Merry Christmas

To all of you, no matter what your faith and traditions is, I wish you a peaceful and blessed Christmas and some days to relax. May the peace of Christ fill your hearts!

French Sappers

Yesterday Ingo sent two photos of his latest project. French Sappers (Mineurs) in siege action. Especially useful for the sieges in Spain and the campaign in Eastern Prussia 1806/07. And maybe also for the siege of Rome 1849.

 Then he sent a photo of all the stuff he sculpted in the past (mostly for me:-))

 The latest job and available now are Egyptian cavalry in the uniform of 1853 especially made for Hank.

I wish you and all your loved ones a blessed Christmas and some peaceful days.

Aspern - and a German forum

Thomas Mischak sent me a link to a German speaking figure-forum. How was I surprised when I saw that Micha from our group who helped with the Aspern-Diorama two years ago posted some photos there.

Some interesting ones, because they show nearly the whole diorama. Ah I am still proud if this:-)))

 

Colonial conversions

Years ago I found some great photos of colonial conversions on Kai's homepage. I safed them all as they gave very good tips how to convert figures. As for example the conversion with simple oil colours which I tried too. It worked very easy.

Then a lot of other Derwish conversions. Try at the end of the page "weiter" to see some more.

Finally here some Afghans which I want to try for my next project, 2nd Afghan war.

 As for Afghanistan I had a talk with Sean from Newline design and asked him to expand his range of Afghan war figures with some regulars like this one.

And if you like some inspiration for this subject, you can also watch a movie:-) The Sepoys from the Guides in this headgear/uniform are available from Spencer Smith

Some more Gettysburg photos

This time I haven't took them from my collection, but the old links and photos some friends showed on their homepage. For example take a look at some links from Kai Fuhrmann.

http://www.rofur-flags.de/gallery/gallery9.htm

and especially here from where you can go to several other links:

http://www.fuhrmann-figuren.de/bemalen-basteln/pebasInd/gbp/mai2002.htm

I hope you enjoy them.

How our diorama group came to life

You may have seen the scans from our very first German 1/72 figure magazine. In this magazines Peter Herfen searched for volunteers to create a diorama of the battle of Gettysburg. Despite having bad experience around this time with another big German project in which a lot of people have lost their figures or got them back broken etc. Peter was able to gather collectors who lent figures for the diorama.

It took several years to bring it to life and it grow from year to year. I joint the group in around 2001 and in the end we had the diorama on display. Picket's charge in 1:1 with 25.000 figures at all on a plate around 80 meters in square. This was the start of our anual project with an inner circle of freaks who are searching volunteers for each future project:-)

See here some photos from this very first joined project:

I hope to find better photos in the future as there are a lot around. These I made with a very old camera in these days.

News from Ingo

 Five minutes ago Ingo sent photos of medieval masters he made. I have to check if they are historical correct, but maybe someone is interested in them. Ingo doesn't know if he should cast them and maybe will sell the masters directly.

Scales

Well Sergeant Lesch has an intersting post on his blog

I think I have to add some 15mm figures to my collection:-))))

Nostalgic - German magazine "Figuren"

Between 1995 and 1998 some of the old enthusiasts in our hobby like Kai Fuhrmann, Peter Herfen and others tried to bring the first regular magazine for the collectors of 1/72 figures on the German market. Maybe the older between still know it?

It is just 16 years ago, but strange to belive - it was the time before the web. No homepages, no Emails, not even flatrates at the telephone. The only chance to get the news was to phone with the merchants or wait for the usual "whats-new" flyers. Then this magazine appeared. Each handcopied by Peter Herfen!

There were copies of boxes and sprues of the latest sets (well, maybe 20-30 each year to last years around 260).

What may still be interesting for the collectors today, there were such photos of the metal figures. Some like Tumbling Dice, Newline and other mostly British makers are still available. But here we have all the German manufactors who started producing figures. Sadly most of them are no more available on the market and others like Art-Miniaturen and Finescale don't have the very first figures still in stock. But it is worth looking on the market for second hand figures if one is interested in them. I have the luck, that in this days I already had enough money to buy all the news:-))

Here the first Art-Minaturen Punic wars and some Qualitycast figures. Hopefully someone will dig up the Qualiticast-moulds soon that I can get some reinforcements...

 One of the best "manufactors" in my eyes was Ulf Debbeler. All figures are converted and sculpted over plastics. We got a lot of great ACW figures, WW1 and colonials from him. I have his complete catalogue, so if someone is interested in his range, I can scan it too for the blog.

 Fine scale factory or the ACW artillery when I have it right in mind from Kai himself

 More Debbeler

 See here in the middle the Art-miniaturen Brunswick Leibbatallion and a French staff for Waterloo. Great figures!

Another subject was historical research, uniformology etc.

And what was nearly new to most of us - figure conversions! A sacrilege to destroy good plastics. But with the time we got our taste for it:-)

I hope you have enjoyed this nostalgic trip.

Ancient Warfare

One of my favourite historical magazines is ancient warfare. When I got the latest issue I was a little bit disappointed to miss the great battle paintings of Igor Dzis. Hopefully they will reapear in the next issue. But in the meantime I found his blog which helps a little bit. I hope you enjoy the paintings!

The Roman Guard-Post

My friend Stephan Berry who painted the great Elephant combat for the Pyrrhus diorama sent some photos of his latest project, a Roman Guard-Post (Police station)

To see the story of the diorama or take a look at his other projects, take a look here .

So far I can offer you some small photos as a teaser.