More French Command - on a run now...

And here are some more. This is the missing artillery command stand - they can also be in charge of the French Siege Train if and when it gets out of the box. The standing figures are from TM1815's set TM-F0002 - French Staff Officers - which are available online from Hagen; the mounted chap is Hinton Hunt FN224, because I have a couple of spares, because it's a figure for which I have a long-standing affection and to get the Old School brownie points score up a bit.

Pleased with these - I'm still not quite sure what artillery commanders do in a wargame, but they can stand around and look smart, I guess. You will observe that they are based on one of my new-house-standard 50x50 jobs (which, strictly speaking, is the size for a Division Commander) and they have the regulation black border, which is used for artillery, engineering and logistics command stands.

Those French ADCs are fun to paint. I must say I do enjoy painting these odd command figures - they don't numb the brain to the same extent as, say, two dozen identical fusiliers.

Poppycock! - another damned waste of bleach

Some of us are destined not to be successful strippers - we just have to face up to the fact. I would love it if bleach worked for me - I keep allowing myself to be duped into trying it again.

I'm currently having a minor blitz on a pile of French command figures which are waiting to be painted - I've just spent a day and and a half, filing and fettling and supergluing - mostly Hagen and Art Miniaturen figures - really rather enjoyed myself. This is partly aimed at shifting some more of the painting queue, but also at moving to my new basing standard for general officers - it may take a while to get there, but the idea is to have brigadiers based on their own, division commanders based in twos (a general + an ADC) and army commanders in threes (a general + 2 staff). I have a nice supply of figures just itching to be painted and based - all good stuff.

I made very good progress, and while I was at it I thought it would be a good idea to do something (at long last) about a Qualiticast command group I bought on eBay - it's been in the cupboard for a couple of years. Problems with it are (1) the group includes Napoleon [gasp], and (2) the group has been professionally painted, to a standard which does not please me. The painting is, to employ a technical term, crap. I could - and shall - do better myself.

So I prised the Qualiticast figures off their little diorama base, being careful to preserve the table (with map) and the scenic drum, crossed myself and placed the figures lovingly in some nice new bleach I had bought specially. I took care to avoid bubbles, and checked they were all covered to a good depth, and left them for 36 hours. When I felt they were ready, I rinsed them off, rubbed them down with the regulation toothbrush and had a speculative pick with the official penknife.

These are not, you will notice, what are termed unpainted figures

They are now drying. When they are dry I shall stick them in the hated Nitromors, or hand remover as it is known here. That will do the job. Speak not to me of bleach, nor Dettol, nor Buckfast tonic wine, nor Fairy Dust - all that can be said for my most recent bleach attempt is that I am very unlikely now to catch any infection from the figures, but the paint on them has become "a little spoilt" rather than "gone", which is the state I had hoped for.

If bleach works for you then you have my envy and my respect - it does not work for me. The number of times I have proved this to myself, you would think I would have got the hang of the idea by now.

Not to worry. Progress consists of small steps. I think Goethe said that. It might have been the Chuckle Brothers, in fact.

****** Late Edit ****** (Saturday night, 1st July)

Nice clean, airtight Douwe Egberts jar containing the Clean Spirit experiment
 - give it a couple of weeks. I'll set up another trial when the Simple Green arrives.

1809 Spaniards - Beremundo

The loneliness of command - under revised house rules, brigade commanders still don't get an ADC

Another senior officer for the Spaniards. This chap is a spare from a stock of Spanish cavalry I've had for a little over two years, waiting patiently in the paint queue. These are some of the figures I commissioned from Hagen - they paint up all right, I think?

This is Colonel Beremundo Ramirez de Arellano of the line cavalry unit Reina, who had the (brief) pleasure of commanding the brigade of cavalry at Uclés (13th Jan 1809).

Since he is a colonel, much of the prep work consisted of carefully filing off his epaulettes - hands are still sore this morning!

New Officer for the 43rd

My good friend Pieter very kindly sent me samples of some new GBM Peninsular War figures he has commissioned, which are now in the Hagen shop. As ever with Massimo's sculpts, the figures are very pleasing - so pleasing, in fact, that I took advantage of a rare couple of hours' free time this evening to paint up a replacement officer for my 43rd Foot - note the regimental eccentricity of a non-regulation pelisse. The unit he will serve with consists of original 1970s Les Higgins figures - the officer is obviously quite a tall man, but his hat is a good match so - by my house rule of thumb (also known as Foy's Third Law) - this officer is officially the correct scale for the job.

