Winter Quarters

OK I admit it, I've been letting myself get distracted, playing at Sapper and so on.

This snow bank was knee high yesterday.....

But I have managed a few minutes at my workdesk now and again.

The Blue Dragoonsand the new Hougal Light Horse each  now have a dismounted marker figure. More importantly, I now have an affordable, easily made, kluged prototype of a late 19thC artillery piece.

40mm conversions of Scruby and Zinnbrigade miniatures 

When I look about for a 40mm fieldgun for late 19thC Colonial wargames, there isn't one really. STS and Irregular have various toyish guns, none looking even remotely like a 12pdr rifled breechloader and all too expensive for my budget, esp with exchange and shipping, for something that's not what I'm looking for..

The Sash & Saber 10lb Parrott  is not right but close enough and an attractive  little model to boot but again beyond my budget at the moment and perhaps a little too serious looking for this project.

The ACW canon that Historifigs sells is a nice, simple OS 12pdr Napoleon. Its a little small, esp for figures on a base, and the wheel rims are a bit thick but it suits the figures well. Its just that its a bronze smoothbore muzzle loader and it looks it.

So, after some pondering of options,  such as whittling a new longer barrel out of wooden dowelling, and looking at pictures of various rifled breech loaders of the last quarter of the 19thC, I cut off the trunnions of a Historifigs gun then took some epoxy putty and built up the breech, incorporating the cascabel, thus lengthening the overall length of the barrel and giving the rear 1/3 that typical  swollen look due to the need to reinforce the breech.

Not great, not accurate but I think it gives the right impression and should be quite a serviceable toy hun. To lessen the height deficit vs figures on bases I added wooden blocks under the wheels and trail with "grass" to lessen the oddity of a gun floating on blocks.

A closer look.

Now to order 3 more guns, and some crew in slouchhats for various purposes.