Dragoon Conversion

Minden Jager turned into a dragoon officer, with RSM standing horse tied to an Irregular Miniatures rustic fence post.

I have been looking at the Minden Prussian jager standing firing and have decided that he would be a suitable candidate for a conversion project. I envisioned cutting out the jager's rifle and substituting a spyglass or telescope and turning him into a dragoon officer on recon.

The jager/dragoon conversion was fairly simple to do. At first, I tried to just cut out the rifle and use both arms/hands. Sometimes you can make a good conversion by simply bending arms and heads and doing some minor cutting under the arm pit or at the elbows. But in this case, it was apparent to me that the bend in the right arm would be unnatural. So I decided on an amputation.

Once I sawed off the right arm, I filed the stub flat and then drilled a hole in the shoulder socket. Here I cut off a pin to 12mm, the same length as the now discarded arm, and glued it into the hole. Once the glue dried, then I applied a sausage roll of green epoxy putty and shaped the arm until it looked about right. Then a small flat piece of putty was rolled out to create the cuff of the gauntlet and the right hand. This worked out much better than the hand conversion that I attempted on Marshal Schwerin last week.

RSM horse with epoxy putty horse furniture added.

I used the standing horse from the RSM range to create a saddled horse that I could use in the vignette. I filed off the reins and drilled a hole into the muzzle so that I could replace the reins with wire reins for a more realistic look. Since the horse comes without a saddle (I wish that someone would make saddles with shabraque accessories for the 18th century to use on this type of project) I had to make my own shabraque and saddle out of green stuff. I'm not entirely happy with the result of the horse furniture -- it looks a little lumpy and lacks sharp definition, but it will probably look all right after it is painted. I could have used one of the Mirliton saddles, but I didn't have any left. That would be a better choice if I want to do a line of four or five horses tied to a hitching post.

A view of the original jager figure (left) and the conversion figure (right) for comparison.

I finished the sculpting last night around midnight so I am going to let it cure all day tuesday, before priming the figures on Wednesday night and then painting them on Thursday.

I am still deciding whether I should use one of the Minden horse holder figures to hold the officer's horse, or dispense with the extra foot figure and tie the reins to the Irregular rustic fence. Or, I could add one of the RSM officers pointing and perhaps directing the attention of the dragoon with the spyglass to something that he has spotted.

Artillery Hoist Is Completed

A front view of all three artillery park vignettes after completing the static grass phase of the basing process. On the left, a Minden Prussian dragoon officer has been converted into an infantry officer. All I did was file off the aigulette on his right shoulder. He is slightly different from the mounted colonel in that his right arm is bent and his hand is in a jaunty pose, resting on his hip.

Note: click the pictures to enlarge the view. Double click for a really large picture.

I completed the final phase of the artillery hoist vignette that you saw yesterday. All that I had to do was to affix the static grass onto the base with Elmer's White Glue (pva glue in the UK) and then it was ready for its photoshoot. In the picture above, you can see how all three artillery vignettes fit together and complement one another.


A view of the model during its construction.

In the picture above, you can see the hoist frame during its construction phase. The legs are made from bass wood (1/8 inch square) cut to 2.5 inches in length. A spare offcut from a North Star flag pole was used to provide the connecting rod at the top of the A-frame and similar pieces were used to make the turning handles on the lower axle. The lower axle is a piece of dowel rod. I used wooden bead sleeves to act as a sort of washer at the ends of the lower axle. Since these were made from wood, it was easy to drill four holes in the bead to accomodate the turning handles. Florists' wire was used for the rope on the block and tackle suspended from the top of the hoist.


Left side view of the hoist vignette. The officer in the blue coat is from RSM. I clipped off the lapels on the figure since Prussian artillerists did not wear lapels. Note the coiled rope on the ground running from the hand of the labourer in the foreground. The rope was made by twisting two pieces of florists' wire together.


The view of the front of the model.


A view of the right hand side of the vignette.


Another view of the complete artillery park and a long view of how it fits with the rest of the Minden Miniatures Prussian army. Supply wagons are now in the painting que.

