1809 Spaniards - Granaderos a Caballo de Fernando VII

I'm very pleased to welcome another new cavalry unit. The idea for this lot first occurred to me last year - it was the subject of a post on this blog in Sept 2014. There have been a few delays along the way, but here they are, and today I've even got them based up and provided with a flag. All they need now is the regulation (light cavalry) 160mm x 110mm sabot and they will be ready to fight.

The figures, as you will see, are Hinton Hunt conversions. Though "Horse Grenadiers" suggests elite heavy shock cavalry, similar to the French Old Guard regiment, these fellows were nothing of the sort - the title was in all probability merely an attempt at bravado. The historic unit they represent was one of the new regiments formed after 1808. Coronel Fernan Nuñez raised them in Extremadura, and in February 1809 they are described as the Regimiento F Nuñez, while a return from Sevilla, in April of the same year, describes them as Husares. Though they were clearly a light cavalry regiment, similar in style and dress to the line regiments of cazadores a caballo, their title appears to have firmed up as the Granaderos a Caballo de Fernando VII by May 1809.

They have a proper campaign history - the unit fought at Ocaña and elsewhere. By 1810 they had become the Husares de Fernando VII, and pelisses were added to the uniform. In my army they'll be brigaded with the mounted cazadores and the husares, which is where they rightly belong.

Spanish Grenadiers - Who's for the Chop?

This is a plea for suggestions.

Not granaderos like this...

...but like this

I've been putting this off for a while. My boxes of 1809 Spaniards contain plentiful figures for 4 battalions of grenadiers - mostly nice Falcata chaps. I'm nervous about the painting of all the embroidered bags on the hats, but they should be spectacular when done, since your typical battalion would be the converged grenadiers of the regiments in a brigade, so mixed facings and even assorted uniforms are the order of the day. Splendid.

Fly in the ointment is that two of these planned grenadier battalions are actually to be grenadiers not of the Line but of Provinciales, and - as I now know - they wore a rather simpler form of headgear - smaller and without the fancy flamme. As far as I know, there is no suitable figure on the market. Hmmm.

Conversion time. The command figures aren't a problem - officers can wear bicorns or even the full grenadier busby (for flash), drummers similarly. For the actual granaderos I think that fitting the ubiquitous NapoleoN Miniatures Spanish line fusiliers with new heads should be a straightforward job - my immediate challenge is, which heads to use?

You ever see a hat like the one in the lower picture?

All suggestions for a suitable donor - any period, any nation - will be most welcome. I can, of course get busy grinding down all sorts of things, but the less grinding the better (to quote Descartes), and the more easily it can be repeated (as he may also have said). I've looked at various possibilities, including British Crimean guardsmen - I'd greatly prefer a metal head, and I'd prefer a full head rather than a hat graft.

Oh yes - the figures are 20mm (or 1/72). Any ideas?

Refurbing again - French Line Chasseurs à Cheval

I've stated here, quite recently, that refurbing old, bought-in, pre-painted figures is mostly more grief than it is worth - unless, of course, there is some particular reason to go down that path. The results are rarely as good as I had hoped, the amount of labour is invariably far more than expected, and so on.

Well, I've been doing some more, despite all the lofty theory. 20mm French line Chasseurs are a rare find - apart from Hinton Hunt and Qualiticast (neither of which is around in sufficient quantities to keep prices down), the best traditional stand-by is the early (20mm) Garrison casting, which can still be found on eBay, and can be very useful if the figures are in good nick. I can never get enough Chasseurs, so I have a quantity of the old Garrisons in my spares box, waiting to be smartened up to take their place in the line.

Today's restored unit is the 15eme Chasseurs. They are certainly not beautiful, but the troopers were passable when I first got them, and their previous history was prestigious enough for me to wish to keep them as is, with basic retouching of chips, new varnish and the official-issue bases and sabot. Sometimes, for reasons which are not clear even to me, it seems right to leave things alone if possible. I've even left the rather faded orange facings and the oversized Garrison swords. These fellows must have been first painted in the late 1960s, I reckon.

One problem, of course, is that Garrison did not do command figures, so my improvised officer and trumpeter are both modern Kennington line Chevauxlegers-Lanciers, with spare Garrison heads fitted, mounted on Garrison horses. The resulting conversions are a little shorter than their colleagues, but their hats match beautifully, so they must be the right size...

