Pegaso / White metal re-casts?

[Banjer]

Hi Alex,
Since posting this thread I have endeavoured to build these kits so I can't show individual parts. With a LOT of cutting, grinding and filing I have got them built. I show images of the Ronin and even with a lot of fettling the fit of the arms is still not great. The torso to legs fit was appalling as was the hair to head joint. The other one, Samurai with naginata, I have primed in black so the faults don't show up in a photo but it is as bad.

Cheers Bill

 

[valiant]

From my industrial experience in mouldmaking and casting I would say that those have come from moulds well past their lifespan......

 

[yellowcat]

Parts details are soft and bad casting. Looks like some parts have lead disease. It looks like a recast to me.

 

[Alex]

Oh my… as Felix said, the casting is simply awful and the fitting of parts as well.. most of the details on the front part of torso are simply not there.

 

[akaryu]

If this is genuine Pegaso, they seem to have a big problem with quality control, unbelievable!

Pierre

 

[Nap]

If this is genuine Pegaso, they seem to have a big problem with quality control, unbelievable!

Pierre

Agree there !

Bill .....have you considered contacting Pegaso for their thoughts ?

Nap

 

[NigelR]

I spent yesterday prepping the Pegaso 54mm Young Guard officer sculpted by Riccardo Cerilli. It's a lovely sculpt and pose but the casting is awful. I encountered all the same issues that Bill had. Moulding flaws, a hole in the cloak, a huge amount of sanding and prep required on the cloak, and the mould quality is definitely nowhere near as sharp as any of the photos of the model. When I finally started to assemble it, the fit was really bad and will require some serious work to fix it. I definitely won't be buying anything from Pegaso again.....

 

[Martin64]

I have the figure of the Ronin im my stash - packed in the traditional Pegaso blue box - just checked it and the parts fit like a glove. I have serious doubts that this is an original Pegaso kit - look at the unusual weak (and missing) details - as I said in my previous post: If you produce a rubber mould from kit parts they will not stand the pressure involved and cause distortions that will identify the castings as a pirated copy. This is different to the more flexible silicon moulds necessary for resin copies.

 

[Banjer]

Agree there !

Bill .....have you considered contacting Pegaso for their thoughts ?

Nap

Kev, as this was a second hand purchase I doubt they would be interested. They wouldn't admit liability if it is their casting. I might however ask them if they are aware of white metal copies.

What concerns me most is I bought from an established (20 years) UK seller with 100% feedback as I am well aware of Chinese and eastern European copies which always are listed as resin.

Perhaps I have been unlucky and have bought duff Pegaso originals or the seller has passed on ( knowingly or accidentally) recasts.

Caveat emptor.

Bill

 

[Martin64]

Btw - just noticed that the Ronin figure is currently on sale at Pegaso at a nice price
https://www.pegasoworld.com/product/ronin-epoch-of-tokugawa/
I wish that they would have adopted this policy to market their kits at a competitive price some earlier...

 

[Redcap]

At the risk of committing modeling heresy, I have to say that I have seen some recasts that are better than some (older kits) in the Pegaso metal range that are still being churned out long after the moulds have passed their acceptable lifespan; or certainly for a supposed premium manufacturer like Pegaso. Sometimes these days, only their price seems to still attract the premium title.

Indeed and about 2 or 3 years ago, I ordered a couple of expensive samurai 90mm kits directly from Pegaso and with one in particular, the molding and cast QC was poor with mould lines running through detailed parts and lots of excess metal 'klinker' (I don't know the technical name!) was present and some of which needed a Dremel type device to remove it as such is the thickness of it. I won't say who it is, but a PF member I corresponded with on this topic had like QC issues with their same kits and we both shared experiences and comparisons of deterioration in the (newer) moulded kits to the same pieces we had both bought years before and the differences were as though made by different companies.


Gary

 

[Blind Pew]

....and lots of excess metal 'klinker' (I don't know the technical name!)....

It's called flash or flashing.

 

[Martin64]

No heresy to me Gary - I am not a so-called "Pegasian" - and IMHO no manufacturer of metal model kits ever managed the perfection in casting, mould making and in the metal mix used for the tin alloy like Poste Militaire did - something else different to resin casts.
I did not take much advantage so far from the new line of rereleases by Pegaso so I cannot comment on differences and Quality control.
I add two pictures from my Ronin box of the parts - held together without glue, any clean up etc. Compare the fit and details and the abscence of pitting on the parts... therefore I strongly doubt that the kit shown by Bill was cast by Pegaso but who knows...

