Here is my latest Hinton Hunt unit, the 23rd Light Dragoons. These are one piece castings BN50, six of which were bought on ebay 5 years ago and the remainder were recently donated, very kindly, by Stryker. Some needed quite a bit of work to remove the excess metal between the right arm and the body (my mini drill used as a grinder did the job pretty well). I also replaced a few short sabres with hammered and filed pieces of flash saved from other figures. After a little deliberation and with some sense of guilt I stripped the prepainted figures rather than try to convert their finish to match what I was hoping to achieve.
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| Stripped, flash removed and, with just a couple of new sabres to add, they are ready for undercoating. |
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| Undercoated and waiting for the first top coat. Part of the hobby I really enjoy is the uniform research which of course can be a challenge in itself. In this case, different sources showed cap lines as either yellow or white. I went for yellow as a contrast to my other dragoons which have white. |
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Ready for battle but after after some delay due to a large brush being thrust in my direction for some much need decorating work (my incentive being that it was the room I use to paint my soldiers!)
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| Painting some of the detail on the one piece castings can be fiddly but they don't look too bad from this angle |
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| Lots of flash ground out from between the horses hind quarters |
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| Now joined on their flank by the 11th Light Dragoons |
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| I'm sure these guys will be brigaded together in future battles although at Waterloo the 23rd were with the 1st and 2nd Light Dragoons of the King's German Legion. |
Those look absolutely wonderful. I've never been able to pull off painting on a black undercoat, but clearly you have mastered the technique. Nice rich colours and nice details. Great work!
ReplyDeleteThanks David, that's praise indeed from someone with your artistic skill. I can't quite remember when I switched to black undercoat. Early figures just had a polyurethane varnish undercoat based on advice in modelling magazines and similarly I tried white before settling on black. I actually use a humbrol acrylic meant for model railways, only because I bought several pots very cheaply in a sale some years ago.
ReplyDeleteThese look brilliant, and the two regiments compliment each other beautifully. Really lovely.
ReplyDeleteThanks Matthew. The bulk of the 11th (BN209) date back to 1997. They were sent in error by Clayton as I had actually ordered Hussars (BN210) to add to some second hand figures. I didn't pick up the error until I came to paint them by which time Clayton had ceased trading. I then had to wait until an ebay lot in 2021 to complete the dragoons! To this day I am still short of 7 (BN210s) but have their horses!!
ReplyDeleteThey turned out really good, the yellow cords work splendidly. I am intrigued to find out how you use spare flash to make new sabres.
ReplyDeleteSo, the 11th are HH as well? They look so cool. I've not seen that figure before, I only have the same OPC guys you used for the 23rd.
Thanks Rob. Most of the flash was from cavalry figures ( I seem to remember the Prussian Uhlan's in particular had long pieces between tails and the base). These were long and thick enough to carefully hammer flat and then cut and file to a shape similar to the Hussars sabres with a narrow bit at the bottom. I cut off the old sabre at the hilt and drilled through the hand to accept the narrow bottom part of the new sabre. I've used flash for other things as well such as Eagles on home made French standards. You might have noticed by the way that I removed the 11th's Officer's carbine...a lot easier on the 2 piece figures and probably becasue it was not cast well anyway. The 23rd Officer has kept his.
ReplyDeleteExcellent work with these. Restoring and repairing figures can be very satisfying and they look the bees knees!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ian, and thanks again for your donated figures. I'm currently doing some more restoration/conversion which I'll be featuring in a few weeks.
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