PA Cavalry Conversion: 40mm Semi-Rounds

I had hoped to show more painted results of the latest figure conversion but had a setback in the mold making stage of the process, more about which later.  For now, the story begins with Prince August cavalry.  While we're relatively spoiled for choice with the infantry, there are four main cavalry trooper figures which can be cast.  First we have good old PA11 and the identical pose in its newer, more fully rounded version:

This seems to be the hands down favorite, and we also see a very similar figure as the mainstay of everyone's Spencer Smith cavalry arm.  I like this one but he looks very Swedish to me in style and the hell-for-leather charge was probably not the norm for most armies' cavalry doctrine of the era. And of course we have the pistol wielding PA48 and the nice, but rather static dragoon PA41. 

Both these latter figures certainly have their uses, but sticking to sword-armed cavalry it comes down to Molds # 11 or Mold # 935 painted in his "Wild Geese" livery in the top photo. # 935 seems to be not nearly as popular, perhaps in part due to difficulty in casting the sword fully.  Further, there are things about the figure which are not quite right. The horse's head looks oversized, the hind quarters a bit skimpy and angular, the pistols oddly mounted forward and too low on the body instead of up near the saddle.  But I do very much like the pose, so let's see what can be done here:

As can be seen in the comparison shot, what I have done to the rider is bulk up the flattish tricorne, also give him a fuller coat and cuffs.  I beefed up the sword a bit to get a stronger cast, with the intention of filing it after casting.  The horse and tack get some attention as well: among other things, filed down the head a little, added more definition to the hind quarters, amputed the pistol holsters and replaced with green ones.

So far so good, I think.  Last weekend I made a new mold with eager anticipation of casting and painting this new figure.  The first half came out fine. Unfortunately, had a bit of a disaster where a small portion of the second mold have stuck to the first despite the use of mold separation cream. Evidently I missed a spot. And this damage fell right across part of the horse, ruining the castings.  Why not just re-do the second half, you ask ?  Good question !  And I would have done so but for the lack of sufficient RTV compound. Rather than taking the sensible course of ordering more and waiting, I tried patching the 2nd half, would up cutting extra channels in the original half as a work-around and to sum up, botched the whole thing.  So we're a week or two away from seeing this figure actually painted.

In the meantime, I've also started on the infantry command figures. The standard bearer is finished, the drummer just under way. I'll soon show these in subsequent postings.  

Transforming a Swede to a Frenchman - 40mm Semi-Rounds

 

I've often wished that Prince August could have done better of creating a French infantryman than the Battle of Rossbach mold PA58.  Of course, there is also the "French Regiments of 1750" and "Wild Geese" series of molds.  But they are very much a case of old wine in new bottles, Karoliners sold with painting guides as French troops. Of course, I painted a regiment of these years ago. 

And a Swiss battalion Courten made from GNW molds.  A little better, but still essentially Danes or Russians in disguise.

 

In any case, following up on the previous post, it was time to try something more ambitious.  My objective was two-fold. First, I wanted a more convincing French infantry figure for my 40mm armies.  Secondly, I wanted it in the always useful "march attack" pose.  Did I have the sculpting talent to make one ?   Who knows, and what were the chances of creating a tolerably good figure the first time out ? 

Hedging my bets, I decided to use a PA casting as the base figure upon which to add green stuff to build up a suitable master.  For this, I chose the advancing musketeer PA14,  the hat company counterpart to the previously featured grenadier figure. 

Again, this is one of the older, flatter Eriksson molds without precise detail.   The idea was to substantially rework the figure, but take advantage of the good proportions and aggressive advancing stance.  I cut off the weapons, amputated his arms and filed down the coat to a bare outline.  I then started to rebuild the figure with green stuff. And here and there, I used existing bits from other figures such as the musket and scabbards.

My main worry was getting the arms to appear natural, hoping to hit a happy medium between T.rex and orangutan. That and just getting the general "look" right.  And the new master.

It looked pretty good to me, but the proof would be in the casting. My 1st mold went wrong when the master must have slipped somehow, resulting in an ugly seam down the middle of the figure.  The 2nd mold worked better but once I got castings out of it, I saw that there were a few things which needed to be tidied up on the master. The 3rd mold works the best except the bayonet scabbard casting short.  But by no means a deal breaker. In any case, this flow pattern is effective and the bayonet at the extremity casts fully every time.

