Our Joint Venture with Mountford Metal Miniatures.

The East of India Company is proud to announce a joint venture with Mountford Metal Miniatures for the manufacture of Colonial artillery pieces and crews.

If you haven't already seen the superb range of over 70 artillery pieces already offered by Mountford as metal kits then you've been missing out! In our opinion they are some of the finest 1/32 scale artillery models available in the world today. Mountford, like us, is a relatively new company and was formed in 1997 by Dave Love of Chesterfield, England. Dave, a life long modeller who was initially inspired by his father's stories when he was a Royal Naval gunner in WW2, served an apprenticeship as a tool maker and worked for Vickers Defence Systems as a project engineer. During his career he gained enormous international experience by living for over 10 years abroad working on major capital projects for several large UK companies. He was promoted to a project manager working on developing systems for Challenger and Warrior tanks before leaving the engineering profession to set up his own model company, a childhood dream. As you can see, there are no better qualifications for a man who specialises in the manufacture of precision scale metal artillery models!

Our first project together is the Zalinski dynamite gun, shown below. The gun itself and equipment have been mastered by Mountford and the crew by East of India. The below photographs show the completed masters of this weapon.

Zalinski Dynamite Gun Front.

Zalinski Dynamite Gun Rear.

The Sims-Dudley (as it was first known) dynamite gun was an experimental breech loading artillery piece that used compressed air to launch a projectile containing gelatinous "dynamite". It was developed based on a concept suggested by a Mr. Medford of Chicago, Illinois. The idea was to use a powder charge to compress air which would, in turn, launch a projectile filled with explosive gelatine. The projectile would be fitted with either a time or a percussion fuse. Medford had built a prototype gun of this sort of gun in 1882 which had a two inch bore, and successfully fired it.

Medford later obtained the help of the U.S. Navy's Lt. Zalinski when he had decided to try to sell the gun to the U.S. government. Zalinski was very interested in the gun and was very active in promoting it, so much so that the gun became known as the Zalinski Dynamite Gun.

The gun, although fairly useless against troops under cover, had a strong psychological effect on the enemy because of its highly explosive projectile, making the weapon basically a terror weapon. The shock was unusual enough that, after a shot from the gun, Roosevelt reported that the Spaniards in the trenches showed themselves, making themselves targets for other weapons.

---

Order Information

If you wish to purchase this set ready painted to add to your collection then it will be available either directly from us or from one of our listed agents [click here].
Our price for the painted gun and four crew is US$ 130.00 and will be available in early October 2002.

If you prefer to buy it as a kit to assemble and paint yourself then it will be available from Mountford or their agents directly.

You can either email Dave Love with your order. His email address is dlove@supanet.com

Or write to him at:
MOUNTFORD METAL MINIATURES
Attn: Dave Love
14 Cherry Tree Drive
Duckmanton
CHESTERFIELD S44 5JL
UK.
Tel: (44) 01246 241881.

Mountford is selling the crew castings and gun as a kit for £39.95 (approx US$ 62.00). Please add 20% for AIRMAIL postage to USA / 15% EUROPE /10% FIRST CLASS INLAND.
Dave normally has a 24 hour turnaround from receipt of order.

We would like to emphasise that painted sets are only available from East of India and our agents and that castings are only available from Mountford Metal Miniatures and their agents and not through each other's companies. Also that castings are not available for the entire East of India range - they are limited to the products shown on this page.