February 23, 2020
There hasn’t been a lot of play at the workbench this past week. At the time of my last posting I completed all my British and Portuguese infantry and cavalry and had turned my attention to organizing my British artillery crews and guns in preparation for the next work I would be doing on my Napoleonic Peninsular War project. With those organized I decided I needed a short break from 15mm Napoleonics so I began a small detour project which was the repurposing/modification of a plastic whale for some future 28mm project. I did a similar project several years ago with another whale by the same manufacturer, and I wanted to do something very similar with this one. The only difference between these two whales is the one I just finished has a missing fin, and so I had to do my modification in such a way as to hide that a fin was missing. It actually proved to be a minor problem, and I was able to complete that little detour project by Tuesday.
The big distraction from my play at the workbench this past week and probably in the coming week or two is that my son-in-law broke his ankle rather badly and so my wife and I have been dedicating a lot of time to helping out over there… there will be surgery.
When I did get back to the Napoleonics this past week it was not to paint soldiers, but to paint some terrain… some wall sections by Stonehouse Miniatures that I had forgotten I had.
Here’s a little sidebar about a future project that has grown out of the Hawthorne Village buildings I purchased at the swap meet a few weeks ago. I’ve really grown to like the buildings and hope to find two or three more… I currently have five. Anyway, the project that is developing in my mind is unique in that it will use only HO scale figures. For years I have used O scale and HO scale figures to supplement my 28mm and 15mm collections. This project that I am conjuring up centers on a murder in a non-urban perhaps rural, though not heavily, farming community which is relatively affluent. It won’t involve a lot of figures, vehicles, or structures, and I am liking the idea of doing it with a focus on figures that have never dominated any of my previous collections. It will reflect a period somewhere in the 1950s and 1960s as defined by the cars and trucks that will be involved. I have in hand or on order most of the figures I plan to use… the uniformed police are on order and I’ll probably get another Preiser and a couple more Woodland Scenics packs… they are expensive figures. I think I will buy about 6 to 8 civilian cars, an ambulance, and maybe two or three more trucks. Fortunately, I have a great model trains shop nearby that will fill my needs… might even find some good stuff on their HO bargain tables.
February 16, 2020
The six AB British heavy dragoons arrived from Eureka Miniatures, and I got them painted and based. I also based more trees. I spent a day organizing the next stage of the project which is the British and Portuguese artillery/field and siege. The work is slowing down a little which is usually an indication that I need to take a little break from it, so I’ll start the next week working on a small (not time consuming) project that has absolutely nothing to do with Napoleonic Spain. That should get me ready to dive back in with the British artillery.
February 9, 2020
I painted the second of my two Portuguese cavalry regiments. It was a pretty busy week away from the workbench. I’ll be returning to the second of my two British heavy dragoon regiments in the coming week. That is the one for which I initially purchased only 11 AB figures… not sure what I was thinking. The new AB order of the remaining six figures for that regiment arrived this week so I should have no trouble completing them. When they are done, my British and Portuguese infantry and cavalry will be complete, and I will be turning my attention to artillery.
There was no swap meet for me today because it rained, but yesterday while the sun was shining I picked up three volcanoes at the swap meet. They are identical (thus I took a picture of only one of them… they’re big), plastic, 11 ½” tall x 11” across the base, and they are made by Learning Resources, so probably educational tools of some sort. I didn’t need any more volcanoes. It you look at my Dr. Who gallery, you will see I already have plenty, but at $7 for all three I couldn’t resist. I love volcanoes. I don’t know why, I just do. I didn’t do any work on the volcanoes, so one may ask why I am posting them on the Weekly Workbench. That is a fair question. The answer is that all I did this week was paint a regiment of Portuguese cavalry (13 figures/1 picture) so to liven things up a little, I decided to post a picture of the volcano.
February 2, 2020
This week I completed the last figures for the second of my two British heavy dragoon regiments. I then moved on to the first of my two Portuguese dragoon regiments. The Portuguese infantry proved to be an effective force within Wellington’s army, but the cavalry was not as strong. After years of French occupation of Portugal, the Portuguese army lacked horses and trained cavalry officers. To reflect that weakness, I decided to make my Portuguese cavalry regiments smaller than my British cavalry regiments (13 figures for the Portuguese compared to 17 figures for the British).
At the end of the week I returned to basing more of my Grand Canyon Gem small pines… got about 20 more based. A friend who saw my last workbench posting about the one small tree or bush I posted last week thinks it’s probably a K & M tree, and he’s a guy who knows these things so he’s probably right.