He displaces a Les Higgins officer - I'll find the redundant chap alternative employment elsewhere.

French Siege Train - Ramrod Enhancement

Ramrod salesmen really don't want you to know about this neat trick.
Kennington gunners in 1813 uniforms, all ready for sieges in 1810 - no wonder they are smiling.

I do have some OOP NapoleoN gunners available, but, since I need big numbers, and since the Siege Train is probably going to spend the vast majority of its time in its box, I am intending to man my French siege equipment with cheap and cheerful (and underrated, in my opinion) SHQ/Kennington crews.

I've still got one small shipment to come, but most of the figures are here, and I've cleaned them up and put them on the regulation bottletops, ready for painting. I also took the opportunity to carry out some modest conversion work, equipping half a dozen of the gunners with ramrods of a suitable size for the 24pdr behemoths.

My photo includes an unadjusted specimen, front centre, for comparison. A razor saw, a pack of needle files, a pin vice and some (accelerated!) superglue and I am a happy chappie - no doubt about it!


Separate Topic

Since today is the 204th anniversary of the Battle of Salamanca (that's Los Arapiles to you European fellows), I am feeling rash enough to do something naughty...

I'm not supposed to show anyone these, but here's a "leak" of some photos of the masters of some new Portuguese Cacadores I have commissioned (in 1/72 white metal) from Hagen Miniatures. In due course they will appear for sale on Hagen's website, but I thought I'd sneak in a quick appetiser. These are to be marketed under the Foy Figures name, to join the Portuguese Line infantry and 1809 Spanish line cavalry which are already on sale from Hagen. The website is here.

Special message to Armand (Tango01) - please do me a favour, and don't link this to TMP...

New 1/72 Portuguese from Foy Figures - and a sticky question

The new "Foy Figures" Portuguese - here are the officer, standard bearer, two fusiliers
 and the mounted colonel. I intend to produce some rather more glamorous pictures
of painted figures in due course. I hadn't glued together the drummer or the grenadier
when this rather rushed photo was taken

This week I have received the first production castings of the new Foy Figures Portuguese line infantry I commissioned from Hagen Miniatures. I'm very pleased with them, and am surprised that they are already available, and have joined last year's Spanish cavalry in Hagen's online shop.

I had intended to get some of the figures painted up before showing them here, but subsequently I thought it might be best just to get a picture out there, since they are for sale now, apparently, and the photos on the Hagen site seem to be of the masters. These are, as you see, Peninsular War Portuguese from about 1811, with the later shako. From my personal point of view, they are intended to fill the gap left by the much-missed NapoleoN figures, and they are an excellent size match for the OOP NapoleoNs and the 1/72 plastic sets available - they are slightly taller than Kenningtons, but could appear on the same tabletop with no problems. I have a conspicuous hole in my Anglo-Portuguese army - I have the Portuguese brigades attached to the Third and Sixth Divisions, but the NapoleoN team went bust before I got to the Seventh Division, so that is the immediate target of these new chaps.

Two packs are available from Hagen, a Command set (containing a standard bearer, a drummer, an officer on foot in a greatcoat and a mounted colonel) and a set comprising three marching soldiers (two fusiliers and a grenadier). I am also in the process of commissioning some Cacadores to go with these (which will contain some skirmishing poses), and I hope these will be available in a small number of weeks. Hagen also have plans to produce Portuguese cavalry and artillery from the same period - I hope these will all prove to be useful to Peninsular War disciples of this scale.

As is increasingly common these days (Art Miniaturen, Perry etc) some of these little figures require some assembly - separate arms for the officers and the grenadier, and a separate drum and arms for the drummer. Everything goes together without much grief, but this brings me nicely to Subject Two, which is the small matter of modelling glues (again).

Subject Two

As I get older, I have found that a number of things are not what they used to be. Bananas don't taste the same, flowers don't smell as sweet, and so on; in my wargaming activities, I have found that rulebooks are much longer than they used to be, that 20mm soldiers are smaller, and that Superglue is a feeble imitation of the stuff I loved and used in the 1970s (good grief - that is a long time ago).

