More Swedes

This is the 2nd ABO Regiment just back from a refit at barracks. The figures are probably knock off’s of SWN4 Swedish Infantry Advancing. The officer and standard bearer are of unknown origin being poor quality and they may even be home cast figures (tucked away in the 2nd rank for this photo). The flag is metal and the puny standard bearer had to be jacked up on a plasti-card plinth to help him hoist the thing above his head.

The purists among you many wonder why I am including these impostors in the ranks of my vintage Hinton Hunt army. The answer is that I have a lot of them so what else am I going to do? En-masse they look fine (fantastic if I take my glasses off) so they will stay in the army.

I had a slight mishap with the 47a copper wash I use over the flesh colour. This resulted in half the regiment parading as David Dickinson look-a-likes. Not very impressive so the whole lot failed inspection. The second attempt proved better.

French cavalry review

Not much painting in the last couple of weeks so I held a review of the French cavalry. It was a small affair because I only have 12 of them painted. To recap, the picture shows a squadron of Carabineers (FN106 & FN311) and a squadron of Chasseur-a-cheval of the line (FN319). A stirring sight for any wargamer who feels the only real Napoleonic army is a French one.

I have plenty more cavalry to come including Austrian Hussars, Cuirassiers and Lancers. A squadron each of French Cuirassiers and Lancers and, best of all, some Prussian Cuirassiers – yes good old PN77 (see my 70’s flashback!). These chaps may just get accelerated to the front of the painting queue although I really should resist such temptation.

Before & after

The figure on the right is one of the Swedes as received and the one on the left is the finished version. The paint job is showing signs of age (I reckon the figures must be at least 25 years old) although the detail in some areas is still good. There was no way I was ever going to strip and repaint 300 of these guys so I settled for a refurb.

Firstly I brushed off any loose paint and dirt and then scraped the green flock off the base. I decided to concentrate most of my efforts on the flesh areas as the original colour was rather anaemic looking - not a lot of sun in Sweden I guess. I used Foundry flesh 5A washed over with copper wash 47A which gives a good result without much effort.

Next I went over all areas with the closest colour matches I could find in the Foundry range, mostly it was the black that was suffering although the blue collar and cuffs needed a good spruce up too. The figures had a yellow hatband but my reference material suggests that this would actually have been brass so I re-painted with shiny 36C. I also introduced a thin black line down the coat front but stopped short of any further black shading. The waist sash and shako badges were left unchanged, whoever painted these originally did a good job and I would have been hard pressed to improve on it. Finally I varnish my figures with Humbrol Satin Cote, this gives a decent finish without looking too glossy