Sutton Hoo Helmet

In the Hats, hats, and more hats article, I created a Dark Ages figure (the one with a round shield) and I admit that it looked a little quirky unpainted. What I was aiming for was something like a 'Sutton Hoo' helmet, as shown in the photos below.

The images below show the results painted up. My gilded moustache and lips are a little bigger, but I think the effect is shown pretty well. Essentially one cut on a stock figure, one cut on a dowel, a little sanding and putty, and you have a Dark Ages figure.

I just need to detail the helmet a little more and finish the body and I will have one fine looking Warlord for Saga and Dux Bellorum.

Making Small, Complex Accessories

Although I love working with wood, sometimes it is very difficult making small, complex accessories due to their small size and the dangerous, potentially finger removing tools you work with. In those cases, in the past, I have almost always turn to foam sheet and scissors. But even that can be a problem if the accessory's shape is complex enough. For these tasks I turn to a product called Instant Mold and simple press mold castings. I mentioned this product back in Oct 2011.

First I created an image of the accessory I want to make (which in this) case is an assault rifle and print it out onto card stock paper. I then carefully cut it out (I have a number of scrapbooking scissors which allow you to make tiny cuts) and glue it to a wood craft stick.

Next, carefully cut out the wood part. This is when having the saw bit for your Dremel really comes in handy!

The instructions on the box for using Instant Mold are pretty easy. Heat some water to about 170º, drop the block of Instant Mold in it for about two minutes, carefully pull it out of the hot water, then work with it. In my case I laid the wooden part on a hard surface and dropped the blob on top of it, pressing firmly so that no spaces or gaps appeared. (Unfortunately, one did at the end of the gun barrel, which you can barely see in the image to the right.)

Most tutorials on using Instant Mold recommend using Lego blocks to form a box so that the mold does not flatten out too much. The thinner the mold, the more flexible it will be, and thus the more chance that the casting will be deformed.

If you muck it up, don't worry, as all you have to do is drop the blob back into the hot water and try again.

In order to set the mold material quickly I dropped the mold and part into ice water. This allowed me to quickly handle the mold without concern that I was deforming it.

Once you have a mold to your satisfaction, mix up some two-part ribbon epoxy (otherwise known as Green Stuff) and carefully press it into the mold. In this case you do want the material as thin as possible as any excess on the top will have to be sanded off, so it is not too thick.

Once the Green Stuff has hardened (about a day, depending upon the quality and age of the epoxy), simply flex the mold and pop the part out.

After that, trim the excess Green Stuff off of the part, sand the top side (that was not in the mold), and go ahead and use it.

Very easy to make and cast small, complex shapes using this method. As the mold material is reusable, there is no reason to keep molds around after you are done with them. Simply dump them in the hot water and make a different part.

As you can see above, here is one of the assault rifles painted and in the hands of an African soldier featured in the first picture of the last blog entry, for my AK-47 campaign (that I may eventually get to).

I hope you found this little tutorial instructive. I think you may see more use of Instant Mold by me in the future.

Hats, hats, and more hats

As I continue to explore more historical periods to make new figures it occurred to me that largely the defining shape of a model soldier is its' hat. With that idea in mind I decided to explore how to make different hat shapes.

I have been thinking about using the Peter Pig's AK-47 rules to run a fictitious campaign in modern (1970's) Africa. The idea is to make two different hats, one for one side and one for the other, in order to easily distinguish each side. (The base uniform color will also be a distinguishing feature.) The first side will have a field cap that looks a cross between a Marine barracks cover and an old Afrika Korps field cap. As I want the creation of it to be minimalist I have decided that the cap's peak will be painted on rather than made as a separate piece as in my Napoleonic shakos.

The cap is made by making one straight cut with a miter saw then making the second cut at 15°. By gluing the back edge of the cap as close to the back edge of the figures head, the front of the cap sticks out as a peak would.

The other side will wear a beret. This is essentially made the same as the hat above, except you use a dowel one size larger than the diameter of the figure. I also cut the piece thinner then I did the hat above.