The 15eme (and the 14eme, who may or may not appear eventually) have been pencilled into my official Grand Plan OOB for some years, nagging away at me, since I have been aware that they have been sitting in the boxes waiting for a place in the painting queue. Well, they're finally done - quite satisfying, really. The flaky trumpeter in sky blue is correct, by the way.

1809 Spaniards – Daft Project #215b

JM Bueno plate of the light horse grenadiers - an odd concept,
but an interesting potential addition to the light cavalry

It’s strange what one finds in the spares box – I guess it’s because there are not so many collectors of figures in the scales, periods, nations and makes that I am looking for, and – ultimately – it’s a small world.

I’ve recently taken delivery of the second of my Spanish line Cazadores a Caballo units for the 1809 army. The Spanish army only had two such units, the Cazadores de Olivencia (red facings) and the Voluntarios de España (sky blue facings), so there’s no scope for adding any more.

The troopers in the more recently-arrived of these units consist of a Hinton Hunt conversion which is obviously specially done for the purpose, and very distinctive – braided chasseur-type jacket, and shako with side plume. All very good, but you may imagine my astonishment when I checked in my spares box, and found that I have 7 unpainted examples of exactly this same converted figure. In some strange way, I have received examples of this unique figure – which is definitely a subject of very limited and specialised interest – from two completely independent sources. Even more strangely, it has taken me until now to realise this. Of course, I could now say, “Gosh, that’s a bit of a surprise!”, or – being me – I might think, “Hmmm – if I added 3 command figures to these 7 figures, I could produce a complete new light cavalry unit for my 1809 Spaniards”. I have a bunch of (I think) Alberken hussar-type horses which would fit them admirably, so I’m off to a flying start if I wish to go that way.

All I need, then, is a suitable historical unit to base them on, and I have found one. The Granaderos a Caballo de Fernando VII were – contrary to what you might expect – a unit of light horse, uniformed in the style of the line Cazadores. They were raised in 1809 by the Conde de Fernan-Nuñez, who became their colonel. In 1811 they were renamed the Husares de Fernando VII, pelisses were added, and a Bueno plate I have of them from that later date looks very attractive, and far smarter, I’m sure, than the reality must have been. It is their earlier form and garb which interests me, though.

I also found these self-same Granaderos a Caballo among the illustrations of the Histoire et Collections volume on the Battle of Ocaña – these are taken from plates by Peter Bunde. The uniform is pretty much the same as the chap in the picture at the top of this post, except that Bunde has the troopers with epaulettes, which I think is unlikely. My intention would be to have the troopers as the plate at the top, but wearing side-plumed, cazador-style shakos, with white cording, and have the officers in colpacks, with silver epaulettes. In fact, an alternative might be to have the officers in full hussar style, in recognition of the hussar-style pretensions of the regiment. Whatever, we are talking of further conversions here.

I approached Peter at BB Wargames, and he sees no problem – just send the figures along – so it seems this might well go ahead. The last thing I need is someone to encourage me, normally, but this is OK. You will hear more of this, I have no doubt.

To give a bit of historical background, here’s an extract from Col JJ Sañudos’ wonderful database of the Spanish army in the Guerra de la Independencia, giving some details of the service of the unit.

More 1809 Spaniards

This week I received a small package of finished figures from BB Wargames. These are always interesting - conversions using Hinton Hunt castings (mostly). Here we have a pleasingly scruffy unit of foot artillery and also a welcome addition to the light cavalry brigade - these are the Cazadores d'Olivencia, who will join my other mounted Cazadores regiment, the (so called) Voluntarios d'Espana.

The cazadores do not yet have their flag, as you see. I know what it looked like, but it will get printed along with a number of other Spanish flags, once I have set them up on PaintShop and once I have got around to buying some decent printer paper for the job. I now have a good supply of cravats and finials, so there are no excuses left apart from procrastination.

Hinton Hunt enthusiasts may enjoy identifying the donor figures - there's a few Austrians in the artillery, I think, and the cavalry officer was definitely Lord Uxbridge in a former life. The cazadores really did wear that scary green colour, by the way.

I have a unit of Kennington hussars to paint (figures kindly supplied by Mr Kinch, of blog fame) and there are another two battalions of line infantry at Lee's prestigious painting factory, so things are moving along nicely.

