HONVED GUNNERS: WORK IN PROGRESS UPDATE...ALMOST DONE

Hungarian Gunners, waiting for the last steps

Harken back with me, dear readers, to my earlier post of 28 January ,when I first reported on my latest conversion project, the Hungarian/Honved artillery, estimating that it would be the work of a week--fond, silly, man! Well, here I am, nearly one month later, and I can report that...well, if they aren't done, they are nearly done. As usual, you may clix pix for Big Pix.

By way of comparison to the source figures, in the above you can see the converted Hungarians next their counterpart Austrians (all Northstar 1866 Austrian Artillery Figs). Headgear modification aside, the major work involved free-handing the Hungarian loops and knots and such. To make the red stand out against the brown, I found that I needed to once again resort to black lining--my method, if anyone wishes to replicate it, was to first paint in the details in black, a bit larger than I estimated them to be, and then do the red over the black.

Above, "Red Cap"artillerists next to their blue-kepied comrades. Still to go is a coat of flat varnish, which I shan't be able to do until tomorrow--a word to those who may wish to try enamels. You need to let them season for at least 24 hours before taking that varnish step. Otherwise the flat varnish will take the paint up in places and in others will make it run (I learned this the hard way: once and once only!). After the varnish, there will be a bit more cleaning up of stray marks and such, and then comes the mounting. I'm looking forward to seeing the Hungarian candy-striped guns and these figures together on the same stand--I doubt that anyone will be mistaking them for their Austrian cousins! Barring another back problem (which did keep me out of action for at least ten days), I should be posting the finished product in a few days (fingers crossed!).