And more painted figures.  It would have been preferable to finish more but I was eager to share it.

How did it turn out ?  Once done with something like this, after the initial delight of creation wears off you tend to see all the flaws.  I'm looking forward to reading any and all constructive criticism but I have to say I'm pleased with the result.

Backdating a PA Grenadier - 40mm Home Casts

Readers of this blog will know my mixed feelings of joy and frustration when it comes to the Prince August range of 40mm semi-rounds, as in this previous post: War of the Polish Succession.  Holger Eriksson's many excellent figures are a great tribute to the Swedes of the GNW, but not necessarily ideal for all among us with designs on using them for other armies both real and imaginative.  When it comes to toy soldiers and music, my tastes run more to the Baroque than the Classical.  Aside from the old-fashioned shoes/stockings and hair styles, the PA's remind me more of Frederick the Great's Prussians than WSS era soldiers.

And as the Irish Prince August mainly perpetuated more Karoliners with recent additions to the 40mm home casting range, it's high time to take matters into my own hands.  Quite belatedly, I have discovered the utility of Green Stuff, and even more recently - mold making.  I took the plunge last month and bought a hobby molding kit from Reb Toys.  It consists of a wooden mold making jig, two jars of Quick-Sil, "RTV jewelry molding rubber" compound, and a container of Castaldo mold separation cream.

My first mold-making experiment made use of a Spenkuch semi-round as the master.  The failure was comically bad: the poor fellow's lower body and legs cast nicely but his headless Swiss cheese upper body looked as if he'd walked into a perfect storm of grapeshot.  It was readily apparent that more pressure was required during the mold curing process and that's probably what those two wing-nuts on top of the jig were for.  For test Mold #2, I emulated Tony Bath in using a flat Zinnfigur as the master.  Not perfect but definitely better.  In the interest of maintaining harmonious relations with Germany I'll say no more about it when sooner or later a battalion or two of these guys shows up here on the blog.

Now that I'd established that I could indeed create a functional mold, it was time to move on to the objective of modifying a Prince August figure.  For this, I selected the grenadier mold PA20.  He is one of the older, flatter original Eriksson creations. It's a good and simple figure with the musket casting directly on the centerline.  As can be seen in the top photo, all I did here was to file off the turnbacks and bulk the coat and cuffs with green stuff.  My mold is nothing fancy, using very similar flow channels to the PA original.  The wing nuts on the jig soon stripped out, but I found the brutal expedient of setting a 3-ton floor jack on top of the jig during curing compresses the silicone rubber rather effectively.

Here I've painted the figure as an Austrian grenadier, suitable for 1700-1735.

And next to his original, more 7YW-looking cousin.

Soon to follow, a more ambitious and exciting conversion ! 

Back in the Saddle

Picked up a new camera.  Haha, at Costco - one of my least favorite places to spend an hour or so.  I stifled the impulse to abandon my wife with the cart amidst the warehouse-roaming hordes in favor of watching the 49ers game in the TV section. The camera is a Sony Cybershot DSC-WX150.  Very strange that the insurance company allowed nearly triple the coverage (and not much at that) for replacing the old obsolete Sony than they did for the Nikon.  There's no Macro function which concerned me somewhat, but all the shots here were taken with it, so I think we can surmise that it's at least competent with the closeups.  The blame for any bad shots can be attributed to my indifferent photography skills.

Here's a couple WIP shots of the custom 40mm semi-rounds, designs from the talented hand of amateur scupltor John Bertolini.  John has kindly given me permission to cast my own.  I like these for the French on account of the full coats without turnbacks. I did a few things such as filing off the moustaches and adding the bayonet scabbard, but essentially they're faithful to the original design.  The figures are good match in scale and "semi-roundness" for the Prince August Karoliners and the NCO carries a Prince August pole arm.

Here's a nice feature of the camera, creating photos using a Picture Effect mode.  The Renaissance flats in this post were shots taken in Watercolor mode.  The effect is kind of cool, like artist's illustrations from a book.  It  might make for an interesting excercise experimenting with painting them that way from the get-go.

War of the Polish Succession - Part 2

On to the uniforms. For the French, things are relatively well documented.  Between a wealth of information about the WSS and the WAS/7YW, we can reasonably extrapolate details about the flags, musicians, pocket designs and so on.  Then there is Rousselot's splendid series of plates, L'Armee Royale a l'Epoque de la Regence, if you're fortunate enough to have acquired it.  If not, no worries as it predates the 1730's by a decade or so, but still useful and inspirational.

