3mm Oddzial Osmy French Army for Black Powder

[Macunaima]

I finally finished the core of my French force for Black Powder during my few moments of down time at the World Cup.

Here are some fotos. I will try to get some better ones when the weather clears here in Rio.



More here...

http://leadnobleed.blogspot.com.br/2014/07/french-army-for-black-powder-3mm.html

[delta6ct]

Those look great! I have been very tempted to do ACW in 3mm using the OO miniatures.

Mike

[Earther]

Excellent looking army and a great way to introduce yourself! Welcome!

[Fighting15s]

The advice on painting light and bright at this scale should be well heeded. An impressive little project.

[Jeff965]

Lovely looking project, do you paint the figures and then base them, or do you base them all up and paint as a single entity?

[morrigan]

Nice army! I've been tempted by that scale..........

[Jeff965]

Got some ACW figures today just to give it a go, wow the detail for such small figures is astounding. Sat down to clean up a Regiment I had decided to go with one command stand and three infantry stands on a 40mm base.
Now where the metal is poured into the mould there are very thin strands of metal attached to all the bayonet tips and on some of the figures this goes right down to the end of the musket barrel right along the bayonet.
Annoying but not the end of the world, however the metal is so brittle that as I tried to cut off the excess a whole figure snapped off the base at the ankles. I persevered but after the second figure snapped I lost patience and gave up.
I will not be going down this route till the type of metal used is changed. Kudos to Macunaima his modelling skills are clearly better than mine.

[Macunaima]

Thanks for the kind commentary!

Hmmm. Yes, the metal is brittle, but also quite strong! I have only had two casting types routinely break on me.

The first wave of the infantry command with shakos were so brittle, they'd literally crumble in your hands. O8 replaced these, but I haven't personally seen the new castings yet.

The hussars are also a bit brittle. Not so much brittle as hard to break apart:you have to use so much force, you risk snapping off the horses if you aren't careful.

But I have had no problems with the ACW infantry. If you snap off the flash with your fingers, you'll occasionally snap a bayonet, but let's be realistic: that is the case with 28mm plastic napoleonics, too.

What I do is use a nail clippers to take off the venting. This has caused few problems. Maybe one in every couple hundred infantry castings breaks. I just use a wire clippers and clip off the base there. No probs.

I think one needs to learn new techniques for cutting and handling O8's hard and brittle aluminium/zinc alloy, but I don't think these figs break more than others.

[Macunaima]

One thing I AM worried about is corrosion. Some of my figs reacted poorly to being stored in MDF drawers. I had to scrape and repaint them. That, however, is apparently a one-off thing: no one else has seent his problem and my figs housed in ppastic are fine.

[Macunaima]

Dear Jeff,

I found that the best way to paint the infantry is in lots by rank.

I glue six strips to a popsicle stick, three stick per battalion. One stick is front rank and gets lots of front detail. One is back and gets plenty of back detail. The middle rank gets hardly any detail at all: shakos, bayonets and basic uniform color.

When I am done painting, I pop them off and glue them to the base. I used to put down filler of Valejo grit around the basses to even them off, but I found that to be a waste of time. Simply flocking around the base serves to hide them pretty well.

I plan to do a tutorial soon.

[Macunaima]

Actually, Jeff, I DO remember that the ACW flag bearers could snap fairly easily, too.

I personally don't use the command stands anymore. I prefer to make my own flags, exagerated in height and width, and glue these to a bayonet. Looks better and is structurally stronger.

[Fighting15s]

Got some ACW figures today just to give it a go, wow the detail for such small figures is astounding. Sat down to clean up a Regiment I had decided to go with one command stand and three infantry stands on a 40mm base.
Now where the metal is poured into the mould there are very thin strands of metal attached to all the bayonet tips and on some of the figures this goes right down to the end of the musket barrel right along the bayonet.
Annoying but not the end of the world, however the metal is so brittle that as I tried to cut off the excess a whole figure snapped off the base at the ankles. I persevered but after the second figure snapped I lost patience and gave up.
I will not be going down this route till the type of metal used is changed. Kudos to Macunaima his modelling skills are clearly better than mine.

Jeff, I've never had a problem with the ACW infantry. The vent metal tends to snap quite cleanly above the bayonet (about a milllimetre and a half above the headline), although it may depend which way you try to bend it. Otherwise, as I state on http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk, I recommend snips and files for cleaning up this metal. Don't cut with a blade.

The figures should look like this:



Oddzial Osmy will not change its metal. It's what helps keep the extreme detail on these tiny figures.

Best wishes, Ian

[Jeff965]

Thank you Mac and thank you Ian, I may have been a little hasty yesterday and so I will give it another go using needle files and nail clippers . I will let you know how I get on, I want this to work as I'd like to do DBACW with these.

[Macunaima]

For most of the figs, it just requires a different touch, not a particularly more delicate one.

The big thing you need to remember is this: THE ALLOY DOESN'T BEND. Ever.

Don't even try it. I think its is basically the same alloy they used to make Hotwheels cars from. In others words, I think these suckers are actually die cast. Or close enough to that to be no never mind.