Cheers, Martin

 

[Alex]

And here is mine (in the newest box format) bought not that long ago

 

[Alex]

Bill, were the smaller parts in small platic bags (no ziplock) folded and stapled ? In every Pegaso kit, smaller metal parts are always contained this way. Even if someone put aside the original box, I'm pretty sure that will keep the grey foam and there's no reason to throw away the small plastic bags. I'm pretty sure that your kit is a recast

 

[Banjer]

Bill, were the smaller parts in small platic bags (no ziplock) folded and stapled ? In every Pegaso kit, smaller metal parts are always contained this way. Even if someone put aside the original box, I'm pretty sure that will keep the grey foam and there's no reason to throw away the small plastic bags. I'm pretty sure that your kit is a recast

Yes, the small parts were packed as you describe and showed no sign of being opened previously. In fact until I attempted to fit the parts together I had no reason to suspect they weren't original. Would a recaster imitate the packing? I think I have just got a casting from a worn out mould but will probably never know.


Bill

 

[Alex]

Agreed. In any case, if this is an original kit, it should never have been sold and pass quality control. I have many dozens Pegaso metal kits and most are of excellent quality. Some had problems and I had to ask Pietro for a few replacement parts.

 

[yellowcat]

Couple of comments by PF member Alex Long from an old thread regarding Pegaso and Poste Miltaire white metal casting.

During the 80's/early 90's I worked for Ceremonial Studios (it was my brother and fathers buisness) and so knew Ray pretty well, as well as many of the other top quality maufacturers of the time. We used a few of the same sculptors as Ray along with Richard Almond, John Tassel and Roger Saunders. The quality of our white metal castings was always of paramount importance and this is were we felt our reputation would stand or fall. Ray Lamb's Poste Militaire was probably the market leader at the time due to the quality of his masters and his meticulous approach to sculpting, molding and casting his figures. It was a family buisness much like Ceremonial and was born from love of the hobby rather than turning over a big profit on the end of year balance sheet (well Ceremonial never turned over a big profit at least). I'm not saying the guys at Pegaso don't love their art, they surely do, they are good enough at it, but I remember Ray would sometimes only produce one new release in a year, this kind of output would surely not be part of Pegaso's business model and somewhere there must be a trade off between quality/quantity going on in the Pegaso camp. It is frustrating considering their masters are very well sculpted and with a price tag that is overly high you would expect the kind of standard that Apline Miniatures produce. At least they are not as bad as Games Workshop though! My son plays 40K and I've been know to paint a few of their figures. They have recently begun replacing all of their white metal figures with Citadel "finecast" resin. The price is almost double, the quality is shocking, worst molding I have ever seen and using the cheapest resin with so many blowholes you'd think they had woodworm. That tangent aside I have to say that more dynamic poses and choice of subject matter available from Pegaso make their figures (on face value) more attractive to me personally but the cost and lapses in casting quality tend to negate this somewhat.

Alex.

I believe Ray used to use the same moulding process that Ceremonial Studios used, which was vulcanising rubber discs within a metal ring. The process involves building up layers of soft rubber and positioning the figure parts within this. The skill is to understand the properties of the metal used when it is to be poured (correct metal temperature is critical) so that it flows correctly into the mould when it is spun in the centrifugal casting machine and gives a clean crisp casting. When the parts are sandwiched between the layers of rubber the whole thing is put into a press consisting of two hotplates which reach a temperature of around 100 degrees and a pressure of 13 tonnes. Some masters don't survive this process intact, particularly if they are made of multiple materials such as metal, miliput etc. For example Richard Almond used to solder all the braiding onto a hussar jacket and occasionally the solder would melt during the mold making process, so sometimes just the one mould is all that exists. Alternatives to this problem included making a cold cast version of the original master for use in the vulcanised mould but invariably resulted in a loss of detail and impacted on the perfect fit of parts. I don't know if new methods are used today for white metal casting but I'm guessing issues around mould life/quality are responsible for the issue of QC.

Alex.

 

[Redcap]

It's called flash or flashing.

Thanks but I know what 'flash' is and same with that found on plastic model kits. This is (much) worst than that and rather, it is big chunks of excess metal like pour stubs normally found around the waist etc. and annoyingly, also on delicate parts and details. Just as bad are the huge lines (possible mould slip?) through entire parts making clean up impossible without removing all the adjacent details too.

Pegaso should either retire those moulds affected or sell them at commensurate low prices to reflect the now sub-standard quality.

Gary

 

[MCPWilk]

David Grieve was (and is) obsessional about casting quality. As stated above the likes of Grieve, Almond, Poste Militaire (why no British Napoleonic figures?) would release one or two figures a year and it was relatively easy to keep up with their figure output. Now there are so many manufacturers producing several figures each year that this is not possible. Inevitably if quantity of output becomes the major issue, then moulds are going to fail.

Mike