Friday 26 January 2018

Off the Work bench - Mike W, 26/01/18

Today 26th January 2018, with what's OFF MY WORKBENCH.


Royal Piemont Cavalry,command elements
Second Squadron

As hoped I completed the French 'Royal Piemont' Cavalry regiment this week, 12 mounted figures in 2 squadrons of six to represent this Piedmont (Italian) regiment in French service. Figures are 28mm North Star 1872 cavalry figures, 
I find cavalry figures a little tricky to paint  - in so much as do you paint the horse, then the man? - do you glue the man to the horse before or after painting? For what its worth, with these figures I glued the man to the horse then painted the horse and then the man...

... with Front Rank 28mm mounted figures I paint the horse and man separately then glue them together. I think its to do with the saddle furniture on Front Rank figures being part of the man's sculpt, rather than being on the horse! I prefer doing them separately as I can get more detail onto the saddle cloth etc!

Blue coats and red linings & cuffs make this a different looking unit to line up with the rest of the French army and as I have done the usual trick of not gluing standards in pace - the unit can be re-purposed if required for specific scenarios in the future.

Again I have not yet applied the final spray coat of Matt Varnish to the figures, hopefully in a couple weeks I'll be able to have a 'Spray Fest' and get all the outstanding units seen to - 35+ mounted and some 160 foot in total at this stage - at a  guess!

The other unit finished this week was the 10mm Scots Common Army Schiltron, 30 spear armed figures...

10mm Scots Common Army
So what's ON MY WORKBENCH.

Royal Italien uniform & Standards
Unpainted metal awaiting clean-up!

I have added a new unit of 28mm French 1672 figures from North Star, I intend to paint these up as the 'Royal Italien' regiment of Foot, to serve with their Piedmontese mounted cousins. The unit was raised in 1671 by Comte Magalotti, a former Captain in the Garde Francais, so impressed was Louis XIV wit the unit he immediately gave them the 'Royal' Prefix! Uniforms look interesting, brown coats lined red with red socks and pants, illustration courtesy of Wargames Illustrated and Mark Allen's wonderful series on French Army uniforms from the late 1980s. (I think!) .   
More astute readers will have noticed that this post is somewhat earlier than usual, we will be away for a few days so the next post will be in two weeks - to allow me time to catch-up on the metal piles....