The world headquarters of miniature manufacturer GHQ resides on the second floor, conveniently above a brewpub, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hardly any sign marks the entrance to the company, and instead, it took us a bit to locate the back door and ring the bell.
We were quickly escorted past rows of model molds and products to the office of Jim Moffet, who graciously escorted MagWeb.com CEO Russ Lockwood and VP Tibor Vari into the manufacturing facilities for the grand tour, which enthusiastically stretched into an hour.
If one aspect shines through, it's Jim's enthusiasm about his work. He passionately explained the plethora of steps needed to turn lead into gold, or, in GHQ's case, pewter into dollars. From his cluttered office and photography lab (well, actually a corner of the office with a camera, light, and cable connecting them to a computer), he guided us to the first step: the master model.
This is made of poly something or other in exactly the scale needed. If it's a 1/285 Micro Armor, it's 1/285. If it's a 1/2400 ship, it's 1/2400.
Unlike other model companies that make the first model much larger and scale it down, at GHQ, what you see is what you get. And these masters are as detailed as what you receive in the final GHQ blister pack. It takes roughly one to two weeks to create each master.
From this first model, a number of hand-crafted, individual production masters are created. Jim notes that it's an extra step, but an essential one if the quality is to be maintained from beginning to end.
Note that an individual item that you buy, for example, an armored fighting vehicle, may have multiple pieces, such as a hull and a turret. Thus, each part requires a production master, and multiple production masters are hand cast.
Once these production masters are created, they go to the next station: mold creation. Like a layered cake, the production mold is made up of layers. A circular steel case holds a layer of rubber, in which the production masters are placed equidistant from each other, along with "buttons" to allow another layer of rubber to grip.
The whole thing is stuffed into an oversized pressure cooker, heated to 375 degrees or so, pressed at 4000 pounds per square inch, and then removed. This can take up to three hours for a single mold.
The two halves are cracked open and the now vulcanized rubber is hand cut to allow for the escape of air during the actual centrifical casting process. Examining a mold for GHQ's 10 mm ACW infantry, you notice each bayonet tip ends with a slice--or perhaps I should say sluice. When the molten pewter enters the mold, it flows into the cavity and the air flows out. Clean cuts and pristine rubber molds ensure a sharp detail and little flash. These rubber molds, however, decay with repeated castings. If you find figures with lots of flash, it's because the mold is wearing out.
Jim proudly points out that GHQ creates new molds to keep the quality up. He's pretty obsessive about quality, and it shows. Certainly the racks and racks of molds bear out that GHQ has over 1000 different products, each of multiple parts. It's a lot to track.
Next we go back to the hottest part of the operation: the casting room. Here, a worker places the mold into the casting machine, pours the pewter in, and makes the actual miniatures. The molds are separated in half, and the miniatures appear at the ends of "spokes" of a "wheel" of pewter. He pours wheel upon wheel, removing each and placing them a worktable.
At the table comes another quality control step where another worker eyeballs each individual piece. Yes, each piece gets the once-over. The ones that pass are placed in a small bin and the rest get placed in a bucket to be re-melted and re-cast.
While there, I picked up a discarded wheel with about a third of the figures (1/1200 scale rowboats) to examine. Well, to my obviously untrained eye they seemed O.K., so I asked Jim (and put his quality control expert on the spot) why they were unacceptable.
Jim squinted a bit and then started to point out this error or that, an unformed line here or too much flash there. Rather picky I thought, but to offer the quality, that's the sort of scrutiny you need to practice.
The plastic bins then get stacked on shelves and divided into product lines and numbers. It's not exactly the Dewey decimal system, but it works. Having now been indoctrinated in the casting aspect, I poked through bins at random to see the final products. They all looked pretty good to me, with minimal flash and maximum detail.
Then comes the laborious part--inserting the right number of pieces into blister packs. Ever wonder how the right number of turrets and hulls match up? Or the right number of ship hulls, masts, and rowboats? There's a fellow counting them out.
Let me digress here for a moment. For large bulk orders, there's a counting gizmo back in the casting room. In my naiveté, I mentioned that it was nothing but a scale. I mean it had one big scoopy thing and two small balancing cups. How was this to count?
Jim demonstrated. He pulled up a pile of figures and dumped them in the large scoopy part. Then he plucked a single figure and dropped it in one of the cups marked 99:1. If the scale evens out, you've got 100 figures. If it's not, you've got more or less. As it was less, Jim pulled the figure out of the 99:1 small cup and placed it in the 9:1 cup, then kept adding figures to the small cup. After the eighth one, the scales almost balanced, but the ninth went over. Jim noted there were about 85 or so figures. What a deucedly clever gizmo. Then again, I'm impressed with all sorts of clever gizmos.
Back to the tour. After the blisters are filled, they're passed off to another station, where the cardboard backing is placed over the plastic and the entire blister pack placed on a rotating sealer machine to be heated shut. This is done two at a time.
The finished blisters are moved to a larger front room, where they're placed on shelves. Off to the side, a packing and mailing station ships orders to distributors, direct to hobby shops, or direct to individual customers.
Also in the front sits a table where GHQ products are put to good use. Of note are the new GHQ buildings atop a slight rise. The actual terrain is modeled after a famous battle (except for the village). I guessed Waterloo and got the big miss. Then I guessed Hastings, and then Antietam. Three guesses, three misses. It's Gettysburg.
GHQ is producing a set of 1/285 scale buildings and embarking on its first rules venture--a WWII set called Century of Conflict authored by John Fernandes. Also, you can expect a new 1/1200 Napoleonic ship, the HMS Shannon. More on these as we learn more.
And so the visit was over all too soon. We headed downstairs for a brew and burger, and then out of Minneapolis.
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© Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum
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