Afternoon all, sorry for the hiatus; I’ve had a large dose of work and life and household responsibilities getting in the way of the important stuff!
I am, however, pleased to report that there is now progress on the rifleman.
Whilst mucking about with toothpaste tube and lead foil I got the feeling that his left index finger was too short, so I snipped it off and inserted a piece of thin wire as an armature.
In my sculpting I have always struggled with individual fingers so I don’t know why I did this. I had just made up some plastic soup from sprue and dichloromethane , which I have never done before, so I thought this might be the time to road-test it.
It took a few attempts but it now meets with my approval. I will probably use it again for this because it dries a lot quicker than Milliput or Duro and allows me to carve it without deforming the thin wire.
What I realised afterwards is that there was nothing wrong with the forefinger, it is his thumb that is too long…….doh!
I have trimmed it but don’t have a picture yet
I carried on with the strappage using lead foil and toothpaste tube, and a couple of etched buckles.
It took some figuring out what went on first and which strap passed over which- thank goodness for the re-enactors websites!
I tried to show the weight pressing down on the shoulder straps by filing some of it away, but I’m not very happy with it. Trouble is I had such ‘fun’ with the haversack straps I’m not going there again-I’ve got another one to do anyway so hopefully I’ll make a better fist of it with him.
And then I discovered I had left off the powder horn string which is attached by leather tubes to the cartridge pouch belt, so I had to tease the haversack straps apart and detach the waterbottle strap to fit it in grrrr!
I used 0.3mm diameter lead solder for the first time since I bought it years ago. It was lovely and malleable but I was terrified of it snapping through work-hardening.
Still I got there in the end –
I have decided to concentrate on this one figure in the sure knowledge that I won’t finish them both for the end of the GB.
And then I couldn’t help myself, but I went all Steve Jones
and decided the Shako cords needed to be improved…….
But that’s for next time
Thanks for looking in
N
.
that should work, Tony! good luck with the straps- I've dremeled out the pack a bit to get a better fit,by the way