Within more realistic reach of everyone are the Osprey Louis XV's Army books by Chartrand, skillfully illustrated by Leliepvre.  Here we have plates specifically labeled "Polish Succession War".  In addition to the color plates, the first three volumes at least (don't own the others), have black and white illustrations executed in a rather naive and appealing style by "Gudenus" depicting individual soldiers from different regiments ca.1735.  Unfortunately they're are attributed to a private collection, so while it may be tantalizing to speculate as to the exact contents of this collection, it remains mostly a mystery.

However, we have an artist's name, and in this fortunate era (so far as the ease of internet research goes), a search reveals more period plates in this style from German Wikipedia, and in color.  Thanks to Ralphus of the Wars of the Louis Quatorze blog for sharing these with us:

http://warsoflouisxiv.blogspot.com/2012/09/philipp-franz-freiherrn-von-gudenus.html
http://warsoflouisxiv.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-gudenus-images-from-1734.html

And the orginal source of the material: Reiter, Husaren und Grenadiere: Die Uniformen der Kaiserlichen Armee am Rhein 1734; Zeichnungen des Philipp Franz Freiherrn von Gudenus; Bearbeitet und Texte von Hans Bleckwenn; Dortmund 1979.

A useful review here (in German):
http://www.figuren-modellbau.de/buch-harenberg-gudenus-kaiserliche-armee-1734.html

After looking at this review, I decided to look for my own copy. Long out of print of course, but worth checking into. First, Amazon.com.  Yes, a copy but at $96.50...um, no.  Next, I tried Alibris. $12.00, ships from US.  Yes, more like it !

So what we have here is a high quality paperback, printed in a small format, 93 pages pages in German.  There is more text than plates, but the images are most appealing and very useful in illustrating samples of the various contingents of Prinz Eugen's Imperial army of the Rhine in 1734.   What has to be kept in mind is the title "Reiter, Husaren und Grenadiere" means exactly that. (and only one plate of the hussars). No flags, no musicians, no officers/NCO's, very few infantry in tricornes. However, the basic uniform details are here and flag information can be found from other sources.  It won't require a big stretch of the imagination to make some plausible guesses about how to paint the musicians/command figures, what button-counting pedant is going to prove you wrong ?

War of the Polish Succession - Part 1

Siege of Philippsburg - 1734

Much as I love the Prince August 40mm Karoliners, Holger Eriksson's passion seemed to be modeling the Swedes, with their Russian counterparts receiving scant attention. Oddly, Prince August has mostly perpetuated the imbalance with their new Karoliners. What we have in the main are uniquely Swedish troops that fall between two stools stylistically: coats with turnbacks & collars more typical of the WAS/7YW on the one hand and buckled shoes & stockings, officers wearing old-fashioned perukes on the other.

Many cheerfully take the mixed stylistic elements in stride and use the PA's for the 7YW era, as well as Imagi-nations with  no reservations. That's a practical and perfectly acceptable approach.  But I've often wondered if the PA's might not be well-suited to a time splitting the difference between the early 1700's GNW/WSS and the mid-century 7YW.  Why not the War of the Polish Succession, with the fighting (what there was of it) taking place between 1733-1735 ?

There's no doubt that the War of the Polish Succession has held little appeal for military historians.  The obvious reason is its legacy as kingly warfare taken to an extreme; lots of posturing and maneuvering with little actual fighting, quite lacking in decisive results.  Then too, England stayed out of it, also contributing to the dearth of literature in English.  About all we've got is the King of Siam's slim volume published in 1901 http://archive.org/details/warofpolishsucce00vajirich and Sutton's "The King's Honor & the King's Cardinal" (1980), some 206 pages in which the diplomatic preliminaries take up the first 1/3 of it.  Readers of French and German are probably better served.

Yet this relatively unknown war presents some opportunities for gamers: not a lot happened but a lot could have happened.  It has potential for Imagi-nations or what-if gaming involving real countries.  And aside from England, all the key players were involved: France, Spain and the Kingdom of Sardinia vs. Austria augmented by small Imperial states, Russia, Prussia, Saxony, as well as contingents from Denmark, Hanover & etc. A virtual riot of uniform painting opportunities - if we can figure out what they looked like !

The next post will touch on some of those uniforms, ca. 1734-1735.