The Armourer Visits - another stream of consciousness...

 I was sorting out The Cupboard the other day, to get the French soldiers into a logical order (which helps a lot with setting up and putting away - any Chief of Staff will tell you), and to make space for new and impending arrivals. While thus employed, I removed a couple of small trays of odd bits and pieces which some untidy beggar seems to have left in there, and I found a little stand of Spanish guerrilleros, which has been in there since September 2018 (I checked), waiting for me to repair a sword that I broke.

I have to say at this point that breakages here are very few and far between - probably because I am extremely timid about roughing up my troops (a legacy of being the owner of delicate Les Higgins figures for so many decades), and they spend their lives glued onto MDF bases, which are magnetised and mounted on permanently allocated sabots; I don't remove casualties and the armies spend their off-table time locked in The Cupboard or in specially-prepared A4 box files. [I think I was severely traumatised at the beginnings of my wargaming career, when at my local club it was considered macho behaviour to shove handfuls of figures around in heaps - fortunately they were mostly S-Range Minifigs, as I recall, which can stand a great deal of rough handling.]

 

The repaired sword - Alfonso is as pleased as anything. His neighbours, I think, are SHQ - there are also Falcata figures among the partida bands. Qualiticast alloy does not bend, I learned.

 Anyway, I had a breakage in 2018, and I remember doing it, and I've been wondering ever since what is the best means of repair, since this is not a strong part of my act. The basic problem is that the broken figure was a Qualiticast casting; they always seem to have used a hard, brittle alloy. Normally they do not break, but I caught a sword with my finger when I was tidying away one evening, and it just snapped off. Didn't bend, just went "ping" and snapped off, about 2mm from the hilt. [Before everyone rushes to tell me how I should fix it, thank you, but please read on...]

I eventually developed a plan for fixing it after reading an article from Archaeology Today about Bronze Age weapons someone had dug up. Glossing over the fact that Archaeology Today seems a strange title to me, what struck me was that these bronze swords were cast with a tang (aha!), a pointy bit which was fixed into the handle. That could be the correct approach for repair of a White Metal Age Qualiticast sword, I decided, though of course it took me a couple of years to get around to it.

Anyway, that's what I did. I filed the broken stub of blade off the hilt, drilled a hole (rather bravely, I thought) in the hilt, heading up into the chap's wrist, and spent a while filing the broken end of the blade into a short tang, as described, such as would fit into the hole. Some superglue, then an extra couple of thin coats of superglue to build it up a bit, paint and varnish and you're done - next gentleman, please. I shall look after it, of course, but you can't really tell it was broken. Good. Result. 

I remembered that the game when Alfonso got his sword broken was a demonstration for the benefit of my aunt (no, really), and was one of two pre-production runs-out for what became the Ramekin mod I use with Command & Colors. Ramekin started life as a simplification of C&C, for the benefit of novice generals. It became rather awkwardly obvious that the simplified game, for a large battle, ran a lot faster and was at least as much fun as the official rules. And the rest, as they almost say, would be history if only anyone knew about it and was interested.

I also remembered that this Battle of Alfonso's Sword was a fictitious game which I've always intended to revisit, so that may be coming up shortly. Watch this space.

French Refurb Project - Yet Another Sanity Check on Scales

I have had some problems getting hold of command figures - especially drummers - to plug the gaps in my refurbished French infantry units. Once again, I find myself trawling around ancient blog posts and forum threads, reading old debates about whether figures from Maker A are compatible with those from Maker B. My perception is complicated somewhat by the fact that individual models from the same manufacturer can vary a bit in scale, by the fact that I frequently disagree with the views expressed in the discussions and by the fact that I tend to forget whatever it was I decided last time.

Round and round we go. I had a couple of email exchanges recently which suggested that, despite my previous investigations, Newline might be OK with Hinton Hunt/Der Kriegsspieler-sized troops after all - especially since I could claim that the drummers were mere lads. I have found old discussions in which some worthy swore blind that Newline were a good match with HaT plastics, and they used them all the time, and so on.

