1809 Spaniards - More Generals

Right - back to more appropriate subject matter. I've had very little time for wargame-related activities lately, but I had a stroke of luck. I supplied some spare Napoleonic figures to a rather mysterious chap named Goya, and he offered to do some soldier-painting for me by way of repayment. He has very kindly produced these splendid Spanish generals for me (I am confident I got rather the better of that deal) - they really are most welcome - the expansion of the 1809 army proceeds, but - as we all know - you just can't get the staff these days. Generals tend to be a catch-up item once the combat units are approaching critical mass.

Here you see a division commander - complete with his ayudante - and a brigadier. Fine fellows, and I'm very pleased with them. The castings are OOP NapoleoN 20mm - which only briefly saw the light of day before they passed into history. I'm trying to make my Spanish generals suitable for either of my two Spanish armies (1809 and 1812) - it is tempting to paint one or two up in the white uniform of a colonel of infantry (like the paintings of Castaños at Bailen), but that would be a no-no for 1812, so I'm holding back on that.

I am now prepared for all the predictable comments about the supposed incompetence of the Spanish army - do your worst; they are still a smashing little army!

Foot Guards - More is Better

Coldstreams

3rd Foot Guards

I recently obtained via eBay some interim-period Minature Figurines British infantry (poses BN26 & 27) which were a good match - including painting style - for my two battalions of Foot Guards, so I set about taking the opportunity to increase the size of these battalions by some 50% - something I have had a fancy for since not long after I painted up the original units (circa 1973?). I had some adventures with varnish incompatibility, and neither the castings nor the paint job will win any prizes, but this is what my Old School units look like, and it's nice to achieve a low-priority objective.

Martin P asked me for some pics of the enlarged units, and I needed to take some for my in-house catalogue system anyway, so here they are - veterans of my wargames going back a great many years, they have been handled and deployed by a good few friends who are no longer with us, and who would probably have been delighted to have the extra 2 bases available for each battalion from time to time. The command figures are - some of them, anyway - later imports from other manufacturers. I don't know where the guys in the last two rows have been this last 40-odd years, but they fit right in.

I am tired this morning, like a great many Brits, having sat up late watching the General Election coverage on TV. I have nothing at all to say about the results, but, having lived through the build-up over the last few weeks, wondering what on earth ever happened to old fashioned concepts like truth and humility, I am reminded that recently I came upon a favourite old quotation (I was, of course, looking for something else at the time...), and somehow it strikes a chord:

"We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us... but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?"

- J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

Housekeeping – a World of Glue

Sticky problem - and this is just some of them...

Yesterday I was having a brief look at what would be involved in doing some conversion work on some more Spaniards, and as part of this I needed to dig out my store of fusewire, to see what gauges I have and see what would suit the job.

Couldn’t find the stupid fusewire. It normally lives near the left hand end of the clutter that is my painting desk, but it wasn’t there. Hmmm. Well, of course it might be next to the fusebox in the electric meter cupboard, in the porch, which is where it really ought to be – but no, not there either, so thank goodness we haven’t blown any fuses lately.

Thank you, Goodness.

Then followed a brief period of muttering and raking about (the muttering was encouraged by the discovery that spare Stanley knife blades are packaged on a card that looks just like the card that holds the fusewire – sometimes it is the little remnants of false hope which hurt the most), and eventually it became clear that it would be a good idea to conduct a proper search of the painting desk – which is actually an old writing bureau with all sorts of little hidey-holes and drawers. This sort of search is not something to be undertaken lightly; what I should do, of course, is keep the bureau tidy all the time, but it doesn’t work out like that. Especially at times when figure painting is sporadic, stuff lies out on the desk top and the water pots dry out and dust falls on the mixing plate and entropy gradually claims its own. Then suddenly there are visitors coming, or else I have had another confrontation with my son about his untidiness, and guilt drives me to get things sorted out, and the desk is cleared, very largely by stashing things in the drawers, lest people might see how I live normally.

Thus the contents of the drawers are always a bit of an unknown – I find things that I haven’t seen for ages – sometimes I don’t even remember I ever had them. Of course, the drawers contain a lot of Official Items, such as paint and tools, but yesterday’s effort had a few additional themes:

(1) Kitchen roll – since I am always worried about waste, any piece of leftover kitchen tissue which is even approximately clean tends to get stored away for the next time I’m painting. Next time, of course, I always kick off by washing out the water pots and refilling them, cleaning off the magic glass mixing plate and getting a clean wad of fresh kitchen roll. Thus I have a drawer containing a ridiculous amount of kitchen tissue – you never know, it might come in handy one day (in truth, what bothers me about this is that my dad used to do exactly the same sort of thing…).

