The education team at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum is working to develop a fur trade program similar to the “Red River Rendezvous” interpretive program created at the Pembina State Museum. The Pembina program uses a pair of muskets that a former site supervisor at the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center manufactured. He hand-carved a model and formed several silicone molds, which he tested before pouring the resin to create the rifles for Pembina.

I paint tiny, nerdy things. One of the side effects of this hobby is that people often mistakenly think that because I paint little plastic figures I can paint larger things as well. During my 12 years of painting, I have learned a lot of tips and tricks, but these do not always translate to larger items. Nevertheless, I volunteered to take on the task of fixing up and painting a couple of miscast test models for the ND Heritage Center program, which was a worthy challenge.

The rifles were so long I could not use my regular painting table and had to prepare a special workspace for this project.

The problems with these rifles arose from the molding process. Mold lines are a common feature of any molded item. These lines are a byproduct of the casting process. As the two halves of the mold come together, gaps or misalignments can cause lines to form at the halfway mark. Besides the mold lines, air bubbles in the resin had caused pockets and holes. I needed to trim the tip of the rifle barrel as one half-circle section was longer than the other. Oh, and one of the rifle’s sights was missing.

Mold lines running down the middle of the rifle’s barrel. The gun was also missing the sight and had many scuff marks.

Here, air bubbles in the resin rose to the surface and left holes during the casting process.

To fix these issues, I started with an Exacto knife and trimmed the barrel to make it even. I also scraped away mold lines to make the join line as smooth as possible. Unfortunately, I could not completely eliminate the mold lines without potentially damaging the desired shape of the rifles. I would try fixing these in the painting process using an acrylic resin. I had to turn to a different tool and skill set to address the air bubbles and missing sight.

In the world of miniatures, there is a substance called “green stuff.” Its actual name is Kneadatite. Green stuff has two parts—a yellow filler and a blue hardener. Mixing the two parts produces a sticky green modeling putty with unique properties often used for filling gaps in miniatures. Before 3D sculpting with computer programs like Blender or ZBrush became common in manufacturing miniatures, green stuff was the medium of choice for skilled artisans to sculpt original miniatures. While most of my green stuff work was filling holes, several areas required a bit of sculpting, such as the missing sight. With most of the problem areas fixed, it was time to prime and paint. A quick spray of brown primer got these rifles ready for my brushes.

Kneadatite before being mixed.

A fresh batch of green stuff ready to fill air holes and fix other imperfections in the rifles.

Using a silicone sculpting tool, I smoothed the green stuff into place, so it looks like it always belonged.

A close-up as I push green stuff into the same holes as above.

Lovely spring weather allowed for outdoor priming.

My biggest challenge when painting large items is making them look real when viewed up close. I have tricks for painting 28 mm scale wood grain, but those don’t work on life-size models. One of the education team’s first decisions was that we did not want to make the rifles look too real. This program might travel to schools, and we wouldn’t want to cause alarm. It is also one of the reasons we did not include the trigger and firing mechanism on the finished product. These were also the parts most likely to break, according to the staff at Pembina.

The paint process for the metal was pretty simple. I applied a base coat of silver followed by a technique called shaded metallics, which you can read all about in a past blog post about painting patina. This gave me a nice worn metal look. I followed a similar process for the brass. Trying to find the right color for the wood on the rifle took some thought and looking at lots of reference images. In the end I found a medium brown color from Vallejo Acrylic Paints that worked for a base coat on the main body of the rifle. I added a few other colors to create wood variations on other parts of the rifle. Then I ran into a problem. In my original plan, I wanted to use a brown ink to help shade in the wood’s nooks, crannies, and crevices. After completing one side, I could tell I had made a terrible mistake on the first gun.

The rifle on the left has had the shaded metallics treatment applied; the one on the right shows what the metal looked like beforehand.

I used a thinner coat of brass on top of the darker metallic undercoat to make it look worn.

In my years of painting, I have taught several individuals how to paint miniatures. One of the first things I always tell them is that most painting involves fixing your mistakes. You will mess up at some point, but everything is fixable. For this project, all I had to do was repaint the wood color and fix where the ink had dripped down and across my completed gun barrel in a couple of spots. The only thing lost was the time spent redoing those sections.

The next problem I needed to overcome was the butts of the rifles. The rifles at Pembina State Museum either had another piece that we made to cover the gun butts or were finished to look that way. After pondering the issue for several weeks, I found examples of trade guns with the stock wrapped in leather. At first that seemed easy enough to pull off, and I even went out and bought supplies. But I soon realized that I was out of my depth. A quick phone call later, I recruited the best seamstress I knew to help me. And all it cost me was bringing one of the grandkids along.