When gluing the beret to the figure the high side is glued to the left side of the figure's head. This makes the low side stick out on the right in an exaggerated fashion. I then use my Dremel sander to shape the beret taking the hard edges off and thinning out the right side as much as possible.

It is also important to rough up the top of the beret, where the cut is made, as this is usually smooth and glossy.

Be sure to flatten out the front and back of the beret. It should be oval, not circular. The front and back of the beret should be flush with the head; only the right side should overhang.

I use the sander to curve the top of the beret, to round it out. Keep working it until it looks right.

Don't worry about it not being consistent. I work with the US Army – where the beret is standard issue now – and they all wear the just a little bit differently. Some "punch them out", some slick them down to follow the curve of their head, and some have them stick out. Then there is the angle that you wear it at. All this variation just makes it more realistic and gives the figures a certain charm.

Moving back to the Napoleonic period, I wanted to make an Austrian Grenadier's hat. Previously, when I have made Grenadier's hats, I simply used a dowel and cut it appropriately. This is good for a French Old Guard Grenadier's bearskin but less so where the shape needs to be more rounded, or barrel-shaped.

Here I took a barrel bead and cut off the top with a 15° miter saw cut. I then filled the hole with carpenter's wood filler. Later, this will receive a peak, as with a Napoleonic shako.

The first wooden soldier project I ever did, as a kid, was to create medieval knights using beads. Here I created a Crusader knight with a barrel helm. I simply cut a length of dowel and attached it to the figure, which had the majority of the head removed with a miter saw.

As the Dark Ages are becoming very popular right now I started exploring ways to represent simple round metal helmets. You could simply paint the head of the basic figure as if it had a helmet on it, but it does not look exactly right. Most helmets are slightly taller than the head itself when it is not covered. To achieve the correct effect I simply removed a portion of the head and inserted a thin slice of dowel in between the figure and the top. You can either keep the thin slice as is and paint it as a band on the helmet or you can sand the edges down in order to make it a smoother shape.

The figure shows an example where the helmet is smoothed and filled.

With the addition of a front and back peak, this is probably the best way to create a picklehaube.

I started all of this because I was looking to create a few figures for an ACW skirmish game. Of coarse the most common hat in this period is the kepi.

For this I started with the same pattern as the first hat. The difference is that I glued the high end flush to the back of the figure's head.

I then shaped the hat so that the cylinder of the kepi "falls forward", which was the style worn during the ACW. I also sanded a little "dimple" in the top of the kepi to give the crown more definition.

The images below show the sequence of creating the kepi; simply sanding with a Dremel. I make the angle sharper on the back than on the front, but as with the beret, historically the kepi was worn in all manner of form.

The last image shows the method of adding the dimple. I use a round burr bit to remove most of the material, then follow up with a much smaller sanding bit to smooth out the roughness.

Shape the Back

Shape the Front

Ensure Top is Even

Add the "Dimple"

I am now experimenting with using foam for the cap peaks. It is not that the wooden ones do not look good, but that they are so time consuming to make. (Not to mention that I tend to sand my fingertips when trying to shape very small bits.)

Add a Foam Peak

Trim and Cover with Glue

An interesting variation of the kepi is to make two parallel 15° cuts with the miter saw so that the front and back of the hat is sloped forward. This shape is very similar to a German police officer's cap in the late 19th century and is also reminiscent of a German Jager shako in the Franco-Prussian War.

The last figure is a Zouave in turban (or a Sikh, or any number of Asians that wear turbans). This requires you get a "beehive" bead and carefully cut it in half.

To make the turban look a little better, you need to cut the top of the figure's head at a 15° angle so the turban is high on the forehead and low on the back of the neck.

For Indian turbans, like Bengal lancers, you can add a foam rectangle to the back to represent the end hanging down.

Well, I hope you have found this instructive. My next project is to show how to make small accessories that are hard or tedious to duplicate in wood, such as an assault rifle (to go with my beret-wearing African troops).

See you next time!

Experimenting with Foam Tricornes

As many people know I like the American Revolutionary period. I have many units in 15 mm painted up that I use with various rules, but despite my joy in building and painting my wooden soldiers, I have not done this period in wood simply because of the tricorne hat. All of my previous attempts have not been satisfactory. This time I think I may have it.

