Saturday, August 10, 2013

All the King's Men 54mm Napoleonics Project Started

Ken Cliffe has hit another home run with his 54mm Napoleonics line.  He recently sent me a teaser gift, knowing I'm a lead prostitute-lead addict:  and will spend copious amounts of disposable income to build a cool Napoleonics collection.  My plan right now is to build a division per side (French and British) plus add "accoutrements" such as limbers, etc as Ken brings them out. Hopefully I can find some of the old Hinchcliffe Calder Craft sets like the field forge and Larrey's ambulance.  That will set me back but they were cool when I got started in the hobby and will be cool now.   I'm posting the progress of painting this figure and will describe the painting techniques, colors used and time it takes to paint it.  
All the King's Men sends two types of heads to construct either Cuirassiers or Carabiniers.  This is a cool touch.  The horses are soft plastic. I don't remember the manufacturer but I do remember they come from Argentina.  The carbines and sword scabbards are separate castings and must be attached.  I use a weird technique (go figure...right?) of a drop of Elmer's Glue plus a drop of Super Glue-Gap Filling to make a tough bond.  Hopefully this will help the miniatures avoid the grip of the "fat wargamers" like me.  I also like that all the horse furniture is molded onto the horse. The previous horses I've painted for my AWI 54mm collection had an Achilles' hell of the reins getting broken during play.  I could have fixed it by poking a hole in the head of the horse but I'm too lazy to take the extra time.

Ok, back to the figure.  I prime all my figures with Rustoleum Flat White after cleaning the soft plastic horses with Dawn dish soap.  It just works and has worked since 1980. Krylon just doesn't get the job done.   I built the rider and glued it down onto the horse before painting the horse. I don't have a problem doing that. I then glued the figure down onto an All The King's Men cavalry base after attaching adhesive backed thin magnet sheet to the base. My traveling boxes are metal lined. Again, that's just what I do.

I'll paint the horse with Windsor-Newton Water Based Oils. I use Lamp Black. I apply the paint in a thick "gloppy" coat and "pull" the paint off with sponge or foam pieces.  Been doing this for years as well.  Will post in progress pictures below.

5 comments:

  1. Napoleonics in 54mm - that's crazy, but a good type of crazy... That horse looks like it might be a copy of the an old Britains Deetail range from the 70s? As for Caldercraft (good taste that man!) those sets appear on ebay uk often enough, though they usually go for serious money. Was Caldercraft a big hit in the states? Apparently the main driver behind the brand (with its blister packaging, etc.) was to get Hinchliffe into US stores, according to Frank Hinchliffe the packaging costs nearly bankrupted them, so i guess it didn't come off..
    Good luck with the project.

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    1. Yeah....color me insane in the membrain...insane in the brain! I've got a good sized 54mm AWI collection. My gaming house is big enough to play a 16x6 table comfortably so space isn't the problem. I've gravitated to 54s since painting hundreds of 28mm and 15,18, whatever they are today figures. All the King's Men puts out a great product, fairly priced in the periods I love to play. I'm an addict!!!!! I'll need to check out Ebay. We used to have the US distributor for Hinchcliffe here in Dallas. I never thought to get Caldercraft stuff when I could get it reasonably. I was an idiot. i'll pay for THAT error now won't I?

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  2. Steve,

    What rules are you going to use?

    Ed

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    1. Right now, I'm thinking ATKM will work fine unless there is something better out there for larger scale figures. I don't think I'm going to go completely outrageous this time and build a division for each side plus cavalry division and appropriate artillery. Do you have any ideas on an alternate set for 54s?

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    2. No other rules in mind, just wondered if you had found something.

      Of course with your table you could do BAR Napoleonics at 10:1 men:figure ratio!!

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