This decision proved one of my best. With my mom’s help, we created a pattern and cover. She also had a much better selection of leather pieces than I could find at the store. So we were able to come up with something we both thought worked well.

With the help of reference photos and the sewing expertise of my mom, we were able to cover the gun butts with faux leather.

My son, Calvin, takes a break from playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from my childhood to help me try some weathering on a spare piece of leather.

With the covers completed, I only had one step left. I needed to add the classic trade gun decoration of brass tacks. The tacks were cast separately for the original program rifles and later glued into place. I admit it was probably the fastest way to complete this task, but casting resin is not a skill I have learned—yet. I went with what I knew and used real tacks. With a pin vise tool, I drilled small holes into the rifle. I tried to match patterns I had seen in different reference photos. A small problem arose with my tacks being longer than I could drill into the rifle, so I snipped the ends. After a drop of glue to secure each tack, I could finally call this project done.

A pin vise is used to drill holes into the rifle.

Overall, this was a fun challenge. Plus, it is always great to help with any project that improves the offerings of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. I estimate I spent close to 20 hours on this project. All of it was worth it. These rifles will be used in Medora at the Chateau de Morès State Historic Site as part of an August teacher workshop that we are presenting on trade and transportation. Be sure to sign up if you are a teacher and want to see these rifles in person.

My completed masterpieces with brass tacks in place.

One day while I was working at the State Archives, a patron approached the reference desk and asked me why Little Egypt Park, located in Williams County, was called Little Egypt? The person was interested in finding out why and how the park ended up with that name. I was intrigued myself, as I couldn’t think of any historical or geographical reasoning behind the name and set to work searching through various resources at the State Archives. This is what I found.

Little Egypt Park, located 30 miles south of Ray on Lake Sakakawea, features picnic areas, camping, and direct access to the lake so visitors can boat, fish, and swim at the park as well. In the late 1980s, plans were made to improve the park by creating a swimming area and bathhouse as well as upgraded picnic shelters and camping areas. And that’s all I was able to find. I looked through the State Archives resources I knew of, including “The Wonders of Williams: A History of Williams County, North Dakota,” local newspapers, and collections relating to parks and the creation of the parks, with no luck. This was odd, since it is common to find information about a park’s origins or name significance in our collections. Feeling stumped and not sure where else to search, I asked other State Archives staff members if they had any ideas, perhaps they had researched Little Egypt Park in the past. Shane Molander, the state archivist, reached out to State Historical Board member Richard Stenberg, an associate professor in the Arts and Human Sciences Department at Williston State College, with my question and provided me with the first lead I had so far: The old-timers in Williams County would say that the land had good soil or dirt. But what was the connection?

The sprawling Little Egypt Park on the shores of Lake Sakakawea. Courtesy Williams County

This research got me thinking about how and why place names were chosen during European immigration and settlement in the Midwest and Western states. The capital city of Bismarck is famously named in honor of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. A settlement in Traill County was given the name Little Chicago, and later in Dunseith, Little Chicago of the West was formed in the hopes that it would soon rival the city in Illinois. Towns across the Midwest were named Little Norway or Little Sweden by Norwegian or Swedish immigrants. So what inspired the people of Williams County to choose Little Egypt as their new park’s name? Continuing my search, I started looking for places named Little Egypt outside of North Dakota to see if any other information could be gathered about this interesting place name.

I came across this advertisement during my search for Little Egypt place names. The Devils Lake World, October 4, 1922, p. 15

Southern Illinois is nicknamed “Little Egypt,” with several towns in the southern half of the state named after Egyptian cities. This nickname was inspired by comparisons of the geographic features of the Mississippi River and flood plains of southern Illinois to the fertile Nile Valley in Egypt. Poor harvests in the northern regions of the state also contributed to this nickname, as the land in southern Illinois provided food relief to the struggling north during the winter of 1830-31.

Suddenly the dots began to connect. The “good dirt” that the old timers in Williams County thought the name came from could have been an allusion to the fertile soil found in that region of the county or to the fertile soil they hoped the region would have. The name also evokes the feeling of a prosperous community, like the settlers in Little Chicago would have wanted. Or perhaps people from southern Illinois settled in Williams County and chose to name the park after their home in Illinois. One single answer may not exist with multiple inspirations possible. But as it doesn’t appear the reason for the name was recorded, my quest continues.