It would be tedious to complain yet again about Royal Mail, but the Next Day Special Delivery package in which these chaps arrived appears to have been fired from a howitzer to get it here quickly from Norfolk. Damage to the figures was not extensive - one broken ramrod and some paint chips and grazes, but the packaging was top class, so a Next Day Special Effort must have gone into abusing the parcel. It did have FRAGILE written all over it, but FRAGILE is a very long word to read when you are in a hurry, and is in any case sometimes regarded as a challenge. Never mind - as long as the shareholders aren't affected.

Spanish Colonels - Conversions

Needs must. Since there is really nothing suitable on the market in metal 20mm, I've been experimenting for a while, trying various hybrid figures to provide mounted infantry officers for my new Spanish army. After some real disasters, I have finally found a conversion which I think works rather well.

Here's a couple of the new lads - the officers are Kennington French colonels, with Falcata Spanish heads grafted on. To provide a little variety, I'm going to mount these fellows on a selection of horses from the spares box - the examples shown here use Falcata and NapoleoN horses, which I think both look reasonable. These prototypes will be off to the painter on Wednesday.

It has also dawned on me that these converted officers would also work well in French or Confederation units. Hmmm.

ECW - As You Were - Switchable FLAGS

Low-tech, cheap solution - job done!

Very many thanks to Steve and Gary and Martin for the advice. I had a go at making up some flags on the plastic tubing which forms the stem (stalk?) of a standard Cotton Bud - just to see how it went - and it went well enough to be the answer, I believe.

Above you see the pikemen from the (Royalist) Regiment of Foot of Gordon of Monymore, with their colonel's colour mounted in this new way. Since the flag swings around like a weather vane, I think I'll introduce a sliver of BluTak to hold it still. If I wish to switch them to the other side, to become a Covenanter regiment for Marston Moor or the Siege of York, for example, it is necessary only to slip on a suitable replacement flag.

A sample cotton bud is included in the picture - we also had some with blue stems, but they are a little thicker. All in all, one of the easier DIY jobs I've attempted recently - thanks again, gentlemen.

At Long Last – proper British Peninsular War dragoons

Le Marchant's Brigade - fresh from the painter

I am delighted to introduce the official version of Le Marchant’s Heavy Brigade, circa Spring 1812. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions here previously, I have been looking for figures in the correct uniform in this scale since about 1975. For a while I considered the Hinton Hunt dragoons, but I could never have collected enough anyway, and I excused myself on the grounds that they would be a bit small for my heavy brigade. I rejected Qualiticast for exactly the same reasons. I also had a serious look at the Minifigs S-Range bicorne dragoons, but the uniform is a little early for my purposes. Another, better option was the Falcata boxed set (now OOP) of KGL dragoons, which are perfect apart from the fore-&-aft bicorne hat fitted with chinscales, which was a local eccentricity of the KGL. Briefly, there was also the NapoleoN version of the KGL boys, which were lovely figures, but - like everyone else - I was snoozing during the short time they were available.

3rd Dragoons

4th Dragoons

5th Dragoon Guards

My final version, therefore, is a hybrid – Falcata men with S-Range heads, on Falcata campaign-order horses. This has been an extended labour of love, and it is only fitting that I commissioned Lee to paint them to his usual high standard, so I am really very pleased indeed to have them ready and in The Cupboard.

My previous (post-1812, helmeted) regiments have moved into the Allied Odd-Bods box, while I decide what to do with them. They served as stopgaps for 40 years, so some respect is due.

The Headless Horseman

…and other mysterious goings-on.

Well you see, Clive was interested in mounted colonels for some of his British infantry, and one of the possibilities was the fellow I have pictured at the top of this post, who had been in my Napoleonic Command spares box for a few years.

I’d never quite identified this figure. At first glance it looks like a Hinton Hunt OPC, but there’s nothing like this in the catalogue. Disregarding oddities such as Der Kriegsspieler, my personal rule-of-thumb for this sort of thing is that if it looks like Hinton Hunt (especially in the horse department), then there is a good chance that it is actually a very early Minifigs 20mm piece. In fact someone had, I think, told me that this was a Minifig, and by deduction it was probably BNC5 – “Line Infantry Mounted Colonel”. Thus I had assumed this was what it was, and it lived in the spares box in this unofficial role.