Polymerisation of methyl-2-cyanoacrylate (well, naturally)

I'm quite happy to carry out figure conversions, sticking on new heads and other bits, but it is less straightforward than it was. Apart from the mysterious coarsening of my fingertips and the need for brighter lights and optical aids, I have problems holding grafts together long enough for them to stick securely. I have been known to build complex clamps and supporting cradles from BluTak and suchlike, but the fundamental difficulty appears to be that superglue is not what it was. Sometime in 1974 or so I stuck a complete regiment's-worth of fusewire bayonets on a French unit of 20mm Garrisons - a few seconds each and they stuck tight, and they are still firmly in place to this day. Couldn't do it now - not just because I am shakier, but because the glue sets too slowly.

I only think about this occasionally - I keep buying in tubes of Loctite glues of various types from my local hardware store (because they have a short shelf life, and always run out on a Sunday in the middle of a job), and I keep coming back to the same basic problem. Using the methods I have learned over some 40 years of hacking and tacking, I now have a lot of trouble getting heads, arms, drums, flagpoles and whatnot to keep still long enough to make a decent job - and I am keen enough to file joints to a mirror finish and put little wire dowels in and all that. It's just the glue, Your Honour.

I have heard that they (who?) have deliberately reduced the spec of off-the-shelf superglue, so that users do not stick their fingers together - to make it - that's right - safer. There are rather depressing threads on modelling fora where some chap will say, "Ah - but the secret is Gorilla Glue - I use Gorilla Glue and my models stick instantly, so why don't you use it and be ubercool as well?", and some other chap will dismiss this as nonsense, claiming that anyone with any idea at all uses something different.

Uwe makes positive claims for a product called Bondic, which I have not used (though you may well have) - this is a liquid plastic which hardens when exposed to a UV LED lamp, which comes as part of the kit. There is a similar product called Blufixx, apparently, which also gets good reviews, but I am concerned that fastening a flat-ground arm to a flat-ground shoulder on a little soldier produces the sort of joint which would not readily allow you to shine in UV light - I mean, it's dark in there, man - which might make the Bondic kit just another of my collection of expensive modelling white elephants.

I have read vague references to the fact that you can still buy "unaltered" superglue which works like the original, but this gets confused by advertising and by inter-forum squabbles.

Yes it does, no it doesn't, Gorilla is the thing, no it isn't, you need 2-part epoxy, you are an idiot, etc.

I am confident that few people can be as ignorant in this area as I am - any enthusiastic users/endorsers of a product which will change my life? I have used what seems like a wide range of products, but there are still many out there of which I have never heard, and the subject is complicated by the fact that some of these are available only in the US. What I need is a one-tube, convenient, non-toxic glue which sets in a few seconds. Oh, and available in the UK, without breaking the bank.

Any suggestions?

Please?....

1809 Spaniards - Some Welcome Progress

After charging ahead with my 1809 Spanish Army for a while, everything screeched to a halt in November - to a large extent this was simply because an illness in the family left me with very little spare time, but it was also a consequence of what I am now rather ashamed to refer to as The Great Sulk - of which I shall say more later.

Today I am delighted to welcome the first newly painted Spanish unit of the year - this is the 3rd of what will be 4 Foot Artillery batteries suitable for 1809. These were excellently painted by my rather shadowy friend Francisco Goya (does he paint in a mask? - hmmm), and they are not only a valuable addition to the available forces, but also (I hope) an important step towards ending the Sulk.

The figures are mostly by GB Miniatures, one of the Hagen family of 1/72 makers (mastered by the estimable Massimo), with a couple of NapoleoN boys and one Falcata. The guns are Hagen's own.

One slightly tricky aspect of putting together a gun-crew is the combination of poses - I try to make this sensible, but manufacturers are very enthusiastic about having the rammers ramming, the firers firing etc - everybody depicted doing what it is he does - but having them all do it at the same time would upset the Health & Safety boys more than a little. I'm not too fussy about this - I have enough artillery crews of old Minifigs and similar which made a point of having the rammer portrayed making an attempt to have his arms blown off, so getting snippy about it at this stage would be rather silly. I do try to keep an eye on things, though.

The Sulk.

Ah, well. You see, last year I suddenly found myself in the position where I was going to have to go back to doing all my own painting, and this after a period when I had been using the services of painters who were both quicker and far more skilful than I. I decided the only thing to do was to bite the bullet and crack on, by myself, so as not to lose momentum (momentum, at my age, being a precious thing).

I did pretty well, painting away, good-style, and listening to a lot of Fauré, but I was obviously going to need more outside support in the painting department. I renewed my acquaintance with Philgreg, the painting service based in Sri Lanka.

