Sunday 16 September 2012

Restoration Complete

I've spent a good chunk of the last year (and more!) progressively working through the various French and allied units that I picked up ex WHC. Each unit has been cleaned, repaired, and rebased and the work involved has varied from fairly minor repairs to some comprehensive restoration and repainting.

Anyway, I've just completed the last two units and here they are:


The 33rd Ligne





And the 9th Legere




At times this work has been a bit of a chore at times, not as enjoyable as painting "new" units from scratch, but in many ways it was worthwhile and rewarding for me in a different way.  Restoring these "old campaigners", every unit of which is real quality, felt like I was bringing back to life work that was worth maintaining, and with a little bit of TLC bringing them back to their full glory after so many years of hard action.

I now have a very solid core collection, consistanly based and of a very high standard. I'm delighted with them.

One thing I have been trying to do as I worked through these units, was to paint the odd "new" thing as I went along. In that regard, here is the latest command base addition. A French General of Division, with an escort of two elite company dragoons from the 24th regt. The General is a Willie figure, the dragoons, are old Hinchliffe figures, with heads swapped for a couple of bicorne ones that I had in the spares box.





5 comments:

DaveD said...

A wonderful job done there John. Great to see the old hand painted flag by Doug M as well

Tim Mayer said...

I impressive paint job. Must have taken you hours to do each one.

Chris said...

Lovely. Great to see them with their finish restored and the muskets and bayonets straight! How did you repair broken muskets? Soldering iron?

The general is wonderful -- isn't he a Connoisseur figure of Marshal Soult?

Cheers,
Chris

John D said...

Chris,

He might be, dug him, out of the spares pile, looked like a Willie figure to me as I have a few of them in there, but you could be right.

The repairs were done using a soldering iron (and thanks to Dave for some tips on how to best use that)

Cheers

John

Old School ACW said...

John, as they say - You da man.

Greg