Why I enjoy plastic kits

 

In my round up of 2024 I mentioned my joy working with hard plastic kits, and while working my way through the box of British Riflemen for my The Very Sharpe Silver Bayonet (TVSSB) campaign I thought I’d talk through why, and my process for dealing with them.

The picture above may not look particularly interesting until you realise that none of them are actually straight off the sprue, and that’s not something you can do with metal or a resin print.  The Rifles box enables 32 figures, but only has 4 different bodies, and yet with the mix of arms and heads there’s a lot of different poses available.  Then on top of that, with a little imagination and work, you can push things beyond the sprue.

So first up the tools you’ll need.  I really suggest investing in a decent pair of side snips for removing parts from sprues.  Like these for example, but of course other brands and indeed non-branded ones are available!

Also essential are a few different shapes of mini files, like these, as even the best snips are likely to leave you with a few spurs that still need filing down.

Then there’s the glue.  Yes you can use super glue and I’m sure you’ll need that anyway, but again I would suggest if you are going to do much with hard plastic, then some appropriate glue is worth the investment.  I love this stuff, it pretty much welds two pieces of hard plastic together but is tacky swiftly (so you don’t have to hold bits together while they dry) and yet still allows a little movement (to get the positioning just right) and can even be detached completely by adding more of the same glue (which will dissolve the original bond and allow starting again if you don’t wait too long).

Finally, there are often small gaps in joins and especially if you start pushing things to use arms in ways the original designer may not have had in mind ;-) so you need some sort of gap filler.  I cam across this stuff and find it very easy to use.  The thin nozzle allows easy application along a join, and the stuff itself can be easily smoother with a index finger (not required to be purchased separately, hurrah!). I do find the nozzle needs poking through each time, so a needle  will come in handy.

With these tools to hand I think you’ll find getting from sprue to figure pretty straightforward.

I assemble onto the base I’m going to use, and prime the whole thing, then it’s on to painting. I use a white matt primer (Rust-Oleum for me) as it works well with Army Painter Speedpaints (my favourites but other people have their own of course).  I’ve read all about Zenithal and ‘Slap Chop’ and frankly I can’t be bothered!  With Speedpaint Ive seen people talking about starting with lighter colours and working through to darker ones, but I find I’m having to go back and tough up anyway so sometimes I do but often I dive into the main colour without being too careful and then tidy up with normal acrylic white (Army Painter Fanatic).

I work in batches, so I can do a single colour on a few figures, then move on to another colour, rather than trying to do one figure at a time. I don’t add everything to the model straight away if I think it will make the painting too difficult, things like backpacks, quivers, scabbards, and other slung weapons get painted separately and glued on before varnishing.  Then I black in the base before varnishing (Rust-Oleum Matt for me).  Finally I base with a light green scatter by painting on some PVA glue, throwing some on, and then tapping the figure to make the excess come off.

Final step is to add some 6mm grass tufts, tiny rocks, or little bits of twig, just for ‘interest’.   So there we go.  Now back to why I bother with all this.  Here’s the sprue for Riflemen, note three complete bodies and one set of legs which the only captain torso can go on.

My plan for TSSB is to do eight characters each in four poses, with the limited bodies above this then has lead me to having a real play with the options.

Take a look at the four variants of Pat Harper above and the variants of Captain Sharpe below.  The kneeling Sharpe is the same body as Harper, but by cutting off the torso I could make the Captain torso fit quite nicely. I also managed to cut down one of those torso parts to leave just the pelisse (jacket) behind to throw at the feet of another Sharpe pose.  Oh and that Sword, everyone knows that Sharpe has a straight bladed heavy cavalry sword, not the curved sabre on the sprue, my only change not using the sprue parts.

Now look again at the rifleman at the top of the page in the classic pose with the rifle steadied on his foot.  That is the same legs and body as Harper standing firing rifle, modified and filled to make the body shape work and both arms needed a little extra length, not to mention a cut-and-shut rifle to make it long enough to rest on his boot.

There’s more to come, including attaching bayonets, the full set will get posted to the TVSSB page.