I started by using a drafting circle template to draw a circle on a foam sheet. I figured out which circle to use by simply holding the wooden figures head inside of the circles in the template until I found one the right size for the hat and another for the hole in the center where the head would go. I then cut the larger circle out of the foam and the smaller circle out of the center of the larger circle.

The next step was to pull the foam down over the head to the neck. Note that the center hole is slightly smaller than the diameter of the head, so the hole  stretches and then snaps back.

It is important to pull down and then pull back up because you want the cupping of the hat to go upward, as in the figure below. Make sure the bottom is as even as possible, unless you are going for a cocked hat look (which is always good for variation).

Carefully use thinned white glue to keep the hat in place. Note that I used a micro brush applicator to lay down the glue and to sop up some of the excess (after this picture was taken).

Here are the micro brush applicators that I use. These were purchased from Micromark and although they are very expensive, I have had these for awhile and typically reuse them. (They also served as scrap plastic. I used one as the telescope for my French Napoleonics artillery officer.)

After the glue has set enough for the hat not to move, but before completely dry, I added two spots of Gorilla Glue Superglue to glue the sides to the head. You can start to see the three corners taking shape, which is where the tricorne name ("tri-cornered hat") comes from.

A little more superglue on the rear to bring up that flap.

Yet more superglue on the front-left and front-right to get more of a "point" on the front corner.

Here is the tricorne painted up, giving you a better idea of how it looks.

Front View

Side View

Rear View

If you are a tricorne aficionado you will probably note that it is closer in appearance to earlier tricornes (War of Spanish Succession, Great Northern War, War of Austrian Succession, etc.) and less like that in the American War of Independence. I strongly suspect that the pattern for tricornes (or bicornes, for that matter) is not a perfect circle, but an elliptical shape. I would require more study.

So, am I going to get into a new period? No, not yet. I need to get more Napoleonic troops ground out and "finish" that period. Like my work with using foam for arms, I would need to make a template for the tricorne in order to ease the process of making a large number of them. For now, it is simply an interesting experiment and something to tuck away for future use.

I will probably use this same technique to make big floppy hats for Musketeers, a skirmish period I have wanted to game in for awhile.

Not Quite a Standard Bearer

Here is another figure I have been working on for quite some time now. As I could not find a properly scaled French Napoleonic standard, I went with a porte fanion to represent my French Napoleonic standardbearer.

Front

Side

Rear

He is pretty much standard as far as the build techniques, however I decided to put the halberd through his hands allowing for a different pose. All in all a nice clean figure and paint job.

I am, however, looking for a 40 mm or 50 mm scale French Napoleonic standard. There are some to be purchased but I am trying to find a free one that can scale up. If so, I can paint a proper standardbearer and use this figure as a guard. Nothing like having a veteran armed with pistols and a halberd in Songs of Drums and Shakos.

Some French Artillerymen - Finally!

I have finally finished some French artillerymen for the cannon I built quite sometime ago. Okay, so "finished" is a relative term; I still have to make a bucket for one of the figures.

I am definitely experimenting more with craft foam, especially in making arms. The ramrod is simply a thin wooden dowel with two cylindrical beads glued on each end.

The officer's spyglass is a simple piece of plastic scrap, as is the linstock (which is really too short). But it was my first crack at it, so I will probably improve it over time.

The French artillerymen's uniform is rather nice during the Napoleonic period. This is really a novelty piece and one that will probably not get much play given that most of my Napoleonic games are at the skirmish level. Given all of the handcrafting that went into the cannon, if I had to make a large number of them I would probably go crazy (or more probably, never finish).

By the way, this was the first blog entry in which all pictures were taken with, and edited on, the iPad, along with writing the blog entry itself. Pretty handy!

Toy Making Dad

Had a blog reader contact me recently. He saw my French Napoleonic artillery and pointed me to his blog articles on how he makes toy cannons and spoked wheels. Must better stuff than mine, but he appears to be strictly a "build from scratch" type with a much better workbench than mine. Definitely worth a look though!

Articles on Cannons

Articles on Wheels