The will be it for the vignettes for the rest of this week, unless something strikes my fancy and I embark on some new project that catches my eye. I was working on the second battalion of Itzenplitz (IR13) this evening and I want to finish it this week. So after Itzenplitz is completed, I may work on some more vignettes. I am almost out of Minden labourer figures to use in these projects, but never fear, a new package of inventory is winging its way across the ocean, even as you read this post.

By the way, I am very close to surpassing my 200,000th visitor and we should pass that milestone sometime this week. Click on the little Sitemeter logo at the bottom of this page to see how many visitors have passed through. You can also click on the map inside Sitemeter to see where other readers of this blog come from. It's kind of a cool thing to see.

Oh, and keep the comments coming -- I love to read the feedback. There is no telling what might come next as I build on and expand this wonderful Minden Project.

Update
A big fat box of miniatures arrived this evening chock full of Minden figures including Prussian fusiliers, Austrian grenadiers and labourers for vignettes. I've got my work cut out for me now. Kudos to Frank on the super fast service. I am looking at some of the Prussian fusilier NCOs and I see pioneers holding their tools in their hands. I was going to lop off heads and do some swaps, but the NCO figure for the fusiliers is a ready made pioneer in mitre hat.

Update II - Monday Night
This evening, after watching the Blackhawks vs. Canucks Stanley Cup Hockey game, I went down to the basement and started converting the Prussian jager standing firing into an officer holding a telescope.

I cut out the rifle and kept the left arm and hand that held the rifle. This would eventually hold the telescope. Then I had to amputate his right arm at the shoulder - I tried but I couldn't save it and use it by bending the arm into position. I measured out the length of the old arm at about 11-12mm and cut a piece of wire the same length.

Then, after drilling a hole in the shoulder socket, I glued the wire armature into the shoulder and started applying green epoxy putty to form the arm. The hand is much better on this model. I seemed to learn a thing or two from my last arm conversion. Then, as an afterthought, I decided to remove the jager belly box and turn the figure into a dragoon instead of a jager officer. So I filed away the belly box and covered up the scratchings with a new officer's sash around the waist. It looks fairly decent. The telescope was just a piece of brass with some putty building up the end of the spyglass.

Then I got really crazy and decided to make a dragoon shabraque and saddle set for a standing RSM horse. The idea is that this will be the officer's horse as he will be dismounted. I may add a horse holder to the stand using one of the existing Minden generic horse holders, or I could just have the horse and the officer on the vignette stand. I will decide on that later.

It will probably take a couple days for the epoxy putty to cure, so I will prime the figures on Wednesday and start painting on Thursday, if all goes well. Preliminary basing on Friday and then I can finish off the base and shoot some pictures on Saturday May 8th. Stay tuned for that.

The Die Hard Dragoon

Reiter Christoph Steiner makes his last stand after losing his mount, determined to take a few Austrians with him. Minden Prussian jager painted as a Prussian dragoon, Minden generic casualty figure painted as an Austrian, Foundry or Perry dead horse, and RSM sword.

Here is another vignette that I added to my collection this weekend. This was was relatively easy to do and required only a minimum amount of conversion work. I already had the horse casualty (which comes from either Perry or Foundry - I forget which one) and the Minden generic casualty, and when I saw the dead horse figure, I immediately began to envision a dragoon firing his last rounds of ammunition from his carbine.

I used the Minden Prussian jager figure for the dragoon. The conversion work consisted of cutting off the cartridge box on the jager's belly and making a new dragoon cartridge box from epoxy putty. The belting was made from a spaghetti string of putty, which I placed over the shoulder and then flattened out with the eraser end of a pencil. The rectangular box was easy to fashion out of putty. I also cut off the hilt of the sword that the jager was wearing.

I envisioned Reiter Steiner being a bit ticked off over losing his horse, so he has unsheathed his sword and has jammed it into the ground in defiance. Then he crouches behind his dead mount and fires his last few rounds at the on-coming Austrians. You can see one of his victims, dead, in the foreground. Reiter Steiner intends to die hard and take as many Austrians down as he can before they finish him off.

