Sunday Update

Oh dear, it appears I'm slipping on the old posting front. That's been down to me not having anything to show you until today. Well, strictly speaking I did have something I could have shown you yesterday but it was easier to roll that in with this post.


Figure Prep

I've finished prepping the SYW Russians! However, I discovered an omission and an error. The error was that the ammunition wagon cover doesn't fit on top of the SYW wagons (too short); that could be because the covers are intended for wagons from the supply train section. The omission was that I'd forgotten to order limbers for my artillery. I foresee and order being rapidly placed with Essex.


But that's far too much chatter, on with pics:


This was what I'd got done over the weekend by lunchtime today:

Yes, rather a lot of figures stuck onto painting sticks. Before moving onto pics of the figures glued on sticks, here's a close-up of the building:

It's the Police Station from TT Combat. It went together quite easily. One thing I found during the assembly was that it was a nice tight fit for a frame of Lego bricks around the outside to support the walls as the glue dried - I wonder if that was a deliberate design choice or just a happy accident? I'm going to need to prime it at some point, which means waiting for a dry morning/afternoon.

Yesterday I realised that I was even lower on airbrush thinners than I'd thought so I did a quick buy through Amazon Prime as I needed some pretty urgently. Of course, that meant waiting in today for the delivery. While I was waiting for the delivery to come, I decided to glue the SYW Russians onto painting sticks, the riders onto the horses and assemble the guns and wagons. That kept me busy for a couple of hours and I've now realised that I need to get some more drawer units to keep them while they await painting.

Cossacks!

Hussars!

Cuirassiers, horse grenadiers, guns, wagons and "spare" infantry

Infantry, generals, horse teams and artillery crew

Just to save you the trouble of trying to work out how many figures there are, here's a list:

Cossacks - 39 figures (6 regiments of 6 plus a 3-figure command group)
Cuirassiers - 11 figures (1 regiment of 9 and 2 spares)
Horse grenadiers - 18 figures (2 regiments of 9)
Hussars - 36 figures (4 regiments of 9)
Infantry - 152 figures (8 regiments of 18 and 8 spares)
Artillery - 2 guns, 6 crew
Wagons - 2 wagons, 2 drivers, 8 horses

When these are all painted I'll have all the non-Cossack cavalry regiments done that fought in the SYW and all but 13 of the infantry regiments. If my megalomania strikes again I might add those 13 next year.


Whilst I was doing all that gluing, the Amazon delivery came which meant I could play with the airbrush this afternoon. I did have a play with it yesterday but had a disaster which was entirely my own fault - I hadn't properly prepared (washed, lightly sanded, rewashed) the cheap toys I was using to test something out and the paint and primer peeled off. Luckily I had another cheap toy which had a better surface that didn't need prepping and I had primed that at the same time. However, I'd run out of thinners and it had got rather too late anyway.

So, today I cracked on with the better toy (a cheap-ish diecast helicopter from Wilko). The tests were in two parts - I wanted to try out a potential camo colour scheme as well as trying out some of the Anarchy Models HD stencils I'd bought a while back. I was in luck today - the primer and paints adhered to the toy and the stencils didn't peel any off when they were removed! Here's the finished test piece:

Now, this was just a test piece so I didn't use as many of the stencils as I would for proper pieces.  I'd also do more overlaps. I think the three colours work as a camo scheme ("where the hell would a pink camo scheme work?!?!?") but the hexes of these stencils are probably too large, particularly for 15mm. Luckily, I picked up the mini-hexocam stencils at SELWG.

Applying the stencils and removing them once the airbrushing was complete was a bit fiddly and time consuming but the effect was really good - you couldn't do hexocam or digicam freehand.

The great thing is that if you are careful you can reuse each of the stencils a few times but they do eventually lose their tack.

I'm planning on getting some other stencils from the range - digicam, tiger stripe and maybe one or two others (skulls! pin-ups!) so I think that tells you I was impressed with them. I might also get one or two of the HS stencils to try out.


Plans for this week:

1) Place a few orders - I need some ore bases, the bits from Essex, some more stencils (and maybe some paints on the same order - need to check what's running low)
2) Do the basing for the 28mm stuff I'd stuck on washers/bases last week, then prime them
3) Prime the SYW stuff - the cavalry I can use the airbrush, the infantry I might need to take to work and prime during my lunch-breaks (they'll be getting hit with red spray primer)
4) Try out some other camo colour schemes
5) Decide what else I need to order in for the Challenge