My armies are (unofficially) 20mm or "true" 25mm (an old-fashioned term which is no more helpful than more recent ones). I look for figures which are 21 to 23mm soles to eye, which have hats and equipment which look about  the same - thus 1/72 should fit nicely, though some 1/72 figures don't seem right to me in this context. The important thing is that I should think they look correct - it is my game, after all.

Anyway, I thought I would go around this loop again, and I ordered in some Newline samples (last time was maybe 6 years ago, I think), to see if I have changed my mind, or if recent developments with the Higgs boson particle have somehow changed the size of the millimetre.

Once again, I have produced one of my occasional strange green photos, just to give myself some evidence next time I become confused about this, and to confirm the Groundhog Day nature of these continuing investigations.

You will observe that Newline are quite a bit smaller than all the other figures illustrated. Apart from Newline, these figures all group nicely around the 22-23mm soles-to-eyes mark (the little squares on the cutting mat are 5mm) - the Newlines are a lot smaller. I might just about persuade myself that a very small Newline drummer boy might fit with my Der Kriegsspieler repaints (which, though not included, are the same as Hinton Hunt), but I might have to be pretty desperate to believe it.

So - in case I forget again - here you have it. Newline figures are too small for my armies, though of course they would be perfectly lovely in someone else's Newline army. Oh - and the Hat soldier has a small head. Just saying.

French Refurb Project - The Freitag Battalion

What better use for a new flag than to stick it on a new unit? I am delighted to welcome The Freitag Battalion - much travelled, and very kindly painted by Jonathan - a very big help indeed with shifting the backlog, and excellently done too.

These are the first battalion of the 26eme Ligne, who will form part of Ferey's 3rd Divn of the Armee de Portugal of 1812. For the casting nerds, the rank and file here are Les Higgins figures from the 1970s, all stripped and recycled, and probably very pleased to find they are back on duty. As always with Higgins figures, it's a challenge to find compatible command - the officer in the second row and the porte aigle are Qualiticast, the colonel and the drummer are from Art Miniaturen and the officer at the back is by NapoleoN.

Many thanks to Jon - this is really very much appreciated, and they will make a fine addition to my army.

New Faith in the Clean Spirit?

After 3 weeks in the Clean Spirit jar, my Qualiticast French command figures had come up very nicely, thank you, so a couple of evenings of brushwork later I have put them back on their little scenic baseboard. There is still some artistic touching-up required on the basing, but here is the new French HQ - it's been a long time coming - I must have bought these figures on eBay five or six years ago.

All freshly painted - apparently invigorated by 3 weeks in the magic stripper.
In the middle distance, young Jean-Aristide gets his instructions from the
Adjudant-Commandant, while his elders and betters appear to be unsure
exactly where the enemy might be. The duty guard from the 3rd Hussars
are probably bored stiff. 

I have quite a few new staff figures to paint up, so that will keep me busy, but I shall also set up a trial jar of Simple Green. No need for hurry, but let's get on with it. I have some pre-owned Les Higgins Frenchmen who will appreciate the experience, I'm sure.

Latest off-the-wall suggestions for stripping model paints are Coca Cola (which I've heard before) and tomato ketchup (which is a new one on me). At the moment I'm happy with the Clean Spirit test results, now I'll set up a Simple Green batch - that's enough excitement for this month.

This and That, and Some of the Other

Odds and ends, really.

Topic 1: The Figure Stripping Trials

Getting a breather from the Clean Spirit

Following previous laments about this, and plentiful advice, I have now had the set of Qualiticast French Napoleonic staff figures steeping in a sealed jar of Bartoline Clean Spirit for two weeks, so I decided it was time to see how they are getting on. I fished one of them out, scrubbed down with water and a (rather soft) toothbrush, and did a little exploratory picking with a penknife point. Not bad at all. What I have done now is I put him back in the Clean Spirit with his pals, and we'll see how they are doing in another two weeks. As mentioned by Doug, the big advantages of this stuff are:

(1) - it is unbelievably cheap - a bottle about the size of a wine bottle is about £2-something out of Homebase.

(2) - it is non-toxic - hardly smells of anything - you can soak figures in it forever without damaging the metal - it would do plastic too, it's safe to handle, and you can flush it down the kitchen drain without wrecking your pipes or the environment.

(3) - it seems to work - pretty well, if you like slow and steady rather than quick and life-threatening. I'm interested to see how the residual fragments of paint get on over another two weeks, and - of course - see how easily the paint comes off figures which have been in the bath for a month. Good so far.

I also ordered a bottle of Simple Green, which was much more expensive, and has just arrived - it took a fortnight to get here (posted from Germany, I see, though I ordered it from a UK firm).

If I can find a suitable figure or two, I'll start another trial jar of Simple Green.

Good this - almost scientific, in a pathetic sort of way. I'll report back. They won't be sneering when I get my Nobel Prize...


Topic 2: A Delayed Make-Over

Pontes Bellonae

After I saw some recent photos of my old Bellona bridges, I suddenly realised that they are very crudely presented - I slapped some paint on them about 45 years ago, and that's how they've stayed. They get a fair amount of use, but every time I see them I think, "Oh, there's the old Bellona bridges", and completely fail to register that they are a bit scruffy. This is very odd - if I'd paid a lot of money for some piece of imported resin exotica I would be carefully drybrushing the life out of it before I let anyone see it.

I decided it would be a simple matter to smarten up the Bellona chaps a bit - so I did it last night. Dark brown undercoat, drybrush with two shades of stone. Not a brilliant job, but surely an improvement. Why did it take so long? No idea - low prestige project? - other things to do? - kept forgetting? - some other reason?

Doesn't matter. Done.


Topic 3: This One under Wraps for a While

Drop me a line

What's this then, Foy?

Well, it's fishing line - pretty strong fishing line. It is my latest outside-the-envelope idea for solving what has become something of a bugbear problem in the figure preparing and painting department. There will be some experiments, and if I have any success I'll come out of the cupboard and bore everyone silly. If it doesn't work, I'll just never mention it again.

How can we lose?

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.

That's Enough Guerrilleros for Now

This post follows an email from Ludovico, who wanted to see what I was doing about flags for the Spanish irregulars. The first thing to note about these flags is that they are a complete fabrication - some are derived from a mish-mash of historical examples or depictions, or parts of such - especially of outdated types, some are adapted from reconstructions I found on the Internet, and at least one is just pinched from elsewhere, though whether a guerrilla unit would carry any one of these flags I really don't know. The main motivators were

(1) I had a bunch of irregular standard bearers with nothing to carry, and

(2) flags are fun to design and print (if gluing them into place is rather more fraught...)

Here, in a single jpg, are the fictional flags I put together for the 6 latest units - if they are of some use or interest, please feel free to copy them, or adapt them, or whatever. If you print the big version of this image so that it prints 62mm high, the flags will be at my intended size for 1/72 scale. Also, please note that, as always, the green rectangles are not part of the flags - these are added so that you can cut out a white flag from a white sheet of paper. Also, please note that they have no historical merit or relevance at all...

Ludovico also wanted to see a picture of all the guerrilleros together, so here they are. The 4 "battalions" at the front are mostly a mixture of Qualiticast and Kennington, the remainder are the ones I pictured yesterday (though they now have flags and sabots), and they are almost all Falcata. There is also a mounted unit, but I forgot to include them [sorry, Ludovico]. The Falcata figures, being just a little taller, are on 2mm plywood bases, while the others are on 3mm MDF. This is what passes for house standards here.

Not a THIRD Battalion, Surely?

My Peninsular War Allied army has two battalions of the 95th, 6 companies of the 5/60th and two KGL light battalions, so I already have more little green men than you could shake a ramrod at. This last year, in fact, I have sold, given away and otherwise disposed of some dozens of unpainted Les Higgins riflemen from the spares department, since only a madman could possibly need any more than I already have.

Right.

Unexpectedly, from various sources I have now obtained enough of the excellent Qualiticast Rifles figures to make up another of my small rifle units, so here, gentlemen, we have the 3rd Battalion of the 95th, some of them wearing the very cool forage cap, in appropriately Sharpesque style. Of course, I might have used them to replace one of my existing Higgins units, but I couldn't bring myself to do this, so three battalions it is - which is historically correct for the late Peninsular War anyway, I hasten to add.

Qualiticast - Catalogue

With sincere thanks to Rod Dearlove and Andy Taylor for making this available, here's a catalogue for the Qualiticast range of 20mm white metal figures - dating from 2002.

These figures are too recent to be classed as Old School, and are only "Vintage" in the sense that they are, sadly, out of production. From a personal point of view, I regret that their years of manufacture began and ended during my extended wargaming sabbatical, but I have become something of a fan recently.

From the dollar prices this must be a US catalogue (which would make it a catalog, I guess) - not sure if this listing was produced for/by Brookhurst Hobbies, major distributors in America. I thought this would be interesting for a lot of enthusiasts, and it gives us yet another means of measuring what we have lost! I am very impressed by the extent and the thoroughness of the range.

Qualiticast - Size Comparison

I find myself a bit hot-&-cold on the subject of Qualiticast. Sometimes I am very enthusiastic, then I'm not so sure. No doubt about the lovely sculpting or the casting (unsurpassed in 20mm, in my experience) - the figures are little treasures, but the sizes can be a problem for me. Some figures I have obtained - especially cavalry - are a bit small to match my armies. In particular, the hats on some examples are small, and this is always a favourite hobbyhorse of mine when it comes to judging size compatibility. At other times they are perfect for my (23-24mm man-size) armies, and I am left none the wiser.

Recently I was so impressed by a load of Qualiticast British riflemen that I was moved to add a 3rd battalion of the 95th to my British army. This is certainly 1, and possibly 2 battalions more than I ever intended to have. The Qualiticast boys will form a battalion of their own because, though they will be fine alongside Higgins and Hinton Hunt figures in adjacent units, the Rifles figures are just a bit small to mix completely comfortably with other brands within the same unit.

On the other hand, the "Qually" (invent your own jargon) Spanish guerillas I have are an excellent match for my other troops - no problem at all. The mystery lingers.

Today I received a couple of Qualiticast French light infantry command figures via eBay (which, you may recall, I do not do any more), and I've provided a side-by-side comparison scan with a Les Higgins figure in the middle. Perfect - they will mix without any problems, and will accordingly go to the painter so mixed.

I am obviously happy about this, and am left to accept that figures will have to be judged individually. As I have said before, real armies contained big men and small men, but the big men were not equipped with bigger hats or longer muskets!

Beauties & Beasts

I've been putting together some mixed bataillons de marche, and I was rummaging through the spares boxes - reaching layers that usually don't see the light, and I was also thinking of the very pleasant email I received from Jean-Marc recently, in which he noted his disappointment at my lack of enthusiasm for ROS 25mm figures - he being a big user of their 6mm chaps.

So this is simply a small collection of pictures of odd figures which caught my eye - not particularly significant or collectible, but some of them are examples of things which I like very much (sometimes for reasons I would be pressed to explain) and some are things which are somehow classical in their - well, simplicity, shall we say. I criticise nothing here - these are just a tiny sprinkling of the rich variety of wargames figures which have been available to us over the years.

Scruby OPC infantry colonel

Scruby infantry drummer - you can be a sculptor too

Qualiticast Rifles Officer - you can't do this, though

NapoleoN Light Dragoon officer

Minifigs 20mm Brunswicker - why is this such a satisfying figure?

ROS 25mm - the French were the ugliest

And, lastly, simply because they were well received when glimpsed in a recent wargame pic, here's a proper view of the Phoenix Model Developments Royal Horse Artillery. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the mounted officer is the notorious Minifigs BNC20, which sold in surprising numbers because a bunch of optimists like me hoped (vainly) that they might convert into Light Dragoons. Painting is by the great Jez Farminer, slumming it a bit to conform to my house style!

More Guerrilleros

Another parcel from David the Painter came yesterday - a fair amount of finishing touches and basing to do, but I have a few quiet days coming up so I can enjoy getting on with that.

First off the assembly line, here's some more of the excellent Qualiticast guerrilla infantry - yes, they include women and slingers - faintly reminiscent of my days with my Iceni/Trinovantes army (long departed).

And here's something you don't see very much - the first of my irregular Spanish cavalry units. These are cobbled from the leftovers of the garrocheros in the Falcata boxes after I had cherry-picked the best for my Lanceros de Castilla, which will be in the next shipment for painting. A pile of spare weapons from Musket Miniatures, a lot of hacking and filing and much Superglue, and here they are. Pleased with them, in fact - they turned out better than I expected.

Qualiticast - Some Illumination!

Following the previous post on Qualiticast, Andy Taylor was kind enough to contact me via email, and send some more information and some smashing pictures. Very many thanks, Andy.

I read your recent blog entry and comments about Qualiticast with interest and was particularly surprised to learn that the company are such a mystery to many people. It’s true that there are very few images of these elegant figures on the web, so I thought you might be interested to see this selection of units from my own collection.

I’m pretty sure I bought these towards the end of the eighties. One of the early Qualiticast mission statements that appeared in all their advertising was to design a range of metal figures that would compliment the plastic ones then available and specifically to fill the gaps in the plastic market.

Amongst my first ‘buys’ were the Brunswickers, Prussians and 95th Rifles. No one was making those in plastic back then as this was long before HaT had arrived. They were also an acceptable match for Hinton Hunt figures which were next to impossible to find in the days before Tim Berners-Lee did his stuff.

I think the company was a husband and wife team who were a regular feature at SELWG on the rare occasions that I attended. I don’t recall their names but they were a delight to deal with in much the same way that I’ve read people compliment the guys at Newline and Tumbling Dice. On one occasion they sent me some British colour bearers but later declared that they hadn’t been altogether happy with the design of the figures and subsequently sent me a double load of their new mould. If there was a difference between the two excellent designs, I certainly couldn't see it.

My main interest in them had started with the Zulu War figures they produced, which I still rate as the finest in any scale of plastic or metal.

It’s a huge loss that they’ve gone. The figures were never less than perfect and I never encountered flash at any time. The last time I looked at a catalogue, their range had expanded to include Waterloo , The Peninsula, US Civil War & Plains War, Vietnam , The Crusades and Imperial Rome. I think they also dabbled in 28mm too which, given today’s developments, makes them truly visionary.

It's only right and proper to note that most of the artwork on these figures was done by GJM Figurines.

Qualiticast - just a glimpse of the unknown

I'm not sure why, but Qualiticast, the British manufacturer of 20mm wargame figures, has been a mystery to me. There is a brief summary on VINTAGE20MIL, which suggests they were sort of compatible, size-wise, with (presumably) Hinton Hunt, but there's no listing and no pictures. There is some discussion of Qualiticast on TMP, mostly about the Romans, and mostly repetition of urban myths - i.e. the figures are a little bigger than Newline, the Napoleonics are "unimpressive" and so on. Somebody produced a useful side-by-side photo of Qualiticast Napoleonics and 1/72 plastics, to give a size comparison, but that's about all the evidence I've been able to find. It seems very odd that all these years of involvement in Napoleonic wargaming have left me unaware of one of the makers I might have been very interested in, but no matter. The mystery has remained.

Well, today I received my very first Qualiticast Napoleonic figures. I am now a fan. I suggest that they are far from unimpressive. Just so there is no doubt, let me state that they are well proportioned, very nicely sculpted, and average about 23-24mm from soles to scalp. The figures I received today were part of a mixed eBay lot of Spanish guerrillas - a mixture of Qualiticast and Kennington. The Kenningtons are a very close match - the figures are about 1mm shorter (maybe less) and very slightly coarser in quality than the Qualiticast, but it's close, and it required some time poring over catalogue listings to work out which was which. They would be good with Hinton Hunts, though the castings are a little slimmer and more elegant than HH, and they would mix well with the HaT plastic guerrillas, for example. My eyes are opened - I shall watch with interest for more. They are currently out of production, and I am unaware of anyone who has stocks, but I did come up with a catalogue list, though I don't think it's complete.

Mixed guerrillas - the 3 on the left are Qualiticast (L to R NIS5, NIS1, NIS4), the rest Kennington (L to R SGA2, SGA5, SGA3) - you get the idea. The guy in the top hat is a little masterpiece, if his sword is a little long for true beauty.