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