Sunday, September 6, 2009

Tricornes and Laurel and Hardy

I had been looking for a dvd replacement for my vcr tape of Bonnie Scotland, one of my favorite Laurel and Hardy movies. An excellent comedy and parody of Colonial movies of the Northwest frontier. I found a dvd set that had that movie (as well as extras I haven't looked at yet), plus another movie called The Devil's Brother, which I had not seen before. I watched The Devil's Brother this afternoon. It's based on a light opera called Fra Diavolo, and is about a bandit in northern Italy in the tricorne era. There are some great Laurel and Hardy comedy bits, as well as the main story about the bandit, and soldiers in tricornes. Black and white, of course, so not much chance of getting uniform color ideas. ha ha

I have been playing around with ideas to rebase my cavalry. I had been using large fender washers, but to get a large enough base to fit the length the width is wider than it needs to be. I experimented with a few options until I hit on an idea to glue 2 of the same washers I use for my infantry figures to a piece of plasticard. It's fairly thin card, so it's easy to cut with scissors. So after gluing 2 washers to the plastic I cut the sides straight with a razor saw (makes it easy to keep the cut straight, just push the saw blade right up against the 2 washers) and then use scissors to cut around the curve of the washers on the ends, ending up with an oblong base. I then sand off the rough edges. I can fairly quickly crank out several bases with a consistent size. With the washers they will stick to the magnetic movement trays. So I'll be rebasing my cavalry in the next few days or so. Command figures will probably still go on the large fender washers, which also helps them stand out from the rank and file cavalry on oblong bases.

Edited: On the left you see the washers glued to the black plasticcard. In the center, how it looks after trimming and adding a horse. On the right is a cavalry figure mounted on one of the fender washers I had been using. As you can see, the new basing gives me more length for the figures, while taking up less width. This gives me uniform bases with enough length for the Foundry horses most of my cavalry figures are riding (some have short bases, some long, depending on their stance)

I have been using greenstuff to fix the minis to the bases, washer side up, but there's no reason you couldn't glue it the other way around. The greenstuff isn't necessary for this, but I like to use it to hide the join between the bases and the mini's own base. For this I use old greenstuff that is getting old and a bit lumpy and not as useful for finer sculpting (I don't sculpt often so I end up with plenty of greenstuff like this for these purposes).
Of course, you could glue the minis to the bases and use whatever base-enhancing techniques you like.

1 comment:

Bluebear Jeff said...

I've used two smaller washers underneath a mounted figure (giving a semi-figure-eight look to the bases) . . . but your idea makes better sense. So, yes, I'd like to see some photos.


-- Jeff