Artillery Vignette Preview


Prussian artillery crew removing a gun barrel from its carriage for some repair work. I will ink the gravel tomorrow morning, after the spackle terrain has dried, and then apply the static grass to complete the base.

I spent a good part of friday evening and saturday night constructing and painting the latest vignette addition to my artillery park. This is a vignette of the Prussian artillery crew using a hoist to remove the cannon barrel from the gun carriage for some type of repair work. Since a gun barrel could weigh anything from 700 pounds on up to 1,500 pounds, this was no easy task to remove the barrel.


A side view of the vignette.

I will post some pictures of the completed artillery vignette tomorrow after I complete the base work. The spackle on the ground needs to dry for a couple of hours. After that, I will cover the ground with brown ink, leaving a few exposed areas of gravel un-inked, for contrast. Then, after a quick dry brushing of some tan paint, I will apply the final touch of the static grass and then the model will be ready for some "show and tell" photography.

This model was a bit fiddly to figure out and construct, but now that I have done one, it probably would not take me as much time to build another one. I will tell more of the construction story when I post the finished pictures tomorrow.

Broken Wheel Vignette

General von Winterfeldt supervises the replacement of a wheel on an RSM 12-pounder. Minden Miniatures "labourers" provide the muscle power. Click all pix to enlarge the view.


Minden labourers change a broken artillery wheel on a 12 pounder (RSM gun).

I finished off another Minden/RSM artillery vignette yesterday, as I continue to be inspired to find new ways to utilize the labourer figures in their waistcoats. The idea came from the Osprey book "Artillery Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars" which depicts a similar scene in that era. I simply cut a couple lengths of brass rod (North Star metal spears) and glued them into the hands of two figures to provide me with a couple of men using levers to hold up the gun carriage while the broken wheel is being removed.

Two other labourers are shown rolling the new wheel, probably taken from a nearby limber, into position so that it can be fitted onto the axle. A Prussian jager officer has been painted as a Prussian artillery officer (with his sword arm bent lower) to offer some supervision to the effort. And finally, I used one of the Minden wagon drivers as a spare crewman sitting on an ammo box watching the wheel replacement.

Reverse side view showing the two men rolling up the new wheel to place it on the axle. Two other crewmen use their levers to hold up the gun carriage while the spare is put on the axle.



I've now added an RSM limber team to line up with the repaired gun. This gives you an idea of how well everything fits together. Eventually, I will paint new limbers for the RSM project and make the stands with all the same widths.

It all looks rather splendid when the vignette is placed "in situ" on the wargame table (see picture above). I plan to paint a new limber team on a similar base to complete the vignette. This particular limber is used in my BAR (Batailles de l'Ancien Regime) Prussian army. My Minden armies will have their own limber teams.

Update - Tuesday Morning - Preview

Now that I am getting more adept at using my pin vise, wires and putty, I think that my next generation of limber teams will have horses with small pins drilled into the harness (on the side of the horse's body) so that I can actually string some wire (depicting reins) connecting the limber trail to the horse harness.

This morning I have added a picture of the Prussian artillery park to give you a taster of what is to come from the workbench of Atelier Fritz. I've got a lot more ideas percolating inside my head and I can't wait to bring them to life.

Here is a picture of my growing artillery park for the Minden Prussian army. I like the way that the basing on the stands really brings everything together. You really begin to get a sense of the movement and activity in the battery once you put all of the pieces together.

The inspiration for this comes from Barry Hilton's League of Augsburg site featuring his French Napoleonic artillery park. The two RSM guns are on the right, and two Berlin Zinnfiguren 12 pounders are on the left (unfinished bases). RSM limbers are behind the guns as well as a scratch built supply wagon that Ed Philips made from bass wood, Old Glory artillery wheels and assorted bits and pieces.

Marshal Schwerin

Marshal Schwerin and his dog Otto. (click pix to enlarge).

