend with no weakness to the model.

Overall, the figures are well sculpted and detailed to catch the feel of the old west. I am looking forward to finishing basing them and spraying them with primer once the weather gets better.

Final Thoughts:

I would recommend anyone that is shopping the 28mm line of figures to purchase from Knuckleduster. Forrest runs a great company by offering good sculpts and a down to earth price with a nice touch of customer service. He is the type person that takes the time to sign a note to my invoice wishing my wife and I “happy anniversary” after I mentioned in an email to him that my wife let me place an order of miniatures as my gift from her.

My only wish is that he could sculpt more stuff! He just released two sets of mounted cowboys to match the 6 figure cowboy set that look amazing. I regret not waiting on my order to slip these figures into the order.

Support small business owners! Buy American! Two wins to a cowboy by the name of Forrest Harris.

Shot of my 60 miniatures based already!

4 comments:

  1. I've not heard of this company before, I'll look them up!
    Ray

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  2. I did my homework over the past few weeks to figure out my first purchase. I am on a very tight budget so money matters to me.

    They are on the perfered retaier and as I said they give 15% off orders over $100.

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  3. How did you base them? I had purchased a good number of figs from them and was really happy, nut since the models have a base on their feet already, it's difficult to do a fun base with them.

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    1. I glued these to a GW round base then added sand.....i used some pink spackle filler (the type in a tube to get rid of the join where the crack is that is the base touching the model base. I also found investing in a tube of this acrylic sand based basing material is great. It was designed to brush on a canvas to give it texture, works wonders for a model and blends in things nicely without an extra work. I got mine at Hobby Lobby, I think it costed $6 after I used a 40% off coupon.

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