German 1st Hussars

Having finished the 3rd, really had to do the 1st!

Colour scheme is pretty spectacular

Horses cast well apart from the reins - not going to worry about that!

Almost didn't post this picture - it's not the most impressive view.

The 1st followed by the 3rd - think that should be enough German Hussars for now.

 At this point I'm really going to have to stop the 42mm figures and get down to finishing the 20mm Prussian Landwehr!

I've noticed that Tango has posted this in the Napoleonic Board on TMP so thought it would be a good idea to add a bit more to this.... the figure is based on a Knotel print of a Prussian unit in the German army  'Lieb-Husaren Regiment No. 1'  in 1903, homecast from a Berliner Zinnfiguren mould and part of my Great War in England 1897 collection that is based on the 1894 book by Le Queux - in that book, Germany was on our side, in his later book 'The Invasion of 1910' they were the enemy.

Bushes and Lamposts

The Zinnfiguren horse moulds come with a terrain piece. In the case of the Hussar it was a lampost, the Uhlan horse has a flat bush.

Simple models with a quick spray of paint, one extra piece of detail colour each then spray varnish - very toy soldier. I'll probably try a couple of different greens before I find one I like for the lampost.

The bush is a better scale fit than the lampost - which should do quite well with 28mm scale figures. However, they should both be very useful figures - and I'll probably do more bushes than horses eventually!

1897 German 3rd Hussars

Lots of hussars seem to have carried a lance around this time - but not sure about the 3rd. The uniform is taken from Das KLeine Buch vom Deutschen Heere published in 1901, though the horse furniture is actually from a picture of  the 3rd Hussars in a Knotel print showing the dress in 1861.

They paint up well and have a real 'toy soldier' feel about them. Couple of issues on vasting this first batch of horses - mainly bridles - but later horses coming out OK.

Must admit I found the scalloped edging to the saddlecloth hard. Time was I could do a lot better on 20mm figures! I didn't even try to do any of the fancy lacework...

But overall very pleased with these and can see quite a few hussar squadrons appearing in the future.

42mm 1897 German command group

Started painting these a bit after the hussars but finished first because there's less to paint.

However, before that I thought I'd just set up all the Prussian Zinnfiguren homecast figures I've got including the ones I bought off ebay - it's building up to a nice little army.

This is the command group from the newly-acquired moulds - the officer is actually an artillery officer.

The light blue cross on the standard doesn't show up very well on this picture.

Bit better here. They've turned out really well though to get the standard to cast I had to use the mould with very little pressure on it - which meant a lot of flash.

Some 42mm Prussians

Being the first painted figures from those Zinnfiguren moulds I bought a while back.

Two units plus a couple of extra officers

Not the best figures in the world, but effective and they look OK.

I'm seriously thinking about buying a load more of these moulds - not really economically practical but I like to have figures that I cast myself rather than bought figures. I can live with the poorly defined rifles etc...

Update on that - went on to the website and found that since yesterday some of the moulds I wanted were being offered cheaper in their fleamarket area. So I've bought some...

Casting ZinnBrigade Prussians

Back in May...2018... or thereabouts I ordered some Prussian ZinnFiguren moulds from Germany. What, with one thing and another, I finally got round to trying them out!

I bought 2 moulds - officer/marching soldier and 2 different firing.

Moulds are neat but I was originally concerned at the lack of air channels.

It didn't prove a problem. In fact, I needed a clamp to hold the moulds together - elastic bands just weren't enough. To spread the load on the rubber there are rigid 2mm mdf boards on the outside of the mould.

After just a couple of trials it worked - one thing, I found that metal temperatures had to be lower than for spin casting.

Initial trial batch - by the end of the holidays I hope I will have cast quite a few of these.