Making Flags and Standards.

Hello There! As mentioned earlier I am painting the forces for the Battle of Maida. Part of the French forces includes the 42nd Line Infantry. I have used figures from a bargain purchase of Wargames Foundry mixed with the odd Perrys Miniature and Front Rank. All of these figures are well detailed and 'compatable' with each other.

The completed battalion will be putting in an appearance in a later blog but here is the flag from GMB going on the standard.

Here are the tools I use to fit the flag. I have already taken a Front Rank Eagle and used epoxy adhesive to glue it to the end of a length of brass wire. The wire is cut to a length that allows the completed base of figures to be kept safely in the 'Really Useful Boxes'. Hence some may say that the standard is not the right length.

Here I have painted the edges and the inside of the flag to stop any white edges showing up when the flag is glued together. Although it is difficult to see in this photograph the right hand side of the open flag has a small square of cooking foil glued to the surface. This is to provide some rigidity to the flag when folded and is held in place so that when the PVA glue is dry the flag can be bent into place, hopefully preventing any creases into the flag.

 

Here is the completed flag for the 42nd Line and another flag I have completed for the 1st Light. Both present at the battle of Maida and these illustrations show how the flags can be curved and bent to represent the wind filling them.

American Civil War Dismounted Union Cavalry, 28mm

 Hello Again! This is the latest addition to my ACW cavalry forces. They will go towards the forces I will use for the skirmish rules I am writing and for the larger 28mm games I usually take around a wargaming friends, (when Covid-19 does not get in the way!).

These are Redoubt 28mm figures. I bought these as at the time the command figures from the Perrys range was somewhat limited. Typically by the time I had started to paint these then they released a second set of Union command, almost as if they were watching what I was doing!

Here are the other figures to substantiate that comment. I realised that the officers hat had a bugle on it too late so he will go into the infantry! The flags for the standard bearers are from GMB.

Here are some close ups of some of the command. The casting of the bugle held by the musician leaves a little to be desired but unless you get really close up it is not too obvious.

I like to provide close ups of finished figures as one of my gripes about pictures of figures I see on the internet are that they are at such a  distance you cannot see much of them at all. I do not mind cutting and cropping photographs to show them 'Warts and all' as I hope it helps other painters to realise that not everything looks that great close up but these do look very good overall.

Lastly the corporal is also ready for the table. All these figures are multi part and can be a bit frustrating to assemble but once done they are a unique model for the table.

Esci/Italieri 20mm Valentine Tanks

 Hello There! Having started too many painting jobs making my painting table almost unusable I thought I had better finish something that was taking up a lot of space.

I had three of these finished, (probably in the 1990's!), and have had a number of other Valentines waiting to be dome! I have a regiments worth in he boxes but two of the three that I have completed recently, (the three in the front), have come from the 'assembled but broken' box.

All they needed was a couple of wheels drilling and pinning back into place and stripping the paint off. The paint was stripped off using 'Model strip' from Hannants in nearby Lowestoft and a bit of careful scrubbing with an old toothbrus. After that they just needed an airbrush primed and off we go!

I notice I have not put the transfers on this one but that will be done in the future. The tank commander is from AB, (always able to improve any model), and the aerial is a cat whisker.

The base is a 0.8mm thick plywood on a thin sheet of magnabase. The terrain is waterproof tile adhesive, Cotswold Buff chippings, gravel and sand sprinkled on a layer of PVA 

The vegetation is offcuts from a coconut hair brush and the rest is tufts. I use yellow ochre paint from an art shop as the main sand colour as I do not have to keep mixing a colour over and over again. It is then drybrushed with the same colours mixed with increasing amounts of white.

In the past I have played a number of games of Stuart Asquith's tank fighting rules. I hope to increase the number of tanks I have painted for a desert version of this game.