(2) Wire spears/flagpoles – I keep running out of these, so keep ordering more, then I stick the new ones in a drawer, and can’t find them the next time I need one, so I go through this cycle regularly. You will be pleased to hear that it seems I have enough wire spears (mostly the good ones from North Star) to last several lifetimes.

(3) Wow. Glue. Whenever I’m in model shops or hardware stores I get interested in various exotic types of glue, and often buy a tube or two. Next time I have to tidy up in a hurry, these get put away, I forget I bought them (in many cases I find I have forgotten I ever knew about them, never mind bought them), and so the process rolls on – like wire spears but worse. I find that I have a marvellous collection of glues – I am going to work out what I’ve got, what they are good for, all that, and get them properly organised. Recently a friend told me about a fantastic new glue he has been using, and recommended it – I duly wrote its name on my whiteboard in the office, so I would remember to get some if I saw it. Well, I’ve seen it now. I had a tube of the stuff in the bureau drawers all the time, and it must have been there for at least a year. I could open a glue shop – especially of different types of superglue. Awesome.

Alas, I did not find the fusewire, so I’ll have to buy some – I think I’ll buy a few packs, and I’ll make a point of putting one in the meter cupboard, next to the fusebox. And I’ll try to keep things tidier in the painting desk department – don’t rush to place a bet just yet.

Aaargh! - Accidental Purple

Not what I needed.

We've had a few problems recently at Chateau Foy, and hobby time has mostly been scrapped. However, I took advantage of the arrival of some pre-owned Interim-Period (post S-Range) Minifigs British infantry to do something I've wanted to do for ages - increase the size of my Foot Guards battalions. Because, as you will be aware, historically they were - well - big.

All right, all right - I admit that the amount of retouching work, as always, exceeded what I intended, but I got myself well organised and a couple of shortish evening sessions did the job (Stan Getz and Ravel on the CD player helped me along). I had about 2 dozen figures to smarten up - the most fiddly job was overpainting the facings with Royal Blue, then repainting the white piping on collars and cuffs, a general tidy up and I finished bang on schedule last night. All that was required now was to base the chaps up to match the existing units, and make up larger sabots to take the big battalions.

Not so fast - the Imp of Perversity strikes back. This morning, I find that the acrylic varnish has dried with the white piping an alarming shade of purple. The forensic work is still under way, of course, but the only unknown element in the job was a previously-unopened pot of Citadel's "Midnight Blue". I've had it for a while, but it looked fine, and covered well enough. Obviously there must be some pigment in there which is unstable with the varnish, even after curing for 24 hours - a problem I've never had with Citadel before. It's a while since I used a blue that dark - I had a pot of a nice Tamiya acrylic Navy Blue which has now turned into chewing gum. Anyway, whatever, I am hoping that a simple re-fiddle of the white piping will do the job - I would not like to have to go back to the dark blue stage.

If anyone is tempted to tell me that it serves me right for using uncool paints, please don't bother.

1809 Spaniards - Milicias Provinciales

Just a couple of prototypes, to see how the paint would look. My proposed OOB for the Spanish army of 1809 includes 4 battalions of provinciales (to say nothing of the mooted provincial grenadiers, of whom I hope to say more on another occasion), and I have been experimenting to see how these might look.

The provinciales were clothed, in theory, very much like the line regiments, but in a slightly simpler uniform, with red facings for all units and brass buttons. It seems likely that some of the units at Ocaña in 1809 wore outdated versions of the uniform. In particular, supplies of local brown cloth being both cheaper and more plentiful than the official white jackets, there were a number of brown-clad battalions, so I have painted up one in the official version and one in the brown variant.

I'll proceed with these two styles, using line infantry castings. I am thinking of having a white battalion, a brown one and two mixed ones. All command figures will be in white for all units, I think.

I have two relevant books on order at present, both coming from Spain. My experience of buying stuff online from Spain is fairly poor, I regret to say, even without including the remarkable Falcata episodes. One of these books is coming from a military model supplier, and it is about the provincial regiments of the Guerra de Independencia - I could do with having it here now for these painting experiments, and I am assured that it has been heading my way since April Fool's Day, which I'd rather not think about too carefully. The other book was obtained through Abebooks - it is a copy of Muzas' book on Spanish flags, and it is coming from a shop associated with a military museum. I bought it on 14th March, and the earliest estimated delivery date on the order is 26th April. That isn't awfully impressive, is it?