I finished painting my conversion of the RSM Prussian general on Friday and got the basing completed yesterday. As you may recall from my report of the other day, I had lopped off the right arm of the figure and manufactured a new arm with green stuff and a wire armature. I wanted to turn the stand into a little vignette, so I added one of the dogs from the Eureka set of Frederick the Great playing his flute. The hound seemed to be about the right size in proportion to the RSM figure. I glued the dog onto a rock, and then filled in the base with epoxy putty, then painted both the dog and the rock. It seems a bit like hauling coals to Newcastle to paint a rock, but it was necessary to hide the putty and blend the dog's base in with the rock.

Comparative picture of the RSM Prussian general as if (left) and with the conversion (centre) as well as the dragoon vignette (RSM horses and Minden Prussians)

Pictured above, you can compare the original RSM Prussian general to the converted model and see the difference. The foot figures are all from the Minden range of Prussians, so you can see how compatible the two ranges are.

Little Wars Convention

I spent the past couple of days at the Little Wars Convention in Lincolnshire, a suburb of Chicago. On Friday night, I was part of the War College panel of wargamers discussing how to put a good convention scenario together. We had a good informal conversion with about a dozen interested bystanders and I may put together a separate post at a future date and go through the main elements of convention wargame scenarios.

I did a fair amount of shopping too and came home with some nice goodies. I found a vendor who was carrying the complete range of Ral Partha/IWM paints and scooped up about three bottles each of black (they make the best black paint in the world, bar none), white, red, dark blue, brown and dun. Rich Smethurst, who used to own Ral Partha, is now carrying the old line of paints again, which is terrific news. The Partha paints always had a little bit more plastic or acrylic like substance in them which made the finishes more durable and they seemed to provide better coverage than any other paint that I have used. I don't have my notes with me right now, but I will post an address for contacting Rich if you are interested in these excellent paints.

I found a miniatures company called Tiger Miniatures that makes 19th Century Colonial figures in a sort of Perry style. I picked up a couple dozen German Seebattalion figures to represent Hesse Seewald in the 19th Century, in our upcoming Mafrica Campaign. I also bought some US Marines to augment my force of Redoubt Marines as well as what turned out to be Canadian Mounties, which I will use as mounted command for my Marines. I talked Bill Protz into buying some of the Bulgarians, who were kitted out like Russians. Now Bill can have a Russian adversary serving as military advisor to the Khan in Tranjipour. Bill also bought a small escort of mounted and foot Bulgarians, again these looked like Russians.

On Saturday, Bill, Randy and I ran a BAR version of Fontenoy, in 1745. Once again, the French defeated the British army.This time, however, the French trounced the British very badly. In fact both wings of the French army were enveloping the British center by the end of the game. It was a good game, but a very one sided victory for the French. I will post more pictures later in the week.


Bill Protz oversees the defense of the town of Fontenoy. The buildings were all made by Herb Gundt, hedges by K&M and I have no idea who makes the gabions.

RSM Conversion

No, the only RSM figures in this picture are the limber/limber horse/rider and the heavy gun model. However, the pictures that I took are not good enough to show in the headline, so I put this one in instead. A good picture is worth a second look. See the RSM pictures below.

Last night before going to bed (around 1 AM), I got a bee in my bonnet to start working on a conversion of the RSM Prussian general to command my Minden Prussian army. I assume that eventually Frank is going to have some generals and maybe even (hope of hopes) his Royal Nibs Himself. But I digress. Since I can hardly wait for the Minden generals to eventually arrive, I thought that I would try a conversion by cutting off the right arm of the general, replacing it with a raised arm, and building up the new arm with epoxy putty. My feeble efforts are shown below.

