My Workbench

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Strelets 1/72 Saxon Guarde du Corps & Rusian Ulans

I just finished my first Napoleonic figures ever. I decided to try plastic this time and chose Strelets 1/72 scale. I picked three groups: Saxon Guarde du Corps, Rusian Ulans, and Russian Mounted Jaegers. I found out painting plastic is way different than painting metal. Even after washing the figures well, my first attempt at priming flaked right off. I then purchased a can of plastic primer and used it with les than satisfactory results. I finally dipped the figures in Rustoleum Spar Varnish. I was then able to paint them with acrylics and apply a final coat of varnish. The paint job is holding up now pretty well.  Here are the Uhlans:





And here are the Saxons:









And here is the battle






 





I haven't finished the Mounted Jaegers yet, but here are the horses. I am taking a break to finish another 1:1200 Langton ship.





Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Langton 1:1200 40 gun French Frigate

(I note that this post gets viewed frequently so I want to point out that the rigging is incorrect, done before I had a good reference to go by.)

I just finished a Langton 40 gun french frigate at quarters. I used black thread for the stays, horse hair for the jib sails, and .008" coated smoke colored bead wire for the running rigging. I really like the bead wire, but as it turned out it doesn't hold paint very well. At first it appeared to paint qhite well but after a while I kept noticing places where it had sluffed or curled up. I ended up coating it with varnish after it was freshly painted. If I could find this gauge of wire in other colors, it would be perfect.












Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Horse Hair Rigged 1:1200 Ship

I decided to bring one of my ships into the shipyard to do a rigging retrofit. I replaced the thread standing rigging with black horse hair from my wife's mare and added running rigging from our paint gelding.