A Miserable Business

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Who enjoys re-basing miniatures?  You do?!  Get out, ya' weirdo!

Seriously, it must rank universally lowly on hobbyists ladder of preferred activities.  I've always found re-basing miniatures to be an awful job.  And the project to reanimate two tired old ancients armies I'd hung on to is absolutely a case in point.

If it wasn't for the lock-down I doubt I would have got round to this job, and it is still a long way from finished, but the absolute worst part of the task is past now:

    

Five file boxes in total, 59 bases if I remember correctly.  Some four hours of jabbing a paintbrush covered in PVA into every orifice, attempting to cover as much of the old flock as possible.  On the face of it it didn't take that long, but it isn't the sort of job one enjoys, although there is plenty of satisfaction to finishing it.

Of course there's a fair bit of work to go yet.

Tatty lads

It should be obvious in the image above that some of these chaps need some TLC.  Whilst the Revell, HaT and Italieri sculpts in the armies are in reasonable condition, the Airfix models look pretty sad.  They are thin and glossy plastic of a very old formulation, and hold paint very badly.  All these figures are painted in Enamel (with no undercoat either - it was when I was very new to painting!), and it simply hasn't survived the flexing.  Something acrylic paint should be better at, so long as it adheres!

Whilst I am not going to do a full repaint, I will fix up the weapons, helmets and limbs that seem to have suffered the worst.  The big unit bases will make it impossible to get to everything, but they should also hide some of the sins, especially after the subsequent stages I intend, and offer more protection in handling.

That's all for now.

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