Neil Merryweather
SMF Supporter
Since I have already deliberately broken my own rule of one job at a time, I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, as my mum used to say, and start another one.
Last week the highly esteemed Peter Day sent me a PM completely out of the blue and offered me this boy as a gift. I was quite gobsmacked and delighted, as it’s an idea I’ve been flirting with for a while.
That said, the idea of painting something so big is very frightening, although the making part should be fun.
I painted a lot of the Airfix 1/12 scale figures in my youth (although never this one) and I thought they were pretty good at the time. I would probably be a bit ashamed now.
Here is the sprue shot
This is clearly a clever use of the original master model for the 54mm Imperial Guard figure as it’s identical in every way, except for the breakdown of the parts, but that poses problems for me that I wouldn’t have worried about as a teenager.
Because it was originally designed to be pantographed down by 3 times there has been a lot of exaggeration or omission of details, such as the texture of the bearskin and lack of engraving on the buttons and insignia. I can’t bring myself to leave these things unaddressed in the context of today’s market, which has some absolutely exquisite sculpting.
Another issue is the constraints of injection moulding which has resulted in some quite extensive ‘back-fill’. It is hardly noticeable at 54mm scale but at 1-12 it will need to be sharpened up considerably.
So I started out by gluing all the major assemblies together, to see what I‘ve got and how much joint filling will be required.
Quite a lot, as you can see.
I started with the torso
The first thing to do was to find images of re-enactors which demonstrate how the real garments look, rather than illustrations.
I removed all the buttons and carved into the edges of the plastron (the front panel).It’s very exaggerated - at this scale it looks like it’s made of 1” thick foam rubber!
The buttons should be flat and have an eagle engraved on them. I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to deal with that yet. I engraved seam lines around the edges of the plastron and waistcoat, dremelled away depressions where the buttons would be pulling the fabric, and carved button holes. I also reduced the thickness of the waistcoat pockets.
The back had fewer issues although the turnbacks are also an ‘inch’ thick.
I thinned them down considerably, as in real life they appear to be totally stitched down.
The piping around the pocket flaps is way too thick so I removed that and thinned them down as well, as they too seem to be stitched down in real life. I will re-make the piping from 0.3mm solder wire. They don’t have button holes so they are clearly not actual pockets.
So this is where we are at the moment.
Thanks for looking in, and a MASSIVE thank you again to Peter Day, what a Gentleman!
Neil
