Obee
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2009
- Messages
- 5,952
In May this year, fellow Aussie collector Howard Woods, contacted Any Nielson in HK with a query about his Ceremonial Range of figures, and in particular Skinners Horse mounted horsemen.
He wanted to include a troop of mounted figures onto his ‘parade ground’ but realised that they had textured base because they came from the Sons of Empire range and didn’t have the flat grey bases of others in the Ceremonial range so they wouldn’t match the standing figures.
Andy replied that they won’t the change bases on those figures, but there could be some spare bases in the factory which could be used if someone could do that task. That is when I was contacted by Howard and asked if I was able to assist.
Seeing that I have done many repairs of K&C figures for local and interstate collectors I felt that I had the knowledge of the construction of the figures and guessed that the horse’s legs would be pinned into the bases and not cast together, like most standing figures. I told Howard that I couldn’t guarantee that it could be done, but because I ‘like a challenge, I’d ‘give it a go’ on one figure and see where we go from there!
A couple weeks later Howard got the good news that they had found some bases and would send them over to Australia with Howard’s order for thirteen mounted figures, (one British Officer, one Subhadra, one Trumpeter, one Flagbearer and nine Lancers).
In early August a BIG box arrived from The Toy Soldier Experience, the Adelaide dealer, containing the 13 mounted troopers and the bases, so now it was time to experiment with a technique to perform this conversion.
I decided to try one, so chose a lancer, and firstly inspected the base, but couldn’t see any evidence of a join or pin so I needed to remove the paintwork and get down to the raw metal. This was achieved using some dobs of paint stripper which removed the black paint and some filler to expose the base where I could see the holes and the pins on the hooves that joined into the base.
I wanted to keep the pins intact therefore drilling them out wasn’t a possibility so I used wire cutters to ‘nibble’ away the base which then exposed the untouched pin.
More .............
He wanted to include a troop of mounted figures onto his ‘parade ground’ but realised that they had textured base because they came from the Sons of Empire range and didn’t have the flat grey bases of others in the Ceremonial range so they wouldn’t match the standing figures.
Andy replied that they won’t the change bases on those figures, but there could be some spare bases in the factory which could be used if someone could do that task. That is when I was contacted by Howard and asked if I was able to assist.
Seeing that I have done many repairs of K&C figures for local and interstate collectors I felt that I had the knowledge of the construction of the figures and guessed that the horse’s legs would be pinned into the bases and not cast together, like most standing figures. I told Howard that I couldn’t guarantee that it could be done, but because I ‘like a challenge, I’d ‘give it a go’ on one figure and see where we go from there!
A couple weeks later Howard got the good news that they had found some bases and would send them over to Australia with Howard’s order for thirteen mounted figures, (one British Officer, one Subhadra, one Trumpeter, one Flagbearer and nine Lancers).
In early August a BIG box arrived from The Toy Soldier Experience, the Adelaide dealer, containing the 13 mounted troopers and the bases, so now it was time to experiment with a technique to perform this conversion.
I decided to try one, so chose a lancer, and firstly inspected the base, but couldn’t see any evidence of a join or pin so I needed to remove the paintwork and get down to the raw metal. This was achieved using some dobs of paint stripper which removed the black paint and some filler to expose the base where I could see the