The conversion is on the left and the original figure is shown on the right for comparison. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

I used an Exacto fine saw to amputate the figure's right army. I then filed the stub flat and drilled a hole in the shoulder socket to insert a piece of wire. The wire was trimmed to about 12mm, the same length as the original RSM arm. This became the armature around which I would add the green stuff. Once the glue was dry, it was a simple matter of rolling out a small sausage lump of putty and kneading it around the armature. Then I shaved off the extra bits and formed the arm, adding a little built up putty at the wrist to depict the gaunlet glove. Finally, I had to nudge and work the putty to try and form a hand, which was not easy. I had plenty of extra putty, so I rolled out some spaghetti strands and wrapped them around the waist to make the officer's sash. Another little loop became the cravatte on the tail of the horse. Relatively simple stuff, I guess.

Rear view showing more of the arm, plus a waist sash worn outside the coat, as Frederick did, an enhanced pigtail so that it is more noticeable, and a cravatte on the horse's tail.


A side view of the before and after figures.

I think that the arm will be OK, but I was having trouble shaping the gauntlet glove, which you really can't tell from these pictures. Hopefully, once the figure is painted, the paint will hide the worst traits and bring out the best. I was going to make this a Frederick figure, but after finishing I realized that Frederick is often shown with his lapels closed, whereas I retained the orginal lapels on the figure. This did not give me any space in which to add a Pour le Merite (see, he's not the only one missing one, if you catch my drift) on his chest. So I think that this will become Marshal Schwerin and I will add an ensign on foot carrying the regimental colour of IR24 Schwerin and put him on the base with the Marshal. For some reason, I have about six extra IR24 flags from GMB, so I might as well put one of them to good use on the command stand.

I will prime the figure tonight and hopefully start painting him tomorrow. We shall see how he turns out. I have no ambition to ever be a figure sculptor and even with my small little conversion, I can see how difficult it is to create the fine details that we take for granted on the figures that we all purchase. Kudos to every professional sculptor for a job well done.

Update on the Conversion
Tuesday evening I primed the general figure and started painting him. He is looking good so far. I wish that I had added a Pour le Merite sash across his shoulders, but at the time I was not thinking of him in terms of being a Marshal. I should have him finished tomorrow night, but the basing will have to wait until I can find another figure or two to add to the command stand vignette. Hmm, maybe a sign post on top of a cairn marker or something like that.

Joe versus the Volcano
It has occurred to me that the recent eruption of the volcano in Iceland, whose name I can't spell, much less even attempt to pronounce, is going to disrupt even more than air travel. If the airplanes are not flying, then neither are the packages that go back and forth between Britain and the United States. That means no Battlegames magazines or Minden Miniatures or books from Caliver or Ken Trotman. Oh my goodness, we are all doomed!

OK Fritz, take a deep breath and relax. Every figure company on the island of Britain is going to be at Salute next week and so they will be too busy to take and ship orders anyway. Plus, you are going to be running your Fontenoy game at Little Wars next saturday. And finally, you still have plenty of Mindens to paint before you even come close to running out of lead inventory to paint. Off the top of my head, I have one Prussian grenadier battalion and a cuirassier and dragoon regiment left to paint. I have two Austrian infantry battalions, one Croat battalion, and a regiment of cuirassiers and some artillery crews for the Austrian army. That's about four or five months of painting that I can do before I run out of Mindens to paint. I would imagine that the air will clear up in that time span and airmail delivery will continue once again.

Actually, I'm not really in a panic, I just wanted people to consider that there are other things impacted besides passenger airline travel all due to the volcano in Iceland.

Dragoon Bivouac Vignette

Two Bayreuth Dragoons (DR5) on piquet duty. Click the pictures to enlarge.

I bet that you did not know that Minden Miniatures makes dismounted Prussian dragoons for the Seven Years War, did you? I would bet that Frank does not know it either. Well, they don't make dismounted dragoons, but when I was looking at some of the Prussian jager figures, I found one pose in which the hands and rifle cover up the belly box for cartridges. Everything else looked like dragoon equipment to me, from cavalry boots to aigulettes on the shoulder. All it would take to convert the jager to a dragoon was to paint it light blue, instead of dark green.

My previous general vignette, plus a Minden casualty figure on round base, and the dragoon vignette are all tied together by a common basing and terraining system.

