"They will say what men say now, Sire: that you have extended the limits of refurbishment."
Almost two years ago, I bought the 20mm part of Eric Knowles' WSS collection, which gave me a flying start into a new project, a new period.
For about 18 months I have been working away to refurbish as much of that collection as made sense; since I had also acquired a veritable mountain of good unpainted castings, and as the number of finished units becomes sufficient to have a game, the pressures have changed. The last refurb job I did (last week) was enjoyable, and I'm pleased with the results, but if I'm honest I have to admit that it might have been easier and probably better to start again with fresh castings.
Also, I have to face up to the fact that under the couch in the attic room I have 3 large boxes of painted candidates for refurbishment, and I haven't really looked at them for about 9 months. Something has changed in the priorities; also, some of these remaining ex-Eric figures are pretty battered, and some of them have uniforms which do not fit with my project. Thus I've decided to draw a line, starting with the cavalry. As from yesterday, I have ice-cream tubs full of Eric's old figures, soaking the old bases off.
I also have some ready de-based figures soaking in the Clean Spirit jar, let's get them back to bare metal and check the castings are nice and clean. Once the ice-cream-tub footbath has done its work, I'll remove the rest of the figures from their bases and put them in the Clean Spirit.
I have no shortage of soldiers to paint, so there's no point in hanging on to the scruffier end of Eric's painted armies if I'm not going to do anything useful with them.
This also calls to mind the possibility that some of my early restoration work for the WSS was not quite up to the standard I would be aiming for now. That's OK - I'm not worried about that - my earliest refurbs used the very best of Eric's troops, so I'm happy with them.
If I'm going to re-use old figures, let's make it sensible and productive!
Well you are keeping busy ! Too me always a hard call if it’s a repaint or strip, I’ve been doing some 15mm Minifigs Huns as a repaint over very early 1970’s paint jobs ( big brush mix of humbrol gloss and Matt ) but they’re coming out pretty good. Enjoy the refurb
ReplyDeleteThis last tipping point has been a bit different. For a year or so I was toiling my way through these boxes of Eric's pre-painted figures, but more recently I've been using new castings, or painted ones from elsewhere. I realised that the cavalry boxes have been undisturbed for a while now, so went through them and decided some nice stripped figures would be good use at this stage. I also have some pretty grotty Dutch infantry of Eric's (nice enough figures, but war weary) which might go in the dip soon.
DeleteThere is something very satisfying about taking thick old paint and varnish off figures and revealing fresh looking metal beneath…
ReplyDeleteThere are some old paint jobs out there that just can’t be saved…
All the best. Aly
Hi Aly - yes - I went through a stage when I was panicking to get as many useable figures restored as possible - partly to get the armies to fightong strength and partly out of respect for Eric's paintwork. I've now reached sections of the old collection which even Eric would have avoided putting on the table!
DeleteI have a couple of converted figures - mounted drummers and so on - which are likely to disintegrate if I strip them, so they will go carefully through the restoration department!