Monday 17 June 2019

A Good couple of weeks


It has been a really good couple of weeks from my point of view.   I have been able to find good wargaming homes for Jack’s hand built ships and some of the figures and at the same time put names to faces of some fellow wargamers who I had only spoken to by email or on their Blog sites and to raise some money for Cancer Research at the same time.  I am looking forward to seeing pictures and the figures in action.  Of course like all good wargamers I passed on tasks as well as finished products painting Jacklex ships crews for the most part and I will be interested to see what, if any, different approach is made to painting these ‘Jolly Jack Tars’.  For my part I kept them as bare metal for more years than I care to think about!

I had great pleasure in meeting a fellow blogger ‘Bob The Painter’ (Douglas Miniatures.blogspot.co.uk)  last week and looking very enviously at his marvellous collection of figures and terrain.  I had always thought Bob Black and I were a bit odd as we had never settled or specialised on a particular period.   Imagine my joy at seeing all the different and beautifully painted period that Bob the Painter (too many Bob’s) has tucked away and not feeling quite so odd. 

Many thanks for a great few hours Bob in which I felt normal and cancer was a million miles away!  That is one of the joys of our hobby it can distract you from all the daily grind for a few hours and take you to far flung places of imagination.  You know we are really very lucky.

I also had the opportunity to exchange emails and eventually talk to Mark Lodge the new owner of the Jacklex range produced by our fellow gamer Jack Alexander.  Over the years Jack has produced one off figures for games he and I, or the 3 of us, have played which never made it into commercial production.  Over time Bob and I have sorted some (a very few) of Jack’s collection of hundreds of moulds lying in boxes in his garage and so I knew where to find bits that were not parts of the range that Spenser Smith used to offer or were simply deemed missing.  I believe that when Mark launches the range hopefully in September this will be the most comprehensive Jacklex 20mm range to ever have been marketed.  This is a wonderful range and I look forward to carrying more details on both this and our sister blogsite All Things Jacklex over the coming months.

4 comments:

  1. Great to hear from you again , have been wondering about 20mm Jacklex of late (Oh no not another period !) . Had huge British/Zulu armies 40 odd years ago - which I sold , all the best Tony

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    1. Hi Tony. As well as filling in with figures Jack made and some which he had moulds for which were deemed 'missing' I think there are plans to make some additional figures to fill in gaps in some of the ranges. The Boer State machine gun team I pictured on the All Things Jacklex site are being recast for example.

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  2. Great to hear you're enjoying your hobby time.

    Good news about the Jacklex range, one of my all time favourite ranges.

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  3. Hi Matt, I made a number of figure conversions for John Cunningham for the French in Mexico and I am painting some of them up. Belgium Legion. Might keep the numbers small and try a little Mexican adventure.

    The Jacklex range are great little figures. Like many figures of there period they are transformed once they are painted and put together en masse.

    Jack has made so many one off bits and pieces over the years which where for models he made for games we had. His the colonial paddle steamer has a deck mounted gun and machine gun which were just one offs and the moulds are around somewhere. Found some bits but still others to find which offers the chance to make basic boats and arm them to give colonial games a bit of a twist.

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