Sunday, July 28, 2019

Tricky Conversions

I CAN report fairly good success with the Tricky Stick I bought to solve the problem of getting superglue to work with soft plastic.
It was needed because I could find no suitable figures for Prussian artillerymen for my Project Kaiser 54mm refight of the Franco-Prussian War.
I wanted to convert Armies In Plastic Union artillery crew from the American Civil War by replacing their heads with pickelhaubed Prussian heads.
Superglue alone did not come close to getting the job done, but by first preparing the Union torsos and the Prussian heads with Tricky Stick, I was able to come up with appropriate-looking crews.
There was an awful moment when one head fell off at the smallest touch. For a moment I thought I might have to restart from scratch.
But the other conversions proved fine, and the failed one worked at the second attempt.
By adding some Prussian infantry to the six converted Union men, I have come up with three sets of four-man crews.
Three crews with two guns - all from Armies In Plastic
And here is how a gun and crew look beside one of my newly finished houses:

4 comments:

  1. Very nice to see you soldier style 54mms figures.
    Am using same figures as gourself, not as detailed painting though.
    Irregular Miniatures do separate heads in different types, guess the problem would be compatibility with different brands having different scale sizes.
    The armies in plastic cavalry, and infantry, are good value.

    I am constructing various European armies, and British empire, set in 1870 to 1914.
    Roughly!

    A sort of what if type scenario, inspired by the literature of the Invasion scare stories, so popular in Victorian times.

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  2. Hi. Good to hear from you. 54mm was a great favourite of mine as a kid (along with Airfix '20mm', naturally), but I never thought I would get back into such a (relatively) large scale. I guess it is mainly the eye-candy factor that persuaded me to return to 54mm, but then 10mm has eye candy too, just in a different way.

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  3. I've never come across Tricky Stick, so thanks for sharing that tip. I do a lot of converting for 54mm wargaming and use Ever Build Stick2 Industrial Grade super glue, which sticks just about anything but sometimes I find it helps to be score both parts with a scalpel before joining them..

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  4. Tricky Stick isn't perfect - at least, not with my somewhat impatient approach to getting things done - but it is the best solution I have come across. The real proof of the pudding may come when I use the figures more often as the 150th battle anniversaries of the Franco-Prussian War arrive

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