Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Hot…

Tony is back at work after his holiday, so we thought it was time for a quick update on orders. We’re steadily working through the backlog that built up while he was away, so far we’ve managed to clear almost all orders up to July 6th (and a few after that). Of those, only a few small UK orders (that fit in a post box) have been posted – we decided against losing valuable casting time at the post office, so everything from this week will go tomorrow (Saturday). As far as possible we’re working on a first-in, first-out basis and doing everything in sequence, so any new orders will go to the back of the queue. Please bear this in mind if you place an order, it’s probably going to take the best part of two further weeks to completely clear everything, but hopefully we’ll be back to normal by the end of July.

It’s been rather warm in the UK this week, which is making things interesting – resin sets incredibly quickly in the heat, and the metal casting kit gets very hot to the touch as well. And temperatures are forecast to hit 35°C on Monday and Tuesday – we can’t ever remember seeing temperatures that high being predicted (UK forecasts are usually quite conservative). The plan then is to get in early, do half a day and clear off before it gets unbearable, and catch up later in the week. Still, it beats working for a living…

As promised, we will try to get the new 6mm bits from Joy of Six (the Sincanmo and Armoured Train) onto the website in the next week or two, but we need to get them all properly photographed first.

In the meantime, Imperial Skies turn rules and altitude markers are now back in stock thanks to Dave at Moomin Merchandise who’s just sent us a big box o’ stuff. The command markers will be back as soon as he can get some suitably-coloured acrylic.

And one last update – the various global supply chain problems have finally caught up with us. Our mould manufacturer is unable to get supplies of the base material for our silicon moulds, it’s a combination of factors apparently including a fire at the processing plant in Scandinavia. We have a small number left which have been lined up for a couple of releases and a master mould, but after that we’re stuck until the supply chain unkinks itself. We should say that this only affects our ability to make moulds for casting metal – fortunately these have a very long life, so once we’ve made them they last a long time (we have moulds which are 15+ years old and still fine). But it means that we will have to switch to resin-only releases for a little while, we still have a good supply of the RTV used to make resin moulds and as far as we know there are no issues with that.