127th Ohio/5th USCT -- Part II

 First of the Line

 Recap:

By way of a quick recap, I am working on building and painting a unit of 28mm American Civil War miniatures based on the 5th United States Colored Troops -- a regiment raised and trained in Delaware, Ohio. I am using Perry Miniatures' plastic "American Civil War Union Infantry 1861-1865," set as a base. Perry makes a set of metal replacement heads called, "Black Union heads wearing forage caps," that I am using to give the figures African American features. I'm using a variety of painting techniques for darker skin tones to create a more realistic and varied appearance. You can read about all of that in my first post. Thus far, I have built and painted the command stand (officer, drummer, and two flag-bearers). Now, it's time to tackle the first of the line infantry.

 

 

Me with the completed command stand

Construction:

In the previous edition, I talked about removing the plastic head and about selecting an appropriate replacement. No matter how well you compare the old and new head, no matter how perfectly you cut and sand, you're going to have a bit of a gap. On the table, you might not notice, but it does bother the perfectionist in me. So, what do you do? You fill!

Some materials you can use for filling

To fill the gap, I made a mixture of this Tamiya putty and some Mr. Surfacer 1000. These are both products I use for my other scale models. You can fill gaps in the hull or fuselage, and you can even texture the Mr. Surfacer with a brush to make a mottled cast-metal appearance. In this case, we just need to fill the crack in our subjects' necks. I find that the putty is difficult to work in and the surfacer is too thin to stay put, but when mixed together, they do the trick just right. 

You have to be careful handling these materials. They aren't great for the lungs. Right now I wear a respirator when working with them. In the future, I'm hoping to build a hood and ventilation system. In any case, mix them until you get a thick enough consistency. Then, I use an old brush to apply it to the cracks. Sometimes it takes a couple of coats. There are also sometimes gaps where the arms attach to the body. This is a great fix there as well. When its dry, you can scrape off the excess with a fingernail or the back of a hobby knife.

The gap is gone!

While the figures look much better, they still seem a little messy. You have metal, putty, and plastic. A good primer is a really important step to unify and make sure the paint adheres to all those different textures.

There, now they look much better!

Perry lets you do a couple of different poses. You can have the soldiers advancing with their muskets leveled or with them shouldered. If you build them leveled you have to connect two hands to the musket which adds to complexity. It's also really hard to paint their chests and stomachs as there are two arms and a rifle in the way. I was already putting in extra work with my head replacement process, so I decided to choose the easier route here.

There were five on a sprue, so that's what I built for this batch.

Paiting

While I followed a similar painting method to my last batch, I did make some corrections to the skin tone set. I tried a couple of alternate highlights for the Ebony Flesh base. I also tried a new method. I followed this painting strategy for tan skin from "Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy," but dropped it down a tone. I'll explain in the caption. 

Base of Reaper Bones' Ebony Flesh, highlight of Vallejo German Camouflage Pale Brown, wash of Citadel Druchii Violet

Based with Reaper Bones' Ebony Flesh, highlighted with Vallejo Black Red, wash of Citadel Druchii Violet

Based with Vallejo Beige Brown, wash of Citadel Reikland Flesh Shade, highlighted with mixtures of Vallejo Beige Brown and Brown Sand, ending with pure Brown Sand

I did two soldiers using the Chocolate Brown method from this video on "Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategies."

Finished Batch

 

 

 

 

 

Finished batch with the command stand

The command stand with someone to command!