Postage from Spain is not cheap, either - maybe mule fodder is expensive at present.

 

ECW Campaign - another new General

This is General William Forbes Geddes, commanding the troops of the Scottish Army of the Covenant serving in Lancashire. "Big Willie" was born in 1592 at Seton Grange, Haddington, youngest son of Alexander Geddes - a wealthy landowner and salt merchant - and his wife Margaret Fallon. A professional soldier since he left school, where he was noted for his prowess in both Latin and wrestling, Geddes is a strange mixture - considered a "hard man" and pretty much humourless, yet he is very highly regarded by his troops, because of his reputation for ensuring that pay and provisions are supplied promptly and in full measure. Unusually tall for the day, he is also gifted with remarkable physical strength which is legendary - at the Siege of Heidelberg (1622) he is said to have  thrown a Spanish officer into the river Neckar on one of the rare occasions when he lost his temper.

This casting is by Art Miniaturen, and my humble paintwork is of interest (to me) only in that it is the first time I have made exclusive use of the (cheap) Deco-Art "Crafter" acrylic paints. No particular problems - coverage is not quite so dense as with the more exotic brands, but it's OK, and anything which makes it possible for me to stay away from the GW shops has to be good.

By the way, if anyone noticed a short-lived post earlier this week, it featured a YouTube clip which refused to run properly in Blogger, so I scrapped it. Fair enough - sorry about that.

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.

Background Artillery Project - Further Progress

Five more French limbers completed and in the boxes - 3 foot artillery and 2 horse. I've kept the size and detail of the photo down, and left the flash switched off, to avoid another roasting from my new chums at TMP.

For the train spotters, the horses and drivers are from Art Miniaturen and Scruby, the limbers from Hinchliffe 20mm, Minifigs S-Range and early Lamming, and the guns - the ones I can identify - are from NapoleoN, Hinchliffe 20 and Scruby.

This expansion necessitated a reorganisation of the artillery box files - I now have a new box labelled MULES & CARTS. Guess what's in that one?

Background Artillery Project - Surprise Landmark

Yesterday I finished off another British artillery caisson, and was very surprised to find that I had one more caisson than I thought, so I have now reached the target of one limber plus one caisson per battery rather earlier than I expected. Here's the contents of the Anglo-Portuguese artillery boxes, as of this morning. The target organisation of my battlefield artillery is: each battery has 2 model guns, 1 limber (with gun attached permanently - no more dropping spare guns on the floor for me), 1 caisson; horse artillery limbers have 4 horses, all other vehicles have 2 horses - it cuts down on the space requirement (and the horse painting!) and you get used to the look of the thing.

Allied Box 1 - 6 British artillery batteries (3 horse, 3 foot), plus a Portuguese howitzer
battery on an odd-sized base (can't remember why), plus the recently-added British
howitzer battery, which is in here only because I ran out of room in Box 3

Box 2 - a limber and a caisson for each of the British batteries (note 4-horse teams
 for RHA limbers), plus a limber (with mules) for the Portuguese howitzers, plus the new
(weird) spare wheel wagon

Box 3 - mostly siege stuff - 3 heavy (18/24pdr) siege batteries, 2 of the iron M1800 10" howitzers,
2 of mortars, 1 rocket battery, plus a couple of those strange S-Range shot-carts

Siege equipment has no limber provision (sieges are chaotic enough without a car park), and all (most?) of the siege pieces have mud-brown bases, with slightly modified sizes and crew sizes.

This is indeed a small and fleeting landmark - the Allies are now a bit ahead in the Infrastructure Race - the French and their Confederation chums have some 8 or 9 half-painted limbers, so there's lots to do. Idle hands are, as we know, the Devil's wassname. However, this has been a quick squint inside some of my boxes; if I am spared, I'll show inside the French boxes when the time is right.

I realise that organised is not the same as good, but it helps a lot. Note to myself: ECW campaign notwithstanding, I really must do some more Peninsular sieges...

In passing, I was reading my Carl Franklin book on artillery last night, and started working out the column length of a RHA troop on the march, with all the guns, ammo carts, service equipment, supply vehicles and animals plus mounted gunners - I didn't finish the calculation, but the numbers were getting very big. If an RHA troop marched past your house, it would be passing by for quite a while.

Background Artillery Project - Spare Wheel Cart

Some more progress in the BAP - no works of art here, certainly, but a pleasing further little shift from the lead mountain into the "infrastructure" box-files.

