Assembling the Swedes

Warfare Miniatures GNW Swedes after assembly process.

I assembled 78 Warfare Miniatures GNW Swedes yesterday. Each figure requires a modest amount of assembly, either gluing on a sword & bayonet scabbard or a pole arm or pike. The marching figures' left arm has to be glued onto the torso as well. My plan was to assemble two 30-figure regiments but I had a few marching poses left over so I decided to assemble them as well.

After a little bit of trial and error, I realized that I needed to break out my epoxy putty so that I could stick a tiny bit of green stuff into the cavities for the pegs that hold the scabbard to the torso. I tried a couple figures without the putty and it was difficult getting the metal to metal bond to hold, as the join was a little awkward to me. Putty definitely speeds up the bonding and assembling process, so I would recommend using it for these figures. Then it took me several models before  realizing that one needs to clip off the bayonet flange that sticks out of the combination sword and bayonet frog. Why? Because the bayonet is already cast to the musket and so the little piece of bayonet that sticks out of the scabbord is a duplicate or redundant. So I took a pair of scissors and just snipped off the little piece of metal. That was easy enough, it just took me several figures before I figured it out.

Front view of two regiments plus a partial regiment of 12 figures marching in the third row.

All in all, assembling is an easy, but somewhat tedious project, for these figures but it is something that you need to do. It doesn't dissuade me from buying more figures, but it did take me a couple of hours to do this mass of figures. Tonight, I will give them a quick soaking in rubbing alchohol to remove any mould-removal agent on the metal. Then I will glue the figures to a square of cardboard and once the glue dries, prime the figures with grey primer. I hope to be able to paint some samples over the weekend.

I now have two charging regiments of Swedes and enough leftover marching poses (which I did not use in the two regiments) - 12, to start a third regiment of 30 figures.