I was never very taken with the paint job, and I was suspicious about the unconvincing epaulettes, so I decided to clean it up a bit and see what it was. Into the bleach it went, but bleach couldn’t handle a very thick coat of red undercoat, so it required a Nitromors bath. That shifted the red paint all right, but I was a bit shaken to find that it also shifted his head.

It was a conversion.

I should have thought of that – the Nitromors had simply taken out the glue which held his head on. At this point I was actually laughing out loud – there is something very silly about an elderly fellow like me looking so closely at epaulettes on a 20mm tin soldier, and missing the blindingly obvious. I really must get out more.

Having had a quick look around, I think it is actually a Hinton Hunt OPC Austrian General (AN102 – picture borrowed from the Hinton Hunter), with a British infantry head attached. If anyone recognizes the figure, or if you did the conversion, or if you disagree with my ideas about it, please shout.

Hinton Hunt AN102 - thanks to The Hinton Hunter blog

Good fun. Not sure what to do with him. The lack of epaulettes might make him suitable for a Spanish general, but the single-breasted jacket might not work – I’ll think about it.

Subject 2 – On Being Dead

I was happily reading Pierre le Poillu’s account of his visit to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, when I suddenly remembered that I am buried there. There are, of course, some 1 million other people buried there, so I can’t feel too bad about it if he did not visit my tomb. Out of idle curiosity I had a look in Wikipedia to see which famous people share my final resting place, and was a little upset to find I am not listed.

It would be ungracious to make too much of a fuss about this, but I would remind the reader that I was a prominent general in the Napoleonic Wars (rising to the rank of General of Division – I would have risen higher if I hadn’t blotted my record by being a Jacobin and a Republican, opposed to the Empire), I was wounded 15 times during those wars – the last time being outside the walls of Hougoumont at Waterloo, and I subsequently retired from military service to become leader of the liberal opposition in the French Chamber of Deputies. I became a noted orator before succumbing to apoplexy at the tender age of 50.

Naturally I would not wish to talk myself up here, but there are some pretty cheesy C-List celebs on the official tour of Père Lachaise – actresses and such. If you are in Paris, I hope you have the opportunity to drop in and say hello. My tomb is a bit overdone for my own taste, but it is easily spotted, and I appreciate the sentiment that created it. As you will see, they did not wish me to get out of here in a hurry.

The Engineer and the Coffee Table

I am still exploring the possibilities for providing my British Peninsular army with some engineers and sappers for their siege activities, as discussed in a recent post. I have had some very interesting and useful suggestions, for which thanks to anyone I haven’t thanked already. I’ve looked at some plastic ACW engineers, which were interesting but not quite suitable (primarily because of that physique thing – 1/72 plastic models are mostly wonderfully sculpted, but they also seem to represent a race of men with skinnier build and smaller heads than 1/72 metals), and the latest suggestion – from Rod – is the Art Miniaturen set JS72/0468, Napoleonic Austrian engineers, for which I have reproduced Herr Schmaeling's  catalogue picture at the top of this post. I’ve ordered some of these. I reckon a man in a shirt is a man in a shirt, regardless of nationality, though I may feel the need to carve off the odd moustache.

I think the aforementioned Finescale Factory French pontonniers which I have in the Spares Box may also switch sides and join the Brits – still thinking about this – and I have been offered some weaponless British infantry who should lend themselves to odd-jobbing and landscaping. One thing I haven’t got a source for is someone like this...

This is the only depiction I’ve ever seen of a British engineer from this period in serious working kit. The drawing is by Richard Scollins, and comes from a book I have which has an unjustly chequered past.

The book is shiny, big format. The edition I have comes from Book Club Associates, and the whole production is very obviously that most uncomfortable of things, a Coffee Table Book [gasp]. You know the sort of thing – lots of nice pictures and not much detail. A book about sieges for people who really couldn’t care less. You just know that the well known print of Major Ridge of the 5^th climbing the breach at Badajoz will be there and – sure enough – there it is. My lack of enthusiasm is evidenced by the fact that I unsuccessfully tried to unload it on eBay – twice, I think. No takers.

Well, in fact the book is not bad at all, once I got around to having a proper look at it. If anyone else is selling it on eBay, it's worth a modest bid. It contains some good stuff on artillery and engineering and all the unglamorous bits of sieges, and there are a lot of illustrations I’ve never seen anywhere else. So – credit where it’s due – I regret having previously rejected this volume – it’s fine. It even has some good pictures of British 10-inch howitzers, and you can’t get more specialist than that.

