Gettysburg terrain - fences

I wanted to make up some authentic looking fence lines for background for photos and also to work as gaming pieces. I knocked up five bases like this one in just under an hour (unpainted). Card base, cat litter coated in PVA shaped into a line, upright posts made from barbecue skewers, horizontals made from spliced ice cream sticks, all held in place with diy filler. Once dry, the bases were sprayed black, the 'ground' coated in sand, painted brown, drybrushed then static grass was applied. Excluding drying time, the five bases took only a couple of hours to complete.

CSA artillery pieces

Another couple of bases that have been hanging around for a while. The first one is pretty much out of the box, just the rear figure has the head taken from the straggler figure in one of the vignette packs. Painted to represent the Washington Artillery; dark grey shell jacket with thin red piping & red kepis with dark blue bands.
http://www.washingtonartillery.com/Uniforms%20page.htm

(scroll halfway down for the Civil War images)

The second base again has a headswap from the CS mounted infantry officer (rear figure) with no other conversions.

The Leister House (Meade's HQ) Final Part

Finally done, even down to the carving on the picket fence. As previously mentioned, the window frames have been intentionally left a darker colour, as per the early images I have posted. Like most things, it took longer than I anticipated, but I am pleased with the results.



Lessons learnt?:

• I will be buying moulded plasticard for tiles, bricks, boarding etc. Life is too short.

• Complete roof separately and affix at end, allowing access to the interior so any mishaps with windows etc can be sorted out easily.
• Research is vital. There's not much point in taking time making something that's not historically accurate. The Gardner images were a perfect starting point, and the Library of Congress architectural drawings were a Godsend. These, together with my own photos, images from various websites & books such as Early Photography at Gettysburg by William Frassanito gave me more than enough material to work with. It's fair to say at some point conjecture and informed guesses will be required, but the more research; less guesswork.
  
• Use cheap paints for terrain. I used large pots of cheap acylic (Inscribe pots picked up for 50p, and old Citadel paints that were near the end of their useful lives) to cover big areas. I was surprised how much paint got used. Conversely, use a quality wood glue!
  
• Put it together using masking tape to make sure it all fits before you glue it. Bulldog clips make excellent clamps for gluing wood joints.

The next building will be the Bryan House. Again, I have all the wetplate images, drawings & photos. The Bryan House is pretty similar to the Leister House, so much so that Brady mistakenly took photographs of the Bryan residence whilst trying to capture Meade's HQ in 1863. Strangely enough, I saw an ebay auction for 'Meade's HQ' last week; guess what? It was a model of the Bryan House!

The Leister House (Meade's HQ) Part 8

The house is now complete, but not photographed. I thought I'd just show a couple of features in the penultimate post of this project.

The chimney was constructed from brick plasticard over a wooden core. A layer of two bricks width was added at the top, then a single bricks width to finish off the detailing. This was all then painted black then Dark Sand for the mortar. The individual bricks were picked out in Plaka Brick Red (!), then weathered with some black added to the mix. As you can see, the shingles are all painted as per the porch roof (the white plasicard has now been painted too).

The ground was sand painted dark brown, dry brushed with various tans, red browns and ochres. PVA was then painted randomly over the whole area, followed by a mix of static grasses. Once dry, the grass (which to my eye always looks too bright) was lightly coated in brown ink, which blended it all in nicely. Again, once dry, the grass was dry brushed with various greens and browns.

CSA Breakthrough marker

FnF breakthrough marker, from the Foundry Southern command pack. Painted with Vallejo greys - black grey and dark sea grey blended with white, Andrea blue facings & dark Prussian blue trousers.

I've also finally finished Meade's HQ which has been a slightly longer project than I expected. Pictures later! I also managed to secure some Foundry Roman standards, so I'm waiting for them to arrive before I start the Legio (excuses, excuses...).

Foundry & Perry - shoulder to shoulder

I've seen a lot of nonsense written on the interweb (of all places!!) about compatibility between the old Perry sculpted miniatures released by Foundry, and their new range. As you can imagine, this issue probably affects me more than most!

Well. As you can see with the two Northern firing line figures, there are differences in the anatomical construction; the new sculpts, as mentioned before, are more 'lifelike'. I don't think these miniatures are incompatible on the battlefield, but maybe not in the same unit. They are certainly more compatible than with Old Glory, Sash and Sabre, Redoubt, Dixon, Renegade etc. Indeed, the differences are less marked than between their Foundry ECW and own range, and I don't remember that being such an issue. There is as much difference between the Foundry ACW artillery and infantry - the artillery being half a head larger - and that's the same range!

The mounted Generals pack I photographed in an earlier blog entry show that although the heads may be slightly different, the overall size of the metal miniatures is similar. After I have painted up one of the ACW3 pack I will let you see the differences.

As to the plastic figures themselves: the main feature is the cost; large armies could be built up for a fraction of the cost of their metal counterparts. They are sculpted in 'generic' sack coats and shell jackets, so for most units they will need to be split US/CS. With a couple of packs, there should be enough to put together three FnF brigades, with a few left over.

Preparation is much like for white metal - there are mould lines which need to be filed, and a rinse with washing-up liquid will get rid of any release agent present. This one was undercoated with enamels and painted with the usual mix of Vallejo, Foundry, Plaka & Citadel; there were no problems with application.

The only thing I found was the detail was harder to pick out on the plastics - especially areas like eye lids; and there are areas on the sculpt, like the hand in the cap pouch that are not as well defined as metal.

I enjoyed painting this figure, and I am looking forward to painting the rest of the range - the plastic horses display the best of the plastic medium; I'm surprised they don't replace their metal horses in their normal ranges. I am of course reassured that there is a continuing line of metals, as not only will we see the 'finishing off' of the Foundry range (Negro heads already sculpted!) but hopefully some new personality figures (Hill? Longstreet? Burnside?) and some unusual units like the Red Legged Devils!