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| Hinton Hunt A2 with replacement wheels on left. Newline Designs 20mm model on right. |
Original Hinton Hunt models are however quite rare so when I do come across the odd one I like to include it in my forces. I have two French guns (click here) and two Austrian ones (click here) but the remainder of my guns are mostly contemporary ones by Newline Designs, which I think fit in quite well.
During my trawl of eBay over the summer I turned up one British gun A.2. Field Gun (British) which I determined to add to the Dukes arsenal. However, it just looked too puny beside my existing Newline gun, so I took the radical decision to swop the wheels with Newline ones. I’m pleased with the result even though it seems a bit sacrilegious.
14 comments:
I think it looks better.
I was counting my way through the really useful boxes etc and somewhat surprised to find around 40 Hinton Hunt and Hinchliffe 20mm Range guns which have not yet been commissioned with crews (I must have more than that again which are in finished units).
The Hinchliffe 20s are the best, then I would have said Newline then Hinton Hunt originals - but your new wheels trick may well bump them up into second place
Hi Clive, I was surprised at just how well the wheel swop works. I do like Hinchliffe but for me they are just a tad too big for Hinton Hunt. HH with Newline wheels could be the Goldilocks solution!
Seeing them side-by-side its certainly very noticeable. Do they look fine on the smaller pieces though / horse artillery?
Still like Hinchliffe 20mm best - limbers are far better, also greater variety of artillery pieces - I have five or six British 10” mortars, which I may never get to use - some have seen action in Foy’s Peninsular sieges. But you’re right, that hybrid is a good solution. Now all we need to do is work out what to use Newline guns with Hinton Hunt wheels for...
Stuart - my idea is to mostly use the HH ones as horse artillery where they look a bit more reasonable.
Interesting post - as ever. Apart from the fact that I can't afford them, I've always had some misgivings, as you say, about the proportions of HH artillery pieces - never managed to work out exactly what the problem was (since i didn't have any to look at...). Your hybrids with wheel swap look fine - that looks like a good solution. The small wheels theory seems sound, too.
Quick comment (digression?) on suitability of Hinch 20 pieces with HH. Frank Hinchliffe mastered these to a constant scale of 4mm to the foot, which is 1/76 and no messing. I'm not sure why this scale was chosen, though it is the official scale for railway modellers' OO - Hinch also did 20mm WW2 equipment, so maybe it was to conform to that market. At 1/76 scale, a HH figure which stands 20mm to the eyes is pretty close to 5 feet to the eyes, or about 5'6" to the top of his head.
In theory then, the Hinch 20 equipment is a tad small for 1/72 (incl plastics), but should be spot on for HH. According to their own catalogue, the Hinch 25mm range was based on 4.75mm to the foot, which is 1/64, so the Hinch 25 artillery is well out of scale with your Hintons. This whole subject is confused by the fact that some of the 25mm Hinch Napoleonic guns, if you sit down with accurate measuring devices and your copy of Dawson, Dawson & Summerfield, actually turn out to have been mastered in 1/76 scale - the British 18pdr and some of the howitzers for a start. I've done this - check it out if anyone doesn't believe me. Which means, I guess, that some pieces were simply lifted into the 25mm range.
Thus I would happily use Hinch 20 with my HH army (if I just had one!), without a second's hesitation. They SHOULD fit, though scale is always in the eye of the beholder!
Foy - I've taken a look at the couple of 20mm Hinchliffe guns I have and although I agree that these are superior to either HH or Newline in terms of detail they do look big next to my own guns. If I had had enough Hinchliffe at the start of this project I probably would have used them however it's a bit late to go mixing them in now with my HH/Newlines.
...and that's absolutely the correct approach. My armies, being of mixed origins, have a somewhat blurred approach to scale which probably ranges from HH/Qualiticast/SHQ at the small end to Higgins, Art Miniaturen and one or two of the smaller Lamming figures at the big end. S-Range sort of fit in near the top of this range, though it depends which castings you look at. Thus my adoption of Hinch 20 (where possible) or NapoleoN guns means that I have standardised on artillery which is a bit small, strictly speaking, with some of my figures. As you say, consistency is probably more important than detailed accuracy.
Anyway, your artillery always looks far better than mine!
Back in the day I used for foot artillery Hinch which are much better than HH. For horse artilery I used HH. However I have sold the HH on e-bay and replaced them with Newline.
The guns look better, but your heirs will curse you Ian. They'll say it was a wheely bad idea.
Goya just sent me this:
I did a quick calculation and some measurements. The exact scale for HH is not clear but assuming a 5’ 6” man (typical for 1800) and a 23mm figure (foot to top of head), the scale comes out at 1/72. A 60” British wheel should be 21mm.
So I've measured the wheel diameters of the models I have and:
Hinton Hunt = 16mm
Newline Designs = 18mm
Hinchliffe = 20mm
So Foy is right that Hinchliffe is the closest to scale!
I dont have any HH, or indeed Newline piece, in my artillery park. I do have some SHQ British 6pdrs and they have 20mm wheels.
My old warrior French 12pdrs have 22mm wheels.
WM - boom boom, that's in appreciation of the joke and not the sound of cannons going off!
French 12 pdrs had a 146cm wheel so that makes the Warrior guns 1/66 scale (if everything else is in proportion). Bear in mind that every dimension is roughly 10% bigger so the overall gun is 30% larger.
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