Tuesday, July 6, 2010

ACW Commission: Union Dismounted Cavalry Finished

I had a bit of a setback this week. After I sprayed the Union cavalry with enamel black paint, the paint clouded up. I thought I could paint the figures with some acrylic black to hide the cloudiness, but the bottom halves of the figures were grainy, and the grainy paint obscured some detail. I had never had this happen before.

I decided to clean up the figures and start again. I soaked all 30 dismounted and 20 mounted figures in Simple Green for two days, then spent another two days scrubbing the paint off with an old toothbrush. With a new can of paint, I primed the figures again, and this time the paint was good.

So I ended up going five days into the hole on these figures. I managed to make good time in painting them, though, finishing in four days.

The figures are a mix of Wargames Foundry, Perry Miniatures, and Sash and Saber.







Next up are the re-primed mounted Union cavalry.

8 comments:

  1. Good save. Take some consolation that it could have been worse. I had a unit of 30 landsknechts that I painted up and after spending 60+ hours on them the flat lacquer that I sprayed on to protect them clouded up and ruined them. Dropping those in the stripper REALLY hurt.

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  2. Ouch. I haven't had that happen yet. It probably helps that we have such low humidity here.

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  3. Hi Scott,

    These look great! Thank you for taking the extra time.

    Question: I can't see the backs: are there any yellow highlights on the back of the shell jackets?

    Does it make sense for any of the cavalry to have a yellow stripe on the side of their trousers?

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  4. Glenn, where the jackets had pronounced trim sculpted on the back, I went ahead and painted it.

    I painted the yellow stripes on the trousers where it was sculpted as well.

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  5. Its enough to make you weep isn't it? Just had a spray lacquer malfunction on my Perry's French dragoons for similarly inexplicable reasons. Fortunately I was able to cut it back and re-do without resorting to stripping it right back - still frustrating as heck though...

    That paint problem must have been awful and doubly so when you loose so many hours of work. But the result you've gotten on the repainted dismounted cav is, as usual, excellent.

    Cheers,
    Doc

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  6. Wow! Scott, you continue to do amazing things. Damn son, I like your work!

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