Camp Delaware: Modeling the 5th U.S.C.T. / 127th O.V.I. in 28mm: Command

 

 

        This is my third unit of 28mm war-gaming miniatures and my first American Civil War subject. I had previously modeled a unit from the 92nd Division -- the Buffalo Soldiers. This was a segregated African American unit from the Second World War. I was really intrigued by the idea of painting a range of skin tones in a single unit. I looked online for different methods of painting skin from the very dark to the light and I amassed a little collection of appropriate paints. When I looked at doing an ACW unit, I realized choosing one from the United States Colored Troops would allow me to practice that skill and get more mileage out of those paints.

    I chose the 5th U.S. Colored Troops because they were raised and trained in Delaware, Ohio. My father grew up in Delaware and I attended the Methodist Theological Seminary there. I had seen a historic marker and the photo above (thank you Wikimedia Commons) many times. I thought it would be a great idea to make a tribute to these unsung hometown heroes. In their brief career (1864-65), they were on several expeditions, manned the trenches at Petersburg, fought in the Battle of the Crater, and attacked Fort Fisher. Four men from the unit received the Medal of Honor for actions at Chaffin's Farm. They certainly have a legacy worth remembering.

Materials

    The next step was to find suitable models for the project. I searched the internet for 28mm African American Union infantry. Apart from some individual figures, there weren't many options. You could take standard Union infantry and simply paint their faces and hands a range of darker tones, but the examples I saw just didn't feel right. At last, I discovered a conversion set of heads for Perry's line of Union Infantry. 

 

    Even a novice like me has heard of Perry. I had hoped that Perry would have an interchangeable head system like some of the Warlord Games products I've tried, but alas it's only an interchangeable hat system. 

 

    So, for each soldier, I'd have to do a little surgery to remove the old head and then glue on a new one. That made me nervous given my limited experience. Part of the joy of hobbying is trying things you aren't quite sure you can do. Sometimes you surprise yourself!

 

    Get a fresh blade for your knife. I studied the replacement heads carefully and noted that they provided good detail from the bottom of the hairline on the back of the neck to the chest just below the chin. That's a bit of a downward angle, so I tried to cut that way on the figure. I scribed each side and then just kept going around and around taking a little more off each side until finally the head came free.

    When they do come free, they seem to want to fly across the room. Try to prevent that so you can compare the old head with the new one. You can then sand the metal head until its connection point resembles that of the plastic head its replacing. I also recommend a light sand on the figure. You don't want to remove too much material, but you do want a smooth surface for your glue. It will be superglue as we're bonding metal to plastic here.  

    I tried to choose an appropriate head for the model. In this case, it's a drummer. I think of ACW drummers as being younger than standard infantry and so I chose the replacement head that had no facial hair and a more boyish look. As I went forward with the rest of the command stand, I compared each existing head with the replacement options and tried to pick one that felt right.

    For the command stand, I wound up doing a commander, a drummer, and two flag-bearers. From my research it seems like there's often a national flag and unit flag. I left the original head on the commander as U.S.C.T. soldiers served under white officers. The other three got the guillotine treatment and nice metal replacements. A good coat of primer is necessary to unify the models. I used Tamiya gray in a rattle can.
 

I based the hands and face on the drummer and one of the flag bearers with Master Bones Ebony Flesh. I used a method I learned from Sonic Sledgehammer in this video. The other flag bearer got a base of Vallejo chocolate brown and was painted using a method I learned from Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy in this video. Finally, I painted the commander using Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy's video.

 

I messed up the Sonic Sledgehammer/Ebony Flesh method by using the wrong highlight. It was too light and when I tried to darken it down, it wound up looking indistinguishable from my chocolate brown variety. That's not a huge problem, but I'd like more range in appearance so I'll have to try and remember the right highlight for next time. It turned out much better in my 92nd Infantry group. 

I then followed Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy's method for painting union soldiers which you can find here. The results weren't bad. I need to base them and I need to make the flags (my first ever), but I think it turned out all right.

    So, this is the command stand. I hope to circle back and start doing some of the infantry soon. In the meantime, I have a backlog of projects to post and some other ones I'm working on now. So, if you're just here for the ACW stuff, check back or subscribe. I'm looking forward to the day when I can put the whole unit on the table and snap a pic. It will be a nice tribute to a group of men who fought against the evil of slavery and a call to arms to fight racism in all its forms today.