Repairs!

Today I had another of those annoying things happen. Specifically, annoying to wargamers. I was feeling really good having just finished the third of four batches (read packs) of Russian light horse archers when I got carried away and began to prepare the final batch.

I shouldn't have done that. It spoiled a nearly perfect moment.

Why I hear you ask? Because two of four of the bows were mis-cast! One was too short (a common casting problem), another broke when I was trimming the casting support.  I'm used to filling in various voids in Roundway figures with Milliput, especially the horses, but this was different and really annoying.

Fresh from the pack the riders look like this:

As you can see there's a lot of excess lead to be removed. Usually this isn't a problem but sometimes the casting has a weakness where the lower part of the bow meets the outstretched hand. After cutting the lower portion of the bow to size there's always a bit of filing required to shape the end. This puts the section under strain and any weakness is soon exposed.

Imagine my frustration.  I didn't want to order more, or return the mis-casts, as the service from John at Naismith & Roundway is patchy at best so I decided to attempt a repair.  After all I had nothing to lose.  After some faffing about I ended up with two passable repairs:

Since taking the photo I've filed down the top section of the figure on the left so it's more pointed and much less square.

The process was fairly standard: cut the bow section at the hand, drill out the hand with a pin vice, insert brass rod, measure, remove the rod, cut and bend the rod with pliers before supergluing the rod in place. Experienced modellers will be very familiar with this process.

The bottom section was the easiest to replace.  It was much harder to site the pin drill bit for the upper section and, as a result, I had to use a bit of Milliput to hide the results of some over zealous drilling.

The repairs seem fairly sturdy but I'm not going to take any chances.  When the figures are based the repaired bows will point into the centre of the base reducing the chance of them being damaged during play.

For those interested in the figures here're the full pack details:

List of all the project posts