Following up on my idea of using the Minden wagon drovers as soldiers sitting around the campfire, I decided to take one of the drovers, wearing a tricorn, add an RSM banded musket, and voila! I had a seated dragoon as well. And after cutting off the reins for the general vignette, I was now an old hand at converting horses with reins to horses without reins, and thus I hit on the idea of depicting a dragoon horse tied to his grazing stake while his owner was taking a short rest from the war.

I had some extra saddles and shabraques from a Mirliton Miniatures of Italy Napoleon Russian cuirassier. Fortunately, both shabraques are squared off instead of having rounded edges. So this was a near perfect fit for a Prussian dragoon shabraque. I filed down the underside of the saddle with a rat tail file and fitted it on top of a wooden hitching post that I made from a wooden fondue stick (you can buy these at the grocery store). I also drilled small holes in the bottom of each post, where it would attach to the base, so that I could insert some metal pins to make the hitching posts more secure when I glued it to the base. The piquet stake that the horse is tied out to is simply a spare piece of metal rod (formerly a North Star spear) that I had in my spare bits box. The rope is made from two pieces of florists' wire that I twisted together to make it look like rope.

So now all of the elements came together: RSM standing horse, Minden jager painted as a dragoon, and a Minden drover painted as a dragoon. The accessories included an RSM banded musket for the seated dragoon, and a Mirliton saddle from their Napoleonic range of figures. For a final touch, I built a little fire with bits of twigs and surrounded the fire pit with some Gale Force Nine rough talus rocks.

I really liked the way that this vignette turned out. I can place the stand somewhere on the table for reconnaissance duty where it won't get in the way of the game. The hitching post for the saddle has given me some ideas on a larger cavalry vignette that I would like to try one day. I can envision a hitching post with about four saddled (made of paper and putty) or unsaddled horses. There might be a water trough or else some of the Minden pioneer figures could be moderately converted to be carrying buckets of water (bucket from the Minden artillery tools sprue), or shoveling hay or manure or maybe even combing out the horse with a brush.



A picture of the completed artillery crew vignette after application of the static grass.

I wanted to post a picture of the artillery dragmen "en bricole" showing how the model looks after the static grass and dark ink have been added to the base. The previous day's pictures only showed the base with uninked gravel. The final basing really shows off the model to good effect and demonstrates how elegant these Minden Miniatures really are. Nothing else on the market looks quite as good as a well painted Minden. I mean Holy Cow! Those guys look so real.


Bring out your dead! Perry AWI Hessian casualties on the top row and Minden casualties on the bottom row, shown for comparison.

I decided to go with the one inch round bases for my casualty figures. The round base gives me more room to enhance the base with extra tall grass (bits of sisal scrub brush), rocks, hats, drums or what have you. So save all of those bits and pieces that you clip off of other models and save them in your bits box. You never know when they will come in handy.

For my next conversion project, I plan on taking an RSM Prussian general and cutting off his right arm so that I can make a new arm that is pointing off into the horizon. Since his new arm will be pointing off at a forty-five degree angle, it was also necessary to twist the figure's head off to its right so that it is looking in the same direction that it is pointing. I sawed off the arm this evening and drilled out a new hole in the arm. Then I clipped off a piece of an old North Star spear to 12mm, bent the piece in the middle to show where the elbow will be, and then I glued the wire armature onto the body. Once the glue dries, I will attempt to build a new arm and hand with green epoxy putty. This is my first attempt at a major figure conversion such as this. Hopefully, the sculpting part will work out OK and then I can paint the figure and get it based. Wish me luck!


It is 1:00 AM on Monday morning and I finished my general conversion. The arm was relatively easy, but shaping and sculpting the hand was a problem for me. I finally got the glove hand to be "good enough" and called it quits. Since I had plenty of green stuff left over, I also made an officers sash around his waist outside the coat, added a bow to the horse's tail, and enhanced the general's pig tail a little bit. I will have to let the putty dry for a day or two before priming it and painting it. I'm looking forward to seeing how the figure looks when it is painted. Off to bed now!