Old Chestnuts

Christmas came early in the Wellington Man household, heralded by the arrival at astonishing speed of the Archduke's guard dragoon reinforcements. I am at a loss to explain how this happened. Wasn't there supposed to be a postal strike going on or something? Whatever the case, it means I've been able to squeeze in one more post for 2016.

Thanks to the Archduke my Guard Dragoons are now over 80% Hinton Hunts and what would otherwise have been a rather weedy Der Kriegspieler squadron is now something altogether more intimidating. The best chestnuts are the old chestnuts, ladies and gentlemen.

So, without further ado, here are the results:

To recap, the figures are:

Hinton Hunt FN 60 Empresses Dragoons x 10, with various repairs and conversions; and
Der Kriegspielers 48: Guard Dragoons x 2

The DKs are not actually all that bad. The main differences are in the position of their swords, the left forelegs on their horses and, weirdly, the details of their pistol holsters. These are already rather strangely modelled on the Hinton Hunts. On the nearside of the Hinton Hunts there are three overlapping holster covers, but on the offside there appear to be only two, or perhaps three rather oversized versions. The DKs, on the other hand, have only two on the nearside and three on the offside. It was doing my head in for a while, I can tell you. The pictures below should show what I mean a little more clearly:

Left: Der Kriegspieler 48
Right: Hinton Hunt FN 60

Left: Der Kriegspieler 48
Right: Hinton Hunt FN 60

My first French cavalry brigade is finally complete!

Happy New Year everyone. I have to stay that mine has got off to a flying start, and it hasn't even started yet.

WM

Thank you Archduke. *Cough*.

Here be Dragons

My first squadron of Hinton Hunt Dragons de l'Imperatrice are ready for their photo session.

They required a lot of preparation as they were covered in a thick coat of house paint which took a week in the dettol jar to get off, only to reveal some very flashy and bashed-about castings underneath. They made my heart sink a bit when I first saw them. The swords, muskets and aiguillettes on all but one of the troopers had been either cut away or otherwise damaged, but in a way this was an advantage as I could take my drill and soldering iron to them without too many qualms! The results are quite pleasing, I think, as no two are completely alike.

First up are the officer and the standard bearer. Both have had their muskets removed and been given new aiguillettes on their right shoulders and fringed epaullettes on their left. I also contemplated removing their portmanteaus, but my nerve failed at that point!

The standard bearer's original arm had been severed at the elbow and replaced with a bit of scrap lead, so the only thing to do was to replace it altogether with another one of John Cunnigham's very useful recast lancer arms. The flag is made from another bit of that wonderfully thin piece of brass donated by my neighbour, Richard. The eagle comes from an old Minifigs guardsman that I found in a local junk shop.

In the next photo the troopers on the left and in the centre were also missing their aiguillettes, so I replaced these too. I rather like the effect of seeing them flying about in different directions.

The second squadron are on the painting table and I'm very pleased to report will now be a mixture of Der Kriegspielers and Hinton Hunts. This is thanks to a very generous donation by the Archduke.

His Royal Highness also sent me this beautifully realised self portrait. It commemorates the moment, he tells me, when he personally seized the colour of a faltering infantry regiment at the Battle of Aspern-Essling and ran forwards with it to great morale boosting effect. Now that is classy!

The Archduke himself!

Until the next time,

WM

Prussian Rearmament

Worth a try. There'll be no árm in it!

I've been forced  to take a break from the Leib Hussars for a while due to the belated realisation that I was a couple of castings short. Reinforcements are on the way, but in the meantime I'm cracking on with another unit of Prussian cavalry. I'm hoping that it'll help me get over my cavalry aversion, which lingers on despite having completed three squadrons.

The implement of triumph or disaster approaches....

The unit I've chosen is the Prussian Garde du Corps. There were several reasons for this: it would give me much-needed experience in painting white uniforms; it would brighten up my otherwise sombre-looking horde of Prussian blue meanies; and it would give me another chance to play with the soldering iron. The figures I have for this regiment are 12 x DK 143: Prussian Guard Cuirassier.