First item is a little unusual - I'm not sure how such a thing could feature in a game, but it's interesting anyway; no, it's not an early support vehicle for the Tour de France, it is a Napoleonic British Artillery Spare Wheel Cart. Odd contraption comprises a standard gun carriage, adorned with spare wheels and towed behind a standard limber - enough bits and pieces to repair just about anything that might break in an artillery battery on campaign. A British example of the benefits of standardisation in the field. Vehicles here are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the draught team and driver are recognisably Lamming. If you are dubious about the authenticity of such a device, you'll find all the details in Carl Franklin's fine book on the subject.


I also finished off another ammo caisson for the French horse artillery - Lamming caisson with Hinton Hunt motive power this time.

All in the box-files and out of sight now - as I have observed before, sometimes this seems a peculiar end-state for a hobby collection, but no matter.

Background Artillery Project - 5.5" Howitzers

The guns aren't really as blue as the flash makes them appear

I seem to be back to painting my own troops again, so I've been picking away at a few odd things in the queue. Here's a battery of British 5.5" howitzers, ready for the Peninsular siege train. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the crew are Kennington, who are smart and fit for purpose, and a better match with their NapoleoN colleagues than I expected.

The mud-brown bases for siege units seem a bit drab, but it seemed a good idea once, and it's become a siege-train standard, as has the 4-gunners-per-gun-plus-an-officer-for-the-battery and the reduced-footprint 45mm x 90mm bases. Tradition is everything...

Next up for the Background Artillery Project (BAP) are a British spare wheel cart and yet another British caisson, both with Lamming horses and drivers. Don't hold your breath.

ECW Generals

Rupert and Chums

A very pleasant feature of an otherwise fairly dismal week here was the arrival of a little packet of ECW generals, painted for me by Iain in return for my foisting off some old deadbeat cavalry onto him - an exchange out of which I feel I did rather well. Iain has long been one of my favourite brush-wielders, and he has done a lovely job on these - thank you, again, young sir. (Hope the house-move goes well.)

It is an established truism that, for 20mm ECW, you just can't get the staff these days, so these fellows are especially welcome. These are SHQ figures, though the left hand figure (who is Prince Rupert in his working gear) is actually a Tumbling Dice man, hacked around a bit, with a pistol from Old John's useful accessory pack (from his 20mm Nostalgic Revival range), and his horse, as usual with my armies, is an SHQ casting, to try to keep scale creep down.

Such is my crazed enthusiasm, I even bought a packet of HO white metal cats and dogs from a model railway supplier, but eventually went off the idea of commissioning a 20mm scale Boye to keep the Prince company on his adventures. Partly this was because it would restrict the scope for getting Rupert to act out the part of someone else when required, but mostly it was because the dogs were not really of suitable breeds, and it would be undignified for the King's nephew to be galloping across the battlefield with a Dachshund. For an instant, I did consider providing one of my ECW personalities with a cat...

So please say hello to Rupert and his chums (as once featured in the Daily Express), and we expect them to speak exclusively in rhyming couplets from this point on. 

In passing, last night I was reading my revised edition of Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Pike and Shot (as one does), when I suddenly received a shock which might have threatened to spill my cocoa if I had had any. I was reading Mr Featherstone's animated account of the Battle of Auldearn in 1645, when I was surprised to note that Montrose was opposed on this occasion by an English force under the command of Sir John Hurry. English? If there was one person I can think of who would have  reacted badly to any confusion over just who was English and who was not, it would be DFF, so this is a puzzle to me - I am not letting go of this one - and there can be no temporary mistyping here, since the army's Englishness is restated on a number of occasions in the narrative. The battle map shows clearly that this English force appears to have comprised the regiments and contingents of Lothian, Findlater,  Seaforth, Moray, Campbell of Lawers and some Highland levies, so what can he possibly mean? Does he mean that they were Protestants? That they were the national army of Scotland, who were allied to the army of the English Parliament? I would reject, out of hand, any suggestion that the writer had had a tiny lapse of memory, and had slipped a hundred years to the Jacobite Unpleasantness. My surprise is only heightened by the fact that this proxy English army at Auldearn, of course, was on the receiving end of - to use a noble Scots phrase - a good gubbing.

So - it is no matter at all, but I am intrigued. I am keen to get back to the book tonight to see if the French turn up at Cropredy Bridge.

Please note - any commenters will get no marks at all for mentioning the Referendum or any related matters. 

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.

