Cheers Simon, Nigel, Oda, Neil and Nap!
Nigel, after doing the first couple of umpteen sets of straps for various figures, I realised it is indeed prudent to do as much as possible before attaching gear, where practical, and then you get cases like this where the egg comes before the chicken. Or however that was supposed to go.
Neil, I agree that the fiddling about is more satisfying, if not extremely time consuming.
Been an off week for bench time so not much in the way of updates. Plenty of fiddly stuff taken care of and now things are just about done. Click on photos for full size.
The straps have all been taken care of, even though some of them are hidden behind his arms. I made up two sets of swivel mounts for the rifle by twisting hoops on a drill bit from thin wire, then flattening the hoop and gluing it into a pre-drilled hole on the rifle. Polish Mausers had two sets of swivels, and two types. The normal style on the side and a parade set on the bottom. The front side swivel could be either of the molded type that is typical of German rifles or a swivel type. The butt swivel is molded so you don't have to do anything there unless you feel like scribing a gap under the retaining bar. The sling is pewter foil with a photo etch buckle. His left hand needed some work as the thumb had either snapped or was short shot. I ended up changing the orientation to run parallel and slightly tucked into the hand. I cut off the original part and replaced it with a slice of stretched sprue nub, the part where the sprue first thins out to form a cone and shaved and trimmed the thumb to shape.
The field cap and helmet were hollowed out, and a liner of sorts added to the helmet. A chin strap was glued onto the blanket to look like it passes under the blanket strap. I added a wee bit of a peak to the field cap to give me a bit more height for the cap badge which is still to be added. I have to say the caps are quite nice as is, and much better than the first versions with the artillery crew figures. I had to prime the inside of the helmet and some of the harder to reach areas now to make sure there is something there in case I can't reach these areas when everything is glued in place. Speaking of cap badges, I made one up from four tiny pieces of strip. Three half round and one straight, then picked, prodded, shaved and sliced my way to this
The only things left to do are add ends to the blanket straps, the badge, glue his arms, head and the helmet in place. All this will have to wait until I get the other figures assembled and bases sorted out as I don't want stuff getting knocked off while moving things about. The next batch of figures should be quicker to deal with now that I know what needs to be done and how to go about it.
Kimmo