I had previous with Philgreg - I had found that they produced an acceptable result (unbelievably cheaply, even allowing for postage costs) if I provided an exact painted sample of what I wanted - I would get back pretty good facsimiles of what I sent them. The occasions when things went a bit wonky were when I required them to work from verbal descriptions, or - I suspect - when they were unusually busy, when an observable dip in quality suggested to me that some of the painting crew were less experienced, or fringe players in a team pool. My first attempts to get Philgreg involved again last year went pretty well - I required them only to provide rank-and-file, in fairly simple uniforms, and the amount of rework I had to do to get the finished figures to a decent quality was acceptable - the cost of the outsource work was good for the effort saved. If they produced 85%-finished figures, it was worth the money.

Their approach is businesslike, and the main man (Philip) is helpful and easy to deal with. The idea is that they send you photos of samples, to show you how your shipment is progressing, to make sure you are happy. Apart from a rather high proportion of broken figures, this went OK - for the first such shipment. Then - lulled into a foolish over-confidence - I sent a rather more complicated job.

First ominous sign was I got no sample pictures, and got no progress report at all until I chased them. The figures arrived back, painted, and they weren't good. One battalion took me about a week of evenings to rescue, but it turned out well. The other battalion that came back was worse. In all honesty, they aren't really so bad - I reckon that another week of fairly dedicated evenings would put them into very good shape indeed, but somehow I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I have been more depressed by this (relatively minor) reverse than I should have been - I have put the figures, on their bottletops, carefully in a box, ready to start work, and then I have hidden in a hole in the ground. I have found Other Things to Do. Sulking. Lamentable behaviour.

With this new artillery unit I hope I can get myself motivated again - a good slap around the head, a cup of decent coffee, some appropriate painting music on the old Bose and I should be back in business. There you are - I've said it on the blog - I'm duty bound to shape up now.  

Foy Figures' Spanish Cavalry - Guest Appearance...

Ben has painted his as the Line Cavalry regt Farnesio - the gauntlets covering the
cuff details mean that you can paint the same figures as dragoons with no problems

I'm absolutely delighted to see that Ben at the Monsieur le Rosbif blog has painted up a unit of the Hagen cavalry figures I commissioned last year. I have figures for 4 regiments'-worth of these guys still waiting in the painting queue, but Ben has done his usual sumptuous paint job, so I am now encouraged to get on with them.

Thank you Ben - nice job! If mine turn out half as well as yours then yours will be twice as good as mine (or something)...

New Napoleonic Spanish Cavalry - Size Comparison

At the request of Mr L Gunner, here's a quick comparison. My new Foy Figures men are made to 1/72, so are a tad larger than Hinton Hunt (which are not). As enthusiasts for plastic will testify, "1/72" is not an exact global standard either, but these fellows will all serve happily alongside each other in my army, so as far as I'm concerned they are near-enough compatible.

L to R: NapoleoN, Foy/Hagen, Hinton Hunt x 2, Falcata x 2

Hinton Hunt horses a bit shorter in the wheelbase, but that's normal

Links to the Hagen shop are in the previous post.

Spanish Cavalry 1806-09 - figures now available

I now have samples from my first figure commission - and I'm very pleased with them. These are available from Foy Figures at Hagen - the initial sets are properly illustrated there - we have a set of 3 mounted troopers and one of 3 command figures (officer, standard and trumpeter), and each of these sets is available with a choice of walking or trotting horses. Lovely sculpts from Massimo.

I have done no cleaning up on this chap - this is the officer, just to give an idea. All the horses are made so that reins may be added with wire (if you wish), and the troopers have separate muskets, which have to be glued in place. The figures may be painted as dragoons (yellow uniforms) or line cavalry (dark blue), and I believe they fill a conspicuous gap in the available 20mm (or 1/72) metal ranges for Napoleonic Spanish collectors.

I hope you like them as much as I do!

A Peek through Someone Else's Window

My thanks to Rod, who brightened my morning by drawing my attention to these fellows, who are featured on Uwe's splendid History in 1/72 blog - here. Peninsular War riflemen in 1/72, but such as I have never seen in metal in this scale. Even those of us who already have too many riflemen will be hoping that Hagen Miniatures can get these on the market soon. My compliments and best wishes to Massimo, the sculptor.

There's more pictures on the original blog - if you aren't a regular visitor, get along there and join up - there's links to Hagen's shop and all sorts of goodies.