Until a few weeks ago my only experience of soldering was a week's work experience in about 1982. The job was to remove components from old circuit boards. It taught which was the hot end, but not much else.

Having tackled the Swiss musket butt conundrum by simply constructing them out of blobs of solder, the next thing to work out was how to re-attach things that had broken off. I'd absolutely no idea how to do this before I started, so what follows was entirely experimental.

Just before I became entirely too overconfident!

As the pictures show, the problem in this case was how to re-attach a broken arm. There was no obvious way to do this apart for holding it next to the casting, applying heat and solder and then seeing what happened next.

What I thought I would try to do was "paint" a little bit of solder over the join with the tip of the iron, in the hope it would sort of seep into the crack and bind the two parts together. At first this seemed to go rather well. What is not pictured is what happened next, which was the sudden attachment of an enormous blob of solder over the join. This immediately set hard and looked impossible to get off without melting half the figure.

The patient (on the right) is restored

The only thing for it was to set to with a craft knife and a file to see if I could could get something at least vaguely resembling the original arm. It took about 15 minutes, but the result, I'm very glad to say, repaid the effort. The new arm even seems to be rather stronger than the original. All my DK guardsmen have been cast with a distinct "nick" in their sword arms which is definitely a bit of a weak spot. If you click-to-embiggen the last photo showing the old and the new side by side you'll see what I mean.

The next thing, of course, was to paint him. He was rather fiddlier to do than the hussars due to his much more complicated fixtures and fittings. The completed regiment, I'm hoping, will look quite fetching.

I got away with it, but more though luck than judgement!

Wrestling with Redcoats

DK 176: Swiss Line Infantry Battalion

Ian's second squadron of Prussian lancers are well under way, but I'm sorry to say they're not quite finished and would have been too late to take part in the spectacular fight which  has broken out at Mont Saint Jean in any case. As a result I've decided to post something that I started working on a few weeks ago when it seemed that Ian's cavalry were never going to arrive.

One of the things one quickly begins to accumulate when collecting vintage figures are various problem castings that it's difficult to know what to do with. In my case the worst example was a set of sixteen DK 176: Swiss Line Infantry. These rather promising figures had everything going for them except one thing - a complete lack of musket butts! What made this especially annoying was that they were just what I needed to go with Chuck's 1809 French standard bearer. Even more importantly, I wanted some redcoats!

After considering various options involving milliput and superglue, which didn't look very promising from a strength point of view, I decided there was nothing for it but to have a go at making some of my own using a soldering iron. I've never dared to do this before, but having consulted an expert (yes, that's you Roy), I equipped myself with some self-fluxing solder, a soldering iron, some micro-files and a pair of flat sided pliers. 

DK 176 with modifications!

The hardest part was to get a blob of solder attached that was long enough. However, once this was achieved a bit of pinching, cutting and filing was all that was needed to get the right shape. The result of my first attempt is in the next photograph.

The next thing I had to know, of course, was what Chuck's DK 7: French Line Infantry Command, Standard Bearer would look like standing next to him. I'm not exactly sure how I managed to squeeze the lettering onto this, but let's just say that it's a relief to know I won't be doing any more of these for a while!

DK 7: French Line Infantry Command, Standard Bearer

Well, one thing led to another, so pictured below him are the DK 7 drummer and charging officer figures needed to round off the command group. The drummer has been slightly modified to create the swallows nests favoured by the 3rd Swiss Regiment.

I chose the 3rd despite the fact that, "as any fule kno", almost all the depictions of the 3rd show they had the peculiar habit of wearing their pom poms slightly off-centre and wore their shako cords even more eccentrically. My excuse is that, as neither Marcus Hinton or Duke Siefried catered for such peculiarities, I didn't have any choice, and besides, not all the pictures of them show them like this! The truth, of course, is that I just couldn't resist their snazzy black facings and white piping.

Normal Prussian Lancer service will resume in the next post.

WM

DK 7: French Line Infantry Command, Drummer

DK 7: French Line Infantry Command, Officer, Charging