Sunday, May 18, 2008

Introducing... The Colonel

There he is, freshly varnished, the Colonel of my 1st (West Melbourne) Battalion of the Infantry Brigade of the Victorian Military Forces.
He's a conversion of this cavalry casting - a head-swap from an infantryman and a gauntletted right arm built up from greenstuff on a paperclip armature. Oh, I also spent ages getting a HUGE moustache to adhere to his top lip.
I think he looks a bit like the illustration from the TVAG (google it) website! and none the worse for that.

Here he is giving orders to his ADC, Capt. Smedley. Young Smedley looks delighted to have a CO at last.

3 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

great conversion!
Sticking small bits of greenstuff to metal (or plastic) is tricky. I usually rough up the area a bit. Another thing to try might be to put a little superglue on the area first. (now I tell you, huh? lol)

Bloggerator said...

Now you tell me!

Seriously, I should have used my head rather than let a wet tool transfer more water to the casting. As the poet says: d'oh!

Still, he turned out nicely, although the hand (so Madam the illustrator tells me!) is a bit high up to technically be resting on his hip, and his head is a bit too far forward - my mistake there; I drilled the pinning holes out of alignment.

I'll be converting an 1866 Austrian mounted Officer into a Russian one next - Eureka sent me a sample in among some Sumerians I ordered a while back. His whiskers look "the business". I think I only need turn his pealed shako into a peaked cap. Fingers crossed!

Bluebear Jeff said...

They look good, sir.

I find it interesting that I too have been taking a bit of a break from my SYW figs to work on a lot of Colonials.

Can you share more of your "grand plan" vis-a-vis the Defense of Melbourne?


-- Jeff