Just Like Christmas

Since it would be churlish to comment on the fact that it took Royal Mail’s guaranteed-next-day Special Delivery service two days to get the thing here, I shall simply state that I was very pleased to get a parcel this morning from Norfolk. Inside were all sorts of good things – converted Hinton Hunt models, the work of the esteemed Pete Bateman, and all for my Peninsular War armies.

There is something very pleasing about good conversions based on Hinton Hunt figures – I don’t have a great many, but they always feel like the sort of thing a proper wargames army should have (strong echoes of Peter Gilder), they bring a unique element and some welcome variety to the forces in The Cupboard, they provide troop types which otherwise would not be available and – especially if they are the work of someone with a lot more skill than I have – they are interesting and good to look at. Also, because this lot are individually converted, heads are all at slightly different angles and each figure is a character in his own right.

I’ve started basing and organising the new arrivals, and here’s some early results, which I’m very happy with. I have two new light cavalry units for the Spanish army, which fill a very prominent gap in the OOB. [Please note that my artificial light photos have started washing out red tones again – the paint is much brighter than this, and the reds are RED.] The horsemen in green are the Voluntarios de Espana, who, despite their name, are an old-established unit of regular Cazadores a Caballo. The other fellows are the Husares de Extremadura, formerly known as the Husares de Maria Luisa – I have no idea why they changed their name – maybe Maria Luisa lost them at cards. Both these units fought throughout the war, and they are presented here with hats which would fit any period from 1810 onwards. They have no flags yet, but I’m working on it.

There are also some cheerfully eccentric Spanish staff figures...

...and an interesting custom figure for General Von Neuenstein, who commanded a Confederation brigade in the Armée du Centre. Von Neuenstein is, authentically, wearing the uniform of a general officer of the Duchy of Baden – HH enthusiasts will spot that part of him may have been Russian in a previous existence!

Tomorrow, time permitting, there are some artillery and logistics items to sort out, so this is a particularly good parcel. Unpacking this lot has been just like Christmas...

Filler

Years ago, when life was simpler and I had more enthusiasm, I used to do a lot of figure conversions and scratch-build scenery items, and I used to use a Humbrol filler, and sometimes I used to use Plasticene, coated with banana oil in the celebrated manner mentioned in all the old books.

Recent hobby work - especially on resin buildings - has brought to my attention that I don't really have much idea what to do about filler now. Banana oil, if it isn't prohibited by Euroregs, is almost certainly plantain oil these days, and it was always dodgy stuff anyway. I have various clever two-part epoxy fillers and things which you mix together and knead by hand for half an hour before you find they have passed their sell-by date and will never set. I admit that I have even used Polyfilla on occasions to fill bubble-holes and graft-gaps in figure castings - at least it sands down nicely. I covered the brass plate on the front of a Hinton Hunt Old Guard Grenadier drummer's bearskin with Polyfilla once, and textured it with a pin, so that he could transfer to the Chasseurs. He's still serving in the ranks - no problems. Not something I would normally brag about, though.

Looking around, I see that Humbrol Model Filler is still on the market, and I believe that is the sort of thing I'm looking for - a simple, relatively non-toxic, one-tube gloop which will set quickly, sand smooth and take any kind of paint without blistering. I would happily order up some of the Humbrol, but felt a nervous twinge - in this day of wonderful acrylic things for modellers, is there something better I should be thinking about?

Yes - correct - replacing the bathroom wall heater would be a useful thing to do, but that's not what I was addressing here. Any gloop-lovers prepared to offer a little advice?

Choppin' & Changin'

This is about my latest attempt at a long-running project to produce some decent 1812-vintage British dragoons for my Peninsular War armies. I have a couple of units in the post-1812 uniform, with the French-style Doric helmet, (one of S-range Minifigs and one of PMD) but they are not really correct for the Peninsula. Well, that's not quite true, but they require more justification than I would wish, and I would really like some chaps in big boots and bicornes and laced jackets.

Like this

I managed to get some Hinton Hunt figures, but after a lot of glaring and head-scratching I decided they were really a bit small to make convincing heavy cavalry in the context of my armies. Next good idea was to obtain some Minifigs BNC9s - the S-Range heavy dragoon with bicorne. Very good - all you would think I would need then would be a source of BNC19s and BNC29s, the corresponding trumpeter and officer, and everything would be fine.