Background Artillery Project - More Siege Guns

Just the thing to rattle the roof-tiles - the brown bases are my house standard for
siege equipment and engineers. I can't remember why, but it's a standard, isn't it?

A little more progress - the British 10-inch howitzers mentioned here back in February have now been painted and have met up with some gunners. The howitzers themselves are from the old Hinchliffe 20mm range, the gunners are mostly by NapoleoN, with a couple of Falcata castings thrown in (including the officer in the bicorn, who might be Captain William "Beefy" Tonkiss of the Royal Artillery).

This little lot represents 2 x 6-gun batteries, which is rather more 10-inch howitzers than the British had available in the Peninsula, but they look nice. The real things were given up as a bad job after the gunners ignored a "maximum elevation" instruction and wrecked the gun carriages at the First Siege of Badajoz - as far as we know, they went into storage until the Crimean War…

A small, sadly routine tale of dommage from the preparation of these: the howitzers are on hybrid carriages, which have little garrison wheels at the rear. One of these little wheels escaped while I was gluing things together, fell on the carpet and disappeared without trace. Remarkable. After the necessary amount of swearing, I cut my losses and assembled the batteries with a gunner standing right in front of the missing wheel, so you can't see that it is not present. I know it's not there, and the gunners probably know, but we won't tell anyone else, will we?

Another step towards getting the fortress out for another siege game; still need a better set of trench sections and a revamp of the rules. I've been sort of hoping that the Picquet-related "Vauban's War" would have appeared by now, but no sign of it yet. I shall hash on with my own ex-Chris Duffy efforts.

Once More unto the Bleach, Dear Friends

Jock after his second confinement - note matching beard

Jock the Guinea Pig has had a further 6 days in the neat bleach, and his paint will still not come off, though it has changed colour more than somewhat.

Righto – time to move onto further experiments. I have identified a source of Simple Green, as advised, but am greatly impressed by the relative cheapness of Dettol, so that will be the next trial.

Jock has served his time, so will be spared any further suffering. I’ll use one of his mates...

How about Something in a Larger Size, Sir?

Last September I finally took the bull by the wassname and repainted my 40-year-old battleboards. I had some misadventures on the way, but ended up with a much smartened tabletop – one side now having the hexes the correct way round for Commands & Colors (previously I was 90 degrees off, though I could justifiably claim that I was there first), while the other side is now very smart, plain Old School green.

I was so pleased with the results that it started me thinking again of producing an extra section of table, to produce an optional, bigger battlefield. There are a number of drivers for this.

(1) I’ve always fancied a huge tabletop as an occasional variant – the fact that I have nowhere handy to set up such a thing is an issue, of course. I have a secret hankering for a vast battlefield in a marquee in the garden, but that is impractical for a number of reasons. Nice idea though.

(2) I recently read the Black Powder horse and musket rules, which I enjoyed, though it was a bit of a shock when they casually announced that, of course, the game was best played on a table at least 12 feet long. Er – right. Of course, I ignored this, but I kept finding myself thinking, “hmmm, 12 feet long…”

(3) When I repainted the battleboards, I did some thinking and some measuring, and I came up with something, as follows:

My tabletop is 8 feet wide by 5 feet across, cut into 4 sections, each 2 feet x 5 feet, for easy storage and to enable them to be laid out on our (large) dining table, in a dining room whose design, if I am to be honest, was influenced by wargaming needs. The C&C-style hex board is the correct 13 hexes wide by 9 across, and the hexes are 7 inches across the flats. These are big hexes, but they sit well with my 20mm (or so) armies. Since the 4 tabletop sections are symmetrical, the centre line of the table could have a 4-hex-wide fillet inserted, which would give an expanded version of the table which is 28 inches wider, and a revised C&C board of 17 hexes by 9. This would require a couple of MDF hex plates to be painted to allow the C&C flank demarcation line to be shifted one hex in from each end when the long version is in use, but this is a trifling matter.

I estimate that this extended version of the table will still fit in the room, though it will now be necessary to walk around it at one end only – full circumnavigation will not be possible, but – hey – I need the exercise.

At risk of getting really wild, it would be possible to add further, similar slices to the centre of the table in future to produce a Memoir 44 Overlord (or CCA Epic) style giant board – but at this point we really are looking for the marquee in the garden, or a church hall yet to be identified.

Back to the point. The first 28-inch extension fillet is feasible, and I have plenty of paint left over from September. If this is not going to go ahead, I’ll have to come up with some new and better excuses. The most obvious excuse is that the tabletop is made of old-fashioned ½-inch chipboard, which I am not sure is available any more.

