Friday 24 May 2013

Burkish Naval Infantry unit - Part 1


Today is rather exciting, I start my first FLW regiment. I am using two boxes of Armies in Plastic's Egyptians in Winter Dress (1882) to create my imaginary Burkish Naval Infantry. Having worked out my painting regime for these sorts of figures it should now be a pretty straight forward production line type of job. Well, except for two special figures I want to include in my unit that is.


One figure that isn't 'out the box' is the flag bearer, this character will have to be created by converting one of the other toy soldiers from the set. Additionally, there weren't quite enough standing riflemen to make up the unit I wanted - I have a preference for an all standing firing-line.

Luckily there are three figures in a particular pose that I am not keen on, the fending-off pose with rifle butt forward. I reckoned that these might be converted using the firing poses from the kneeling riflemen to create a couple of additional shooting infantry for my ranks. I would simply take the bottom half of the standing figure and mate it to the top half of the kneeling figure!

Proof of concept, the two halves of my chopped up soldiers stuck
together with some BluTac. But I like the pose!
Pretty simple as I say, but a good introduction to converting these soft plastic toy soldiers.

To be honest I was surprised how easy it was to cut through these figures, my sharp hobby knife slid through the plastic like the proverbial knife through butter! But joining the two haves together again did pose a bit of a problem, I mean what kind of glue is best and will the join hold?

I decided to use a internal brace, a piece of plastic inserted into a hole drilled in either half.


The resultant pose is quite dynamic, rather as if the soldier has just fired. Hiding the seam will be left to my old friend Milliput, the painting will do the rest!

In part 2 of this project I will be doing a little more complex conversion as I make the regiment's flag bearer.

2 comments:

  1. Impressive! I normally just buy more boxes of figures...

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  2. A great start to the unit. By the way how do i become a follower of your blog? I can't seem to find the thingie at the side ...

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