Little Doughboy helmets wanted.

Yes and no. No, I have no idea where to get a load of classical British 'soup plate' helmets. Yes, I do know where to find loads of these with soldiers attached to them. It shouldn't be hard to find a few sets of 1/72 scale WWI or WWII British soldiers. Soft plastic may be a bitch to work with, be they come cheap and plentfull. Just cut of the unwanted soldiers, and stick the helmets on your shields.

Rob

AFAIK nobody makes such an animal but you could set up a few masters and easily vacuform them. Or if they don't need to be hollow just make one master and cast them in resin.

keyword "metal"

keyword "metal"

That's the key word, indeed! I may be a purist and a snob to boot, but I build wooden ship models. The fittings I make are brass. If I were to cast them, then I'd use brittania metal or some similar alloy. But then I'd have to make a mold and clean-up the castings afterwards. At that point, it's less work to make my dies and stamp them out. I know lots of ways to make these .. I'm trying to find them ready made, please.

Boris

You can also take one soft plastic one and make a resin casting of it. Once you have a hard resin copy, you can refine the shape with file, sandpaper, etc. Then you can use it as a master to make a mold and you cast as many as you want.

If you need them to be metal, you can use the resin casting I mentioned in my earlier post as a form to shape thin metal on as long as it's really soft metal.

"Boris Beizer" wrote

How thick do they have to be? You can make a master and form a die out of Super Sculpey and bake it. It will be plenty hard enough to form pieces from a thin, malleable sheet.

KL

For what its worth. Try looking at jewellery "findings" I have often found things like fine chain and small split rings and jewllery shops. I ran a google search and found the following

HINT------------ALCLAD!

Thanks all for the cogent advice on how to make these. I know how to make them .. That's what I was trying to avoid with my post. The jewelry finding was the most frustrating of the ready-mades because modifying the findings into what I want is more trouble than making one from scratch.

Boris

You forgot the smiley. I may be a stickler for scale, but I'm not about to engrave 75 of the little suckers. As for the decorated beads on the first site, the Gokstad ship's shields were plain.. no decoration. Those were good sites for jewelry findings. I've used those in the past to make things, but this time, no luck.

Boris

Do they *have* to be metal? If so...how about a two-piece combination of some very small washers, and the heads from round-head nails?

It was worth a try anyway. Another thought was brass upholstery nails or escutchion pins!

I bit the bullet and made a punch and die set. I cut 3/16" discs out of annealed 0.0015 shim stock with my shim punch and then press the results in a few seconds. I actually spent more time trying to avoid making the right tools than it will take me to make 75 of the little suckers. Anybody doing WWI dioramas in 1:100 scale, in need of a supplier of little helmets? {|:

Boris