That excuse didn’t last long. I phoned my local branch of B&Q, who have masses of 12mm chipboard, and are absolutely itching to use their computer-controlled cutter to produce my new extension for what is really a very small cost.

Well, I don’t have my truck any more, so how will I transport it home? That one didn’t last either; with the back seat folded flat, my car will take a 5 feet x 28 inch panel, no problem.

So I’m going to do it. I measured everything up accurately, and (allowing for inaccuracy in the 1971-vintage cutting of the original boards) I need a perfectly rectangular piece 1531mm x 711mm.

I have a feeling that somehow it can’t be as easy as this, but I’m off to B&Q tomorrow morning to do the deed. There will be a lot of marking up (with my tongue sticking out) and painting and suchlike, but my extension should be coming up shortly.

Back from the Bleach – Sterile but Unbowed

This process is tested on Scotsmen

Stripping time again. I recently applied matt varnish and a lot of touch-up paint to a host of very shiny ECW troops I bought on eBay, and generated almost all of what I need to pursue the adventures of the Marquis of Montrose. Good. Thumbs up.

As with all such bulk purchases, I am left with a pile of figures which failed inspection – the original painting is too awful, they need too much rework, the proportion of cat hairs to varnish offends, they are no use for what I need, whatever. Certainly I have the makings of a couple of decent regiments of horse and a few useful generals, but – alas – I’m going to have to strip these to get the best of them.

The gloss varnish they are finished in – apart from the animal impurities - is far too thick, yellowing, smells dreadful (no, really) and is a source of scientific puzzlement to me. What is it? Why would anyone apply it to model soldiers? Just looking at it, I found the whispered words BLEACH PROOF came into my mind from somewhere.

Now, as discussed here before on numerous occasions, I have mixed experience with using thick household bleach for stripping soldiers. I would like it to work, it is relatively inoffensive compared with the alternatives, it is easy to use, you can see what you’re doing (at least a bit), it is only slightly dangerous and you can safely flush it down your indoor drains. The alternatives, in these parts, really come down to just one thing – Nitromors – which certainly strips paint but can also remove your hands and fails pretty much all the criteria mentioned above as plus points for bleach. I once had the experience of being in a room with a mixture of Nitromors and hot water, and have promised my lungs and my eyeballs I shall not do it again. Also – in this particular instance – many of the figures which require stripping are from Tumbling Dice, which means separate, glued-on heads and weapons, and Nitromors will also strip out the glue. I can think of absolutely nothing less enchanting than sifting through the toxic sludge at the bottom of a bean can containing a Nitromors project, looking for the correct number of missing 20mm scale heads and pistols.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the garage...

So bleach would be a nice alternative if it works, and I’d even saved up some cheeky little, transparent chocolate mousse pots which are ideal for keeping an eye on stripping progress with bleach jobs, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t going to work. The Bold Stryker is a great champion of bleach for this sort of work, but I am beginning to suspect it is partly a question of faith. I have had some good experiences with bleach, and some disappointments, and at the start of each new attempt (I have to confess) I find that I am not as optimistic as I would like.

Since I had a plentiful supply of bleach, the cheeky pots and lots of suitable test samples, I decided to try one out. Definitely the right thing to do. The chap at the top of this post is a Tumbling Dice Covenanter of some sort, and he spent almost 40 hours in bleach – well above the health warning in Stryker’s guidelines. While he was in the bleach, there was no evidence that the varnish was suffering at all – he looked the same as when he started. When I took him out and rinsed and dried him, I’m not so sure. The varnish is still there, but it is a lot less shiny, his hat has faded a bit, but some interesting cracks have appeared in the paintwork.

Hmmm.

The alloy hasn’t started discolouring, or turning into anything undesirable. Do I think that another soaking in the bleach would result in some better progress? Not sure. I could try it, certainly.

After all, anything is better than Nitromors. In this case, with the glued-on head problem, simply ditching the remaining figures and – if necessary – buying new ones might be a sad but wise alternative to Nitromors. I guess I should try another bleach session – I could leave him in for an open-ended trial – the worst that could happen is that I write off a scrap figure, which is a trifling matter indeed.

It is a question of faith – I am beginning to see that. I am, I believe, scared of proving to myself, once and for all, that there is no future in using bleach, and my confidence will suffer. It is difficult.

While I ponder the matter, the picture at the top is of the most germ-free toy soldier you will ever see.