Miniart has a (good) habit of making not only figures and machines for modellers but also accessories, civilian machinery, street furniture, and now - sheep! We look at their set of sheep, made in 35th scale injection moulded plastic in our review...
Construction Review: Sheep
From Miniart
1/35th scale
The set contains 15 sheep in the one box
Price: $14 USD from Hobbylink Japan
Miniart has made a new set of sheep in 1/35th scale. This set of injection plastic sheep contains fifteen sheep, males (rams), females (ewes) and lambs. These are seen eating walking and resting on four legs (but none sitting down). these are a wonderful idea for a diorama, as many scenes modern, right though to ancient have sheep near people and soldiers...
The contents & sprues:
The box is a side opened affair, with the six sprues in a single plastic bag. the instructions are on the rear of the box.
Here you can see the six sprues, two sprues, multiplied three times.
You can see the two sprues here, the first, with Ewes of two types, one standing looking forward, with the other leaning with head down eating or grazing. You will notice two things, some flash on the sprue and several connection points, and some nicely detailed fully woollen sheep.
The second sprue has a few of the same artifacts of flash and injection points. These are a bit of work to clean as we will see later. The sheet has the lambs and the rams, with their horned heads separately.
Construction:
The sheep will take a fair bit of work to clean the flash and connector points from them. Also, a good note is to use thicker glue like the Tamiya (regular) cement. You will go through too much extra thin cement otherwise to get the same result. The slower drying time of this regular, thick cement also helps merge the sheep's halves together a little better.
You will also need at least fifteen clamps to marry the halves together after carving all of the excess connector points and flash. These really need to be clamped heard together after you fit them properly otherwise you will need to fill some gaps (as you can see below, I need more glue and more squeezing here). The thick glue for the main seam, the extra thin to do smaller areas if needed.
Once moulded together I had a problem. The connector points that surround the wool of the sheep need to be carved away, and then I made a bumpy wool-like surface that I can cover with glue and texturize later on (the other sheep looking on nervously here)...
That Tamiya thick cement worked well to wet, then texturize the backs and the undersides of the centre gap of the sheep. This is why you need thick glue. Others have used a solder gun to make texture which also works.
Here are your types of sheep in the set from top to bottom. Rams with horns on the right that sit into the head like a hat, some ewes eating with head down, some walking ewes, some standing and alwert rams with smaller horns and lastly, the little lambs with separate heads on the bottom.
Here we are with the final flock put together, fifteen sheep, males, females, walking and resting with lambs also...
This is a great set and well needed, Before this, there were some other sheep in resin and quite good, but at under $15 USD these are a steeeeeeeel (In a sheep voice). A little bit of work, but a great result.
Adam Norenberg
Thanks to Miniart for sending me this kit to make and review. See more about all of MiniArt's kits on their website...
Status Changed – Again Available:
