Carlo's Army

Refurbing again. This is a constant theme on this blog, and I am always moaning gently here about how some current job of restoring a batch of pre-owned figures is turning out to be more work than I had expected. Yes - that is a little odd, I agree. Every time, it seems this comes as a surprise to me - just a slow learner, I guess.

As supplied - a bit jaded, and those turnbacks and shako decorations will have to go,
but otherwise not bad at all for vintage 1973. Thank you, Carlo.

I think this running thread may give a bit of a false impression - not least to myself. Maybe it's deliberate, if unconscious. There is an implication that somehow or other these refurbing exercises are an interruption in the serious work of building my armies. Not so. I haven't carried out a proper analysis of my army catalogue, but the refurbed acquisitions are really a very substantial portion of the available forces. The truth, then, is that they are not merely an occasional inconvenience, but may actually be the backbone of the collection. Hmmm.

Having said which, it is probably worth giving the subject a little more respect, and discussing it as a process and a skill in its own right.

Since I use a rather old-fashioned scale of metal figures, and am very partial to certain old makers - notably Les Higgins/PMD - I am always interested in other people's old soldiers. I've bought loads on eBay, of course, so all sorts of anonymous contributions from unknown collectors are present in my armies. With much of this stuff I just stripped them and started again, but I've also managed to preserve quite a bit of the painting efforts of others.

I've been the recipient of some very kind donations from some very good friends over the years - Ian, Charles, Iain, Clive, Martin, Matthew, Andy and many others - you know who you are, and you know how much it is appreciated. I've also (not often, but it is an important element of my armies) bought collections or parts of collections which were no longer wanted. The most notable of these have been from Pete Welsh, Harry Pearson, Danny (and Dominic) Heggie, Steve C, the infamous "Mike and Whiskers" ECW collection which came from some poor chap's estate, courtesy of a Belfast charity shop, and so on.

I'm currently nagging an old friend to de-clutter his cupboard by selling me his remaining Napoleonics, since, by his own admission, he doesn't know why he is hanging on to them. I hope that is not as menacing as it looks, now I re-read it...

Most recently, I bought a pile of old Napoleonic Higginses from Carlo.

Carlo's figures were in unusually good shape, and nicely painted, and I have to admit that this was an important part of the appeal when I decided to buy them. The idea is that it should really not take much effort to fit them in. When they arrive, of course, such figures are always rather more worn and faded than I might have wished - not that there's anything wrong with them, but if I'm proposing to freshen faded paint and repair chips and - of course - rebase to the house standard, then it seems sensible to keep the brushes out and make the new arrivals blend in with the veterans. This means: stylistically; paint shades; organisation; basing; the lot. I like my figures to be "mine", and an important part of this is that new arrivals should not look silly compared with the existing armies and - even more critical - should not make the existing collection look silly either(!).

Carlo and his brother painted up a French Napoleonic army of Les Higgins and PMD figures a long time ago. They must just have been teenagers. Since a number of the figure poses in their collection are ones which were discontinued when the Higgins range was rationalised after Les died, I guess the painting was done about 45 years ago. They did a nice job - it's possible to find some faults with the way they went about it (since I am now sitting in forensic mode, with bright lights and the magnifying jeweller's loop - which is not how one appraises the initial photos), and there were a few clangers in the uniform department, but they did a nice job, no mistake.

I've already restored some of their cavalry, which really only needed a good clean-up, some retouching and varnish. They are already in The Cupboard, as an inspiration to get on with the remainder.

Now I'm working on the Line Infantry. By the time I've added figures to make up my standard unit organisation, I should get 4 or 5 battalions out of this lot. Because Carlo's units were not made up like mine, I'll have to add mounted colonels (Art Miniaturen figures are here, ready to paint) and - since there is a shortage of flankers and command - I shall add drummers, eagle-bearers and voltigeurs recruited from Schilling Miniaturen - I am delighted to discover that they are a very good match for Higgins, by size and style. The first job is to get Carlo's boys cleaned up and based, ready for the extras to be added. Apart from anything else, the figures when based will take up a lot less space and will store a lot more safely than the heap I have at present.

Line Infantry - work in progress (there are a couple of trial Schillings in the foreground)

More of the same - some Swiss chaps in this box

Righto. Gave them a soak in a mild detergent bath for a couple of days. Got rid of the cardboard bases and washed them carefully with a soft brush. Stuck them on the green bottletops. First thing I don't like is that the line infantry all have red turnbacks. Easily fixed, except that it will take two coats to cover the red with white, there are a lot of them and - as soon as I try one - I realise that the overall trousers are very yellow next to the fresh white. OK - I'll paint the trousers as well.

So the painting job list becomes:

* White turnbacks and trousers - two coats.

* Blue touch-up on worn bits, and clean up lines for turnbacks. Also add blue to (red) shoulder straps so they look like blue-piped-red.

* The faces have faded to a slightly pink off-white shade, so paint faces and hands for everyone - at present I use Vallejo's "Parasite Brown" for a base shade, with Foundry's "Mediterranean Flesh" as a highlight.

* Black - the shakos are not great - repaint, and also paint moustaches and cover up Carlo's powdered white hair - touch up worn cartridge pouches, sort the boots out and rescue the bayonet scabbards from the white trouser paint.

* Red - retouch worn cuffs and grenadier distinctions - not much. The red hasn't faded as much as I thought it might, so these soldiers must have been kept in a box somewhere.

* Gold - shako plates, re-do chinstraps; officer's shako trim and fancy work. Buttons will do as they are.

* Silver - bayonets.

* The packs and the rest of the kit are fine as-is.

* Cockades; company pom-poms.

* Varnish; tabletop green on figure bases; mount on MDF bases, leaving gaps for the extra command and voltigeurs.

That's one battalion's worth done - I'll do a bigger batch for the next one, now I know what I'm doing. One fairly relaxed evening listening to music - no sweat at all.

First lot based - just waiting for the missing figures - easy job, really

Not a red turnback in sight, and those hats are nearer to the regulations. More
importantly, they look like my French army now. 

Apart from the extra figures for the Line (which I've bought in and are here, ready to go), there is also a hefty contingent of the Old Guard in this purchase. They are also nicely painted, the red turnbacks are not a problem for the Guard, so I guess that will be an easier job - lose the white hair and the delicate faces, general touch-up, varnish, base. Fine. Anyway, they are behind the Line in the queue (as it should be). One slight issue with the Guard is that some broken bayonets will need attention - maybe the Guard castings have weaker bayonets, but some work with the pin-vice and some staples will sort that lot out.

Somewhere down the queue - Imperial Guard - Grenadiers and Red Lancers

Beyond the Guard Infantry I am rather surprised to find that I have also set myself up to restore the Red Lancers - not quite sure when that will get done.

So - there is a pause in the Bavarian Project for a little while, as I get some more figures sorted out for painting. I can fill in odd evening sessions with the French refurb work. Let me be clear in my own mind, though - it's not an interruption - I do want to get it done!

Hooptedoodle #304 - The Haar

View from the upstairs bathroom window - somewhere out there, there should be a
distant view of Dunbar, and the Lammermuir Hills. But not today. This is a day for
staying indoors, and listening to the guy on the radio complaining about how
hot he is in London.

What you might call a characteristic regional phenomenon here is the haar (otherwise known as a sea fret) which blows in off the North Sea during warm weather. As an incomer, I always assumed that haar was probably a Viking word - a number of our local words - especially weather-related ones, have a pleasingly rough, Nordic twang, but it turns out that the origins of this one are almost certainly Dutch - there are similar, ancient words in use in Friesland and the Netherlands which simply describe cold, foggy weather.

Whatever the etymology, the haar is the reason why for the last couple of days, while most of the rest of the country is enjoying a minor heatwave, we have our central heating switched back on and the view out of the window stretches about as far as the trees on the far side of the nearest field.

One of my older sons visited North Berwick on Sunday, and he reassured me that Edinburgh was also cold and misty that morning, but yesterday, when my wife returned from a shopping trip, she arrived at the end of our farm road in bright sunshine, and could see our very own haar sitting like a pancake on top of our woods, so it is probably OK to take it just a little personally. Microclimate.

My first memorable experience of such weather came when I first moved here, in 2000, and my parents came to visit - all the way from (warm, West Coast) Liverpool, during a remarkably fine, warm spell in October. One late afternoon we were sitting on the terrace, with glasses of chilled white wine and straw hats deployed, when suddenly the mist began pouring down from over the trees at the bottom of the garden, and it became gloomy and bitterly cold while you watched. Show over - remarkable. [As a footnote, I have to say that my parents were not put off, and they duly upped sticks and came to live in this area the following year.]

[Drat.]

The haar, as I'm sure you are aware if you live on the East Coast, anywhere from Norfolk to John o' Groats (or could care less, if you don't), is the result of warm air passing over the cold sea - the water vapour condenses into thick mist, and the sea breezes waft it back in over the coastal land - the fog obliterates the sunshine, the temperature drops, and we start wondering about the heating. It's always been like this here.

We have had a good number of bright days, too, of course. Here is a swallow resting on
our electricity cable, gathering his strength for nest-building in the woodshed...

And our beloved white lilac has had its brief few days of glory. We really do love the
show it produces, and each year, as the blossoms start to turn brown, I ponder the fact
that it will be another year before we see it again. That's a thought that becomes more
profound each time, I guess. 

The Contesse continues to produce some terrific wildlife photos - here's a very
scruffy robin at his ablutions.

We've also had some remarkable exhibitions of raw aggression recently from those icons of peace, the Collared Doves. They have been beating up the wood pigeons on a regular basis. They have now been seen chasing magpies out of our garden - very scary - they really are surprisingly vindictive little beggars. We're still trying to get a photo of that - maybe even a little video, but no luck yet.

Blogger Misbehaving?

I've seen a couple of posts along this theme. I'm currently having problems with Blog comments. For some subscribers (not all, and I don't understand why) I am not getting email notification of pending comments. I also now realise that these "stealth" pending comments are arriving in my Awaiting Moderation folder in batches - sometimes a while after they were submitted.

Very sorry if you've been affected - I know that Stryker, Jon Freitag, David from Suffolk and one or two others have sent comments which didn't trigger the notification email. I live in hope that Blogger will be fixed soon - I don't think any of us has done anything wrong!

I do try to keep an eye on the pending folder.

Bavarians - Flags, and a Possible Wizard Wheeze...

Continued (very useful) correspondence with Giovanni suggested that the line infantry flags I have used with my new Bavarians might be of wider interest. Now I have to say straight away that the flags are such a nightmare to draw (not to mention the risk of epileptic seizure) that, unusually for me, I was happy to go for the examples in the Napflag bit of the Warflags site. I have long admired the Napflag material - Alan Pendlebury did a splendid job of giving a free offering of all his research and very impressive graphic work. The pity is that the site hasn't been updated since 2001 - not because the flags are wrong, but because more modern internet bandwidths would have permitted higher-resolution (bigger) files.

So I downloaded Alan's Bavarian flags image and - entirely for my own preferences and use - I used the trusty Paintshop Pro to alter the shade of blue a bit, and to replace the black outlines and construction lines in the image with the predominant blue shade. I've also, for my own purposes, swapped some of the centre sections between flags. The tweaked image is here, if it is of any use to anyone - please note that this is Alan's intellectual property, from the Napflag site, and I take no credit for any of this. The images are a lot smaller than I would normally use, but for my 20mm soldiers I have printed them so that each flag comes out 24mm high (they were 173cm, according to the regulations), which is 1/72, and they work out fine. I would not recommend them for anything larger. Oh yes, the Leibfahne (carried by 1st Bn) is on the right of each horizontal pair, the Ordinarfahne (2nd Bn) is on the left. If you want more details of dates etc, check the Napflag site.

These are slightly tweaked versions of Alan Pendlebury's flags from the old
Napflag site. If you use them, or pass them to anyone else, please explain that
they are Alan's flags, though it was me who probably spoiled them! 

I was mentioning to Gio that my only concern about having a burgeoning Bavarian army is that I don't have anybody for them to fight. Yes, they could have a bash against the French after Leipzig, and I can always change history and get them sent to Spain as part of the Confederation contingent, but for the most part I will be relying on visiting (or hosting) generals at social games to provide an Austrian army for opposition. Gio, of course, humorously suggested that I was now irrevocably committed to building an Austrian army of my own to complement them. This has already been suggested by a number of other humorists, and the joke is not what it was. The Austrians are no kind of niche army - that would be a very serious undertaking, though the idea does have a strong appeal for about 8 seconds, until the full horror of the implications hits you.

One campaign I do have an interest in, however, is the Bavarian involvement in the Tirolean Rebellion in 1809. This would be a smaller undertaking all round, would involve relatively few Austrian line troops, and, for me, has the scholarly underpinning that my imagination was caught by Andreas Hofer and all that lot during a couple of fairly recent holidays in the Tirol. Yes, all right, all right. Hofer and ice cream. Highbrow stuff.

There is still the problem of sourcing suitable figures. The only known models of Tyrolean rebels in a scale which suits me are a single set of plastics by German, which got a very muted reception in the pages of Plastic Soldier Review.

German's Tirolean rebels

However, Gio suggested that my existing Napoleonic Spanish guerrilleros might just slot right into the Tirol. Hey! There are plenty of round hats and capes, lots of knee-breeches, priests, mad women with blunderbusses. He may well be on to something. And, of course, I have about 130 of them. As Napoleon said, quantity has a quality all of its own.

