Perry Miniatures conversions - Part 4 Engineers

I thought my army should have some engineers, again I looked through all the metal ranges in the hope of finding something which took my fancy.  They are out there but they didn't seem to fit with the Perry scuplts so I decided to have a go at making my own.

I had a set of the Perry Civil War artillery set and that the numbers of gunners whilst great were too many for my needs.  This left me with a number of spare figures, so I set about trying to make some 'engineer' figures.  I didn't want too many.  Just 4 figures a side to be placed near bridges, or earth works to represent demolition or construction as needed.

I then needed to find tools. Again they are out there.  Black Cat Bases and Irregular Miniatures have them and there is also a Seige Fortification kit available from Architects of War.  I went for the former two.

The conversions were fairly simple, again using my hand twist drill which was all that I needed.  One set of arms in the artillery set is holding a powder charge. 

 Simply drill through the charge and slide in a pick or hammer.

 

Another set of hands are ramming.  Cut of part of the 'rammer' and trim down part of the shovel, drill a hole in the hand holding part of the 'rammer' and superglue the shovel into the hole.

Although these are painted as Confederates, they could as easy be union sappers.

For the Union I decided to use a couple of figures from the Perry Camp set.  This gives one figure wlaking with an axe and a figure reading a map and another putting on a jacket. 

 I added to these with a plastic artillery figure with an axe superglued into his hand.

The standard bearer is a conversion of the plastic 28mm em4 Officer from their Civil War range.

Jacklex Pirate Fleet

Here is our Pirate Fleet.  Jack Alexander completed the rigging on the ships that I made.  The hull is  made from carboard with a balsa wood base.  These are based on a plan I picked up at a Salute game in the days when it used to be held at Earls Court!

They are supposed to be for 28mm figures, although we have used them mainly for 20mm Pirate Games.  The Pirates are from Orion English Pirates and LW Pirates.

Perry Miniatures conversions - Part 1 Musicians

Our first foray is entitled ‘Converted from Perrys’.  Like many wargamers of a certain age I started with Airfix and built up largish Union and Confederate forces.  I had these figures for the better part of 30 years and in the last 20 years probably only used them once or twice and whilst I would get them out now and again to look and wanted to try the civil war again, I never got around to it.  Then out came the Perry’s ACW plastic figures.  Bob bought some first to do the confederates and they looked interesting so Jack and I thought we would give them a go and starting painting the Union troops.  These figures are superb and better still brought me back to converting figures to produce troops that weren’t available and to be honest I probably was something of a plastics snob and wanted to do as much without buying metal.  Some might also call it being cheap.

Let me say I am not a modeller and what I have done is easily within the range of the novice.  I do not pretend that these are the greatest conversions in the world and I am sure others have done better.  But here are a few tips and ideas.  Firstly, the tools you will need. A hand twist drill; a tube of green stuff or similar or melted plastic sprue; a scalpel and plenty of spare blades.

The bases for a number of these conversions are the 2 infantry figures loading muskets.  These are the figures that I like the least. 

They can be used to make dismounted cavalrymen, artillerists, musicians and standard bearers and a whole lot more. 

  

These figures I use as sailors.

You can use arms from the cavalry set to make a simple dismounted bugler for your infantry regt, just stick it onto the figure in place of the standard or musket

More on dismounted cavalry in part 2

Jacklex ACW Fleet

I asked Jack to make me some ACW ships.  He made the models from some drawings in Bill Atteridge's book North and South Naval Images.

They were scratch built using cardboard, foamboard and balsa wood.

This is the entire fleet

CSS General Beauregard

CSS Calhoun

USS Commodore Perry

CSS Little Rebel

USS Queen of the West

CSS St. Philip

USS Rattler

CSS Little Rebel

These 15mm figures gives an ideal of the scale of the ships.  

ACW Train

I saw this train in the window of a sweet shop in Ealing a few years ago, and decided to buy it as we were just getting into 28mm ACW following the release of the Perry range.  It is a die cast model and was screwed to a length of plastic track.  I paid £9 if my memory serves me right.  I gave it a bit of a paint job to cover up some of the 'gold' and 'bronze' plastic, but it had no tender.

Jack Alexander thought he could solve this and set about building this tender from scratch, including modifying the wheels from a couple of OO gauge railway trucks we picked up cheap at a show

  

The effect is excellent and 'yes' he cut all the bits of 'wood'.

  

It works really well with our Perry figures and was a very cheap solution to being able to have ACW games with a railroad.

Perry Miniatures conversions - Part 3 Generals and Standard Bearers

I wanted to have at least a couple of figures without hats or waving a hat in some way.  Not putting a kepi or hat on the existing figure looked odd.  Bob experimented with using some melted plastic and I took it on from there.  

I cut small bits off a sprue and stuck it on the head of the figure with liquid glue.  Put plenty on so that the plastic begins to become soft - small slithers of plastic woirk better that big bits - and build it up with more small slithers.

 As the plastic becomes soft and you have built it up, simply poke it with the point of a scalpel to give the appearance of hair. 

Once painted up the effect is quite good.

I also found that I didn't have enough standard bearers.  Again taking my least favourite poses I found I could make more with simple conversions  Cut away a musket and use of a hand micro drill which you can by on eBay together with 1mm drills and a piece of brass rod (model shop) or florist wire (from a florist shop) you can create a variety of different standard bearers.

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