Before going to the site, we toured the official government sanctioned store that is allowed to replicate the Terracotta Army with the actual clay used to make the original army. They make replicas ranging from 3″ up to life size options that can be shipped anywhere in the world. Once they complete the clay molds, all of the finishing details are done by hand before they are fired in the kiln. From the waist down, the molds are solid and from the waist up they are hallow to help with stability. The replica making process was truly incredible and done in a similar process as the original Terracotta Army.
Once the soldier molds were completed, they were also painted. After excavation, the lacquer covering the paint can curl in fifteen seconds and within four minutes in the dry air the paint flakes off.
The terracotta figures are life-size and vary in height, uniform, and hairstyle in accordance with rank. Their faces are different and they have identified 10 basic face shapes.
Most of the figures originally held real weapons and they estimate over 40,000 bronze weapons have been recovered from the pits. They found hundreds of crossbow triggers which meant that the Chinese invented them 2,000 years ago even though the English claim to have invented them in the 14th century.
Swords were coated with a layer of chromium dioxide that kept them rust free for 2,000 years. According to the Germans and Americans in 1937 and 1950, this technology was invented by them.
