English Civil War - Cavalry charge!

[Peter Gillson]

Tim - It was a Bill Horan book.
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This was what I had remembered. He says that of the 12 hooves of the 4 horses only 2 are pinned to the ground.
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Bill Horan's work is quite simply awe inspiring.

Sorry Peter to have slightly hijacked your thread with old memories :rolling:

A great book - truly an inspiration. i will be happy if my attempt is half a good.

[Peter Gillson]

Thanks for the support guys.

Using Magic sculp I have made basic saddles for each of the horses:


i have kept them fairly basic becasue for most of them the buff coats will cover the saddle. However I decided to make a full saddle for my test horse:

so that I do not get the saddles mixed up, and help keep them fitting nicely each of the horses had a notch cut out of their back, the saddle has a matching shape of putty:


at this stage there is not a lot more I can do to the horse so on to the figures a couple of foot figures from Prieser Adam figures, one is the pike man from the Castle Miniatures set, the rest from Airfix:


here is a photo of something i made a few years ago to help with getting scratch built figures the "correct" scale size. since people are different heights I will allow =/- a mm or so but this does help, and being laminated its easy to get putty off it!


Now the real fun starts.

Peter

[Jim R]

Nice looking saddles Peter. The notches for identification is clever. At this early stage it's hard to see the figures as dynamic riders.
A most enjoyable thread.

[Neil Merryweather]

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Excellent idea. I did the same thing for myself years ago when I was making 90mm masters for Hussar Military Miniatures.
Loving this Peter. Have you bought the Preiser figures recently? They were as rare as hen's teeth the last time I was looking for them.

[Peter Gillson]

Excellent idea. I did the same thing for myself years ago when I was making 90mm masters for Hussar Military Miniatures.
Loving this Peter. Have you bought the Preiser figures recently? They were as rare as hen's teeth the last time I was looking for them.

The Preiser figures are yonks old. not sure what is going on with Preiser, their stuff seems to be getting difficult to find. About a year ago I w]saw some great 1/72 D-Day US soldiers but they have yet to be released. Shame, because they are a good quality.

[Peter Gillson]

Hi guys

i've done a little more on the figures but most effort has been on the saddles. Most of the saddles will be covered by the riders' buff coats but it is worth lsculpting the basic saddles since it will help with both the sit of the figures and getting the coats for fall correctly.

A couple are quite detailed since they will be seen - the one where the rider is falling off and one where the rider is leaning far forwards.

[Peter Gillson]

Houston we have a problem!

as I started to work on the figures i found a problem which you can see from the photo:


The castle Miniatures figures is a big 54mm figures - closer to 60mmrather than 54mm. This is irritating but not critical - I will have to sculpt 3 foot figures; which is not too bad since I am sculpting 6 or 7 figures already but whole idea behind this was to find a project for those figures.

Oh well back they go into the Stash and on with the sculpting.

[Peter Gillson]

It may be tempting fate but we seem to be ahead of ourselves with the Christmas planning so a little modeling time this afternoon - refining the details on the horses:

I am focussing on two aspects of the horses heads - the fist is to drill a hole through the sides of the mouth and inserting a length of plastic rod -it will be cut to length in due course - which will act as a post to fix the two part of the horses bit onto. I cannot recall where i got this tip from but it makes fitting the bit a lot easier as well as providing a more secure fixing. The challenging part is grilling the hole squarely through the mouth to avoid a cock-sided bit.



the second jot is to refine or replace the buckles on the harness. most are fine but on some horse Ii have remade the bridles or the detail is a bit fuzzy. For this I have made three little tools from some scrap brass. The third is an inbetween size and on the other end of the small one.



These can be pressed into putty to form the inner part of the buckle, forming both the inner part of the buckle itself and the leather strap, when semi-set, the putty is trimmed to form the buckle. Here is a photo of the three indentations in some putty:


i have found that cutting the semi-cured putty gives a nice, sharp cut and will slightly close the gap between the 'leather' in the buckle and the putty which forms the buckle..

Peter

[Peter Gillson]

Sorry about the poor photos - here is an update:

the mounted figures and horses are all about 90% sculpted. The tails and bits will be added to the horses later, just before painting to reduce the risk of them being broken off. Regardi the figures; they needs some refining and general tidying up, but I am going to pit the, aside for a couple of weeks so that when I do review them it will be with 'fresh eyes'.

before I start to sculpt the foot figures I think I will do something completely different - probably a universal carrier, WASP IIC

peter

[Airborne01]

Totally intrigued by this Peter!
Steve

[Peter Gillson]

Steve - it come together when the 4 or 5 musketeers are sculpted (hopefully)!

[Neil Merryweather]

That's brilliant Peter! Great to see someone else doing figures on this forum!
Any chance of some individual shots before you take your mini break??

[Jim R]

Totally intrigued by this Peter!

Oh yes, me too.

[Graeme C.]

Plenty of action in those figures already, I'm very impressed.

[Peter Gillson]

I couldn't resist having a think about this - something about the composition has been niggling me; it just didn't seem right. I think 'i have realised what it is.

ECW cavalry tended to charge close together in a line, or a series of lines, so that on the whole they reach the enemy at the same time. This means that if one horse falls while they are galloping then by the time the falling horse actually hits the ground the surrounding horse will have overtaken it. Therefore in my composition the horse which are still running should be further forward.

i'm going to make a slight change by having a horse having jumped over the fallen horse and landing in front of it. At this stage I'm not sure if it will be an additional horse or replace one of the existing horses.

searching the web I found this reference photo:



the website 'Horses inside out is a great reference we site. Brilliant Idea painting the skeleton on the horse then photographing it - simple but great idea.

these are the Historex parts I will use - the front legs are left-overs from producing some of the other horses:; serious surgery will be needed.


Peter