Thinks: if I added a sprinkling of celebrity figures - maybe a box or two of the German plastics - I could already have the makings of a rebel army. Some of the flags might seem a bit inappropriate, but that's not bad for this week's potential Wizard Wheeze. If you half-closed your eyes, you might not notice that some of Hofer's heroes looked a bit Spanish.

I'll probably have gone off the idea, or have been talked out of it, by this time next week. My local providers of Austrians may have some understandable doubts about their prized regiments appearing alongside some very scruffy guerrillas. It does go to show, though, how sometimes we are so hidebound by history that we can't see the possibilities.

Part of the Bergisel Panorama, Innsbruck

Bavarians - noch zweimal

Newly finished yesterday, here are the two battalions of the 14. Linieninfanterieregiment, flagged and ready.

My Bavarian forces are based on the troops which made up Lefebvre's French VII Corps in 1809, and the three battalions produced so far are part of Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy's 3rd Division.

The 14th regiment was relatively new in 1809, and had no official title, since it owed its existence to the terms of Bavaria's contribution to the Confederation of the Rhine rather than the patronage of a particular Inhaber. The history of the organisation of the Bavarian army is rather complicated, as I am learning. Even the brief snapshot around 1809 has a few quirks.

Line regiments with higher numbers than 10 become a bit tricky. Regt No. 11 "Kinkel" was ceded to the newly-created Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806, though a new regiment with the same name and number was created the following year - these chaps spent 1809 chasing around the Tyrol, fighting Andreas Hofer's rebels.

Regiment No. 12 "Lowenstein-Wertheim" was disbanded after it mutinied in 1806, and the number was kept vacant until 1814. The problem was that the regiment, which formed the garrison of Bamberg, consisted of men from the Würzburg area, and since Würzburg also became a new state in 1806 the troops did not wish to remain in the Bavarian army.

Regiments 13 and 14 were created in 1806, without regimental titles (which, I remind myself, was the reason I embarked on this explanation). In 1811, the new (replacement) 11th Regt was disbanded, the 13th became the 11th, the 14th became the 13th (to preserve seniority - and there continued to be no No.12); subsequently, in 1814, more new regiments were raised and things swapped around again, but we won't worry about that here.

Bavarians - 1/9. LIR ready

King Maximilian's heroes - Oberst Delamotte leads the Ysenburg regiment towards
the front lawn. Some fool parked his car in the wrong century.

Here we go - all based and flagged, this is the 1st Bn of the 9. Linieninfanterieregiment "Graf Von Ysenburg" ready for action on the Danube. I have another two battalions almost ready, and I was holding off to post a photo of all of them, but time is passing and I thought better of it.

The others will be along on the next bus. Two posts for the price of - well, two, I suppose.

These are a bit special - they were painted by the illustrious Count Goya, who - when he is not painting the horrors of war - can apply his skills to turning out some very nice miniatures, as you see. This allows me, now I think about it, to focus my attention on the horrors of war. Anyway, my grateful thanks to the Count - I'm delighted with these fellows.

20mm as it used to be - guilty as charged, Your Honour. The rank and file are Der Kriegsspieler, the mounted officer and the Fahnenjunker are from the old Falcon range, which is now available again from Hagen, and the foot officers and the drummer are Hinton Hunt.

They probably felt a bit conspicuous marching round the garden, being the sole representatives of the VII Corps at present, but some friends will join them shortly, and they were enjoying the sun.

Hooptedoodle #303 - Flushed with Success [EXPLICIT]

Today was our day for a visit from the Septic Tank Man. The wagon duly arrived - all the way from Motherwell - to pump out our domestic drainage system.

As expected, it was all very professional and inoffensive. The driver/operator got about his business very quickly and efficiently - half an hour and we were done, and he was on his way to his next call.

It's not a big tank (1000 gallons), but it only services part of our house, so usage is very light really. This is our first clean-out in 13 years, and there were no problems - it was not an emergency. In the light of this (and the one-off service cost £250), consider, if you will, that Scottish Water, whom we approached late last year, will not touch your tank system unless you sign up for a 5-year minimum contract, with yearly visits which each cost more than Henderson's job this morning. Sometimes local authorities are not unlike the Mafia in their business model.

Anyway, all done, and now we are good for some years. Thank you, Mr Henderson. Remember: it may be just sewage to you, but it's his bread and butter.

...and, in case you missed their marketing push...