Alas, no. After an appropriate amount of swotting up in Carl Franklin and C C P Lawson and elsewhere, I realise there is a problem. The S-Range figure has a long-tailed coat, not to mention a pigtail. According to my books, the long-tailed coat for dragoons and dragoon guards was discontinued in 1796, and these units wore a short-tailed jacket with lace bars and with turnbacks in the regimental facing colour, along with the bicorne. The S-Range figure would be fine for the Life Guards or the Blues in 1812, but not for dragoons or dragoon guards. Bother.

I have a couple of units of 1812 KGL heavy dragoons by Falcata, and these are correct apart from the fact that they have the distinctive KGL bicorne, worn fore-&-aft with brass chinscales, which does not seem to have been worn by any other British units. I have a fair number of spare Falcata men left over, so my latest idea is to behead some of the KGL boys and give them Minifigs heads, and that has become this week's reason for getting my fingers covered in cuts and superglue.

Thus far I've done a trooper and a trumpeter - I have a few ideas for an officer, including using a KGL one unaltered, or a KGL one fitted with a new head, wearing a stovepipe shako with the peak filed flat, in imitation of the watering cap used at this time - I have a couple of potential donors of such a head among my box of broken NapoleoN figures (and the very frail muskets on the NapoleoN Peninsular Brits ensured that I have quite a few broken spares).

I'll put a smidgin of Milliput around the joins, to avoid the wasp-like neck which grafts usually give me, and it should be OK. This is probably the best conversion prototype for dragoons of this period I've produced to date. No - you're not getting to see the earlier ones. There is an excellent old Scots word comes to mind - haunless (literally handless) - meaning inept, clumsy, incompetent.


Afterthought:

This sort of thing doesn't help. This plate for British heavy cavalry in the excellent Histofig online resource perpetuates the error - the two figures on the left, with the long-tailed coat, should have white turnbacks, and this long coat was not issued after 1796. There is a missing uniform - from 1796 to 1812 dragoons wore a short jacket (like the illustration at the top of this post) with turnbacks in the regimental facing colour. Figs 1a & 1b here are an incorrect hybrid. How can mere wargamers be expected to get this right when the gospels are wrong?

Pickin’ & Scratchin’

eBay, the Spares Boxes and a Museum of Glue

Cuirassiers – maybe by Alberken – soon to have a nationality transplant

I recently won some French cuirassiers on eBay – Alberken/Minifigs 20mm OPC jobs – enough for a unit. A couple of points here in the interests of accuracy (after all, standards have to be maintained). Firstly, I am not really sure whether they are Alberken or Minifig 20 – I have read the debate about strict definitions a few times now, and sometimes I understand it, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes – like this week – I understand it but have forgotten what it says. They do not have horizontal, sticky-out tails on the horses, which suggests they are not Alberken (or not Minifig 20, perhaps?), but the horses are recognisably from the same gene pool as Hinton Hunt, so they must be pretty early Minifigs.

Secondly, since I am doing the Peninsular War (as in doing the Lambeth Walk), I already have all the cuirassiers I need – the bold 13eme, in fact. Well, the truth is that my search for suitable Spanish cavalry has become desperate enough for me to embrace the idea of recruiting the famed Coraceros Españoles. Previously I had dismissed this as something of a cop-out, but a quick study of the magnificent database of JJ Sañudo has convinced me that this was an active unit with a long and worthy war record in the relevant period. They look pretty much like French cuirassiers (most of their hardware was nicked from a French provisional regiment), but they wear red jackets with green facings. Easy peasy – this should be just a paint conversion – and my ex-eBay figures have little enough paint on them to enable me to paint over what is there. I need command figures, but the castings do not have carbines, which simplifies conversion work, so the officer will just be a trooper with a bit of extra silver paint. The trumpeter was manufactured last night. Razor saw and superglue on a broken spare figure turned his head a bit to one side and replaced his right arm with one from a spare Kennington trumpeter. The join is a little crude, to be honest, since the arms were of slightly different diameter, but some gloopy paint can hide a lot of misery. I even did a little botchy dowel jointing of the grafts with brass wire, so by the normal house standards this is almost over-engineered.

