Project 16 - Return to Cattle Dock

'Followers' may recall I had an issue sourcing 00 gauge calves for the cattle dock pens. Well, I found some that are about the right height for 6 month old fresian male calves. Purchased from Pendukemodels (at a show) I believe they are the same as that manufactured by Dorspring. Pendukemodels supplied me one cow and two calves in a pack. The problem is the calves have the same pose of head down grazing. A herd of these in a cattle pen would not be suitable so, I looked into moulding replicas and adapting them for an upright head posture.

Searching YouTube tutorials on 'moulding miniatures' I came across this one. I adopted that technique simply because I had all the required materials to hand. I find it is a very effective method of replicating small 4 legged critters and at mininal cost.

Photograph on the right is two halves of the mould tool made from a hot glue stick with a moulded calf in situ.

Photo left shows the stages of adaptation. Left to right is the master Pendukemodels calf, then the moulded replica, then repositioned head on milliput standard putty neck and finally the painted model.

The hot glue stick mould tool captures the fine details of the master but care is needed. The calf head in particular is not so well defined as the master having lost much of the ear profile. More care would probably have overcome this but the final result here is OK for me - they are quite small being about 11mm high so deficiences are not too noticeable.

Below is the scene on the model railway. The mould tool is good for creating more calves so I could go mad and fill both pens if I wanted to.This will do for now.

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To Part 40.

To Part 1.