Greys Anatomy

Last year Mark very kindly sent me six Scots Greys castings he had spare from his own project. The figures had all seen better days with swords missing, limbs detached from bases, and some tails docked but I thought it would be a good challenge to restore them.

This is how they arrived, rather sorry looking but full of potential.

The first step was to insert a brass rod into the docked tails (Ooh Matron!) to give the putty something to stick to.

Here is the tail built up using Magic Sculp putty. This was quite fiddly and my first efforts resulted in tails that were too fat ("you're not going to leave them like that are you?" said Mrs S, who had suddenly become an expert on miniatures restoration) so I had to carve away my handiwork until they looked right.

I gave one of the figures a trumpet as he was already missing his sword. This is now my tried and tested method - glue a piece of brass rod to his mouth and hand and then build up the trumpet shape with putty.

The missing swords were replaced from some donor DK figures I had lying around. These were spliced into the figure's arm and then made good with putty, not perfect but should look ok when painted.

And here they are finished (a couple of bases needed filling too as there were holes).

The plan now is to paint them and add them to my current squadron of six figures to make up a full unit – you can never have too many Scots Greys.