Wednesday 29 August 2012

Of Sprues and Men

The local hobby store [Imperial Hobbies, Richmond, BC, Canada) had its annual "Customer Appreciation Sale" with 25% off (being in business for -you guessed it- 25 years) and thus like a kid with a new $10 bill to spend for the candy, I went a bit crazy and picked up more plastics for my Napoleonic project.

Yup, now more snipping, and scraping, and glueing.....

I bought two more Prussian Infantry boxes.  Over doing it for the 1814 battles I had in mind, but Plancenoit (action during the Battle of Waterloo) is now doable!

I also could not resist picking up a box of Victrix French Guard which, along with the sale price, had an old price sticker on it. Woo hoo! My new Young Guard!  All be it with Perry heads rather than bearskins being the lesser guard types. But all in the practical greatcoat....

I read my good friend's latest blog entry (link: Kevin's blog) about his foray into constructing plastics and was amused at some of the same problems I encounter.  But I also noticed some differences.
Perhaps it is my Virgo-ness coming through (Virgos are apparently eminently practical and pragmatic*) but I took a somewhat methodical approach to clipping out each pose separately and placing them into empty blister trays (never throw those away!) and then going on to the next. I also placed all the arms into container trays along with the sprue tab with the code number so I could find them quickly.  Thus the whole procedure should have been quick. However....

...well, Victrix being Victrix with all the arms separate and to a large extent interchangable, one can start really individualizing each figure.  The box has both marching and standing firing/loading poses and so must be separated.  As I have but 10 figures to a stand/unit (I actually planned it this way to take advantage of the configuration of the boxes of plastics) it came out to 6 units or the entire box of 60 figures - if one is OK with putting only 2 various command figures for each unit.

The photo shows the cut up sprues (note the uniformity!), the separated poses in old blister packs and the arms separated into each tray.  Anality in its splendor!

Thus, the whole glueing procedure is quite time consuming.  Fun - in a wargamer demented way - but consuming.  With lots of swearing.  But that just might be me.

As I write this evening, I have still have the packs to glue so they are not yet done. 


[* my wife scoffs at this suggestion as NO wargamer can be so described <grin>]