Coracero

A good wash and they’re ready for painting. However, since I’d built up a little momentum, I decided to revisit one of my plastic freezer boxes – this one is labelled Extra Chasseurs a Cheval. Inside are two batches of old Garrison line chasseurs, which are intended to be the raw material for the last two such units in my Grand Plan. I already have three regiments of chasseurs (13eme, 22eme and 26eme), but the theoretical OOB also includes the 14eme and 15eme (yes – I know) so I’ve sort of got used to the idea.

I got busy hacking flock and surplus glue off the chasseurs, checking the paint job and straightening swords and scabbards – no breakages – good so far, though I got bits of glue and stuff all over the place. It turns out that one of the batches is really pretty good – some minimal touching up and a couple of convincing command figure forgeries and they are good to go. The other batch, even after quite a lot of cleaning up,  really are not up to it. The paint job is not brilliant, and they appear to have been liberally coated with thick gloss varnish which has turned an amber colour – so a thorough strip is required. Also, close examination reveals that the horses for this batch are actually cuirassier horses, with the shabraques covered in thick cream paint. Since I have enough new, unpainted Garrison castings to make a full unit anyway, I decided to cut my losses and ditch the worse of the two old batches. I can make command figures by gluing chasseur heads onto Kennington line chevauxlegers, so I now have a detailed plan for my two proposed additional units, so that feels like progress of some sort.

I got quite interested, while I was hacking and scraping last night, with the variety of glues on display, and it got me thinking about glues in general. The figures I was working on have been fastened onto numerous generations of bases over the last 40 years or so, and the riders have been stuck back onto their horses at odd times with products ranging from Copydex to something like Uhu. The base glues included some thick, yellow slabs like barley sugar, and there were traces of Araldite, which is a sadistic thing to use to mount figures on cardboard bases.

Over the years my own favoured glues for use with toy soldiers have changed considerably. I started out using Araldite, I recall, but I was always terrified to try to heat it in case I melted the castings, so I did a lot of jobs which required 24 hours to set, with everything strapped together with wire clips and Plasticene girders. I briefly became attached(?) to Plastic Padding, which was pretty horrible stuff for small scale modelling, but had the big advantage that it set faster than Araldite.

Since then I have had occasional dalliances with the stringies, such as Uhu, which are useful for filling gaps and sticking non-flush surfaces, but almost impossible to make a neat job with. Nowadays I use two different consistencies of superglue, white PVA for base-gluing, and sometimes Serious Glue for fiddly jobs.

When I was a boy, my dad was a great glue enthusiast. We always had supplies of very earnest glues. I remember Durofix clear glue (which was like a less stringy version of Uhu), something called Croid, which had a more industrial relative named Croid Aero, which I think came in tins. There was also something very scary indeed which was in orange and blue tins (can’t remember the name), and it needed to be melted by placing the can in a pot of boiling water. It smelled like the old glue-pot stuff we used in school woodwork classes, so I guess it was derived from dead horses or similar. I’m sure modern glues are superior in many ways – a friend of mine who is a manufacturing biochemist says the best glues are American ones if you can get them, since the US is a lot more relaxed on the subject of eco-friendly solvents.

I also used to use Cascamite, a casein-based glue which you mixed with water, for joinery work. It was hard and strong if you could get it to set properly – much recommended by luthiers and the like.

Anyone remember Croid? It’s probably still on sale in B&Q, and I just haven’t noticed.

Regimiento del Ribero

Having replaced my congealed red paint, I've now finished the first of my new units of Falcata figures. Here are the Regimiento del Ribero - also known at different times as the Voluntarios del Ribero and even as the Cazadores del Ribero. Whatever, they are light infantry. These are all pre-production castings from Falcata - the skirmishers are my own conversions - Spanish regular light infantry with militia heads.

There will be three similar new battalions in the fairly near future.

ECW - Snip Snip

Very short post this afternoon. I thought I would come clean about another instance of an unspeakable practice - converting Hinton Hunt figures. The particular case in point is the ECW standard bearer.

I have never really cared for HH standard bearers with their cast flags - it's a personal thing. Mostly this is because I am not a good enough painter to paint a pleasing flag (I had some disastrous, embarrassing failures with ACW Union flags in my formative years), but it's also because the figure is very top-heavy, and has an inconveniently extended base, which impacts on unit spacings. So I snips em, don't I?

I remove the flag, shorten his base, clean up his shoulder and remodel the brim of his hat (the cast flag is integral with the hat), then drill out the bearer's hand and superglue a metal pole in place and the job is done. I've done this enough times now to be getting comfortable and quick with it, and I'm pleased with the results (although it will certainly earn me black marks in the Great Book of Hinton).

The example shown here is the Royalist CEW2, before and after, but the procedure is exactly the same for the Parliamentarian REW2. All complaints to Chateau Foy, please, on used £10 notes.

ECW - The Rabble

I believe I may have mentioned this matter here before. I have already had some valuable advice from Clive, John C and others – for which many thanks – and I have a short term plan which I shall say more about in a moment, but I thought it might be a good move to air the topic more widely, to see if anyone has some good ideas.

While reading about the ECW in Lancashire and other, similarly provincial parts of Up North, I have come to understand that a proportion of the infantry - especially Parliamentarian town guard and militia units, were often just citizens armed with anything they could get their hands on. Of course, there are no suitable figures available in 20mm (which serves me right, I guess), so I've been having a good think what I could use for such characters. The idea is that they should be compatible with my Les Higgins/Hinton Hunt armies – a size range that also includes SHQ and (some) Tumbling Dice things.

Irregular are too small, as are Niblet. Mainstream old-style 25mm such as Minifigs S-Range (and there are two very nice armed peasants in the range) are too big, as are Art Miniaturen and the forthcoming Falcata 30YW figures, and so are all 1/72 plastics, sadly – I was impressed by Dux Homunculorum’s clubmen converted from the Imex “Pilgrims” set. I am happy to consider figures from a different (though similar) period.

My present plan is to convert some Les Higgins ECW artillerymen, and maybe some Hinton Hunt artillerymen if I can find spares – give them the odd new hat, remove their artillery tools to give them open hands, animate them a bit and fit them with pole arms (bits of florists’ wire, plus any suitable axes and bits and pieces I can get). I probably need 2 or 3 units – I would go for normal ECW figures for the command, on the assumption that the leaders would be better dressed, so I would need about 60 suitable clubmen, preferably in a suitably disorganised mixture of poses (i.e. at least 3, for preference).

If I can make up some decent converted prototypes I can arrange to get some copies made, but this is all a bit of an unexpected challenge. I knew I was going to have to obtain some Scots at some point, but there are suitable figures by both Hinton Hunt and SHQ. If you are aware of any (21mm tall) 20mm ECW figures which I haven’t mentioned, or you have any good ideas on good donor figures for cunning conversions, I’d be very pleased to hear from you.  

Solo Campaign - The Earl of Aigburth

Still on the milk bottle top, and with his varnish still a little too bright, here is the new C-in-C of the Anglo-Portuguese army. May I introduce General Sir Banastre Tarleton, Earl of Aigburth, more or less ready to join his troops in Portugal.

You see him mounted on his favourite horse, Philadelphia, and dressed as Colonel-in-Chief of his beloved 21st (Yorkshire) Light Dragoons. Yes - the hat - had to be.

The 21st, of course, are currently in South Africa, not in the Peninsula at all, and experts might observe that in 1808 the regiment's facings were changed to pink - ah well - according to my trusty Franklin, the new facings were not well received, and the regiment continued to wear its pre-1808 yellow facings until the new (French-style) uniforms were received in 1814, at which point the facings became black.

So there you have it.

He has still to be joined by his ADC - Captain JE Falconer of the 4th Foot, who is, in fact, his nephew (being his sister Bridget's boy - I hope you are taking notes). The family were very keen that Falconer serve in this capacity, though who is going to look after whom is a matter of debate. The Captain is on another bottle top, and will be along shortly.

If anyone cares, the figure of Tarleton is what as a boy I would have called a bitza (bitza this, bitza that). He started life as a Minifigs S-Range figure of Eugene de Beauharnais, but has a new head (from a NapoleoN light dragoon officer) and a horse supplied by Art Miniaturen.

In his baggage for his voyage to Lisbon is a letter for the Quartermaster General which contains the following passage:

It is my intention to leave responsibility for the whereabouts of individual mules and supply wagons in the hands of the QMG's staff. I intend to focus primarily on the disposition of the fighting army. I should not express a view on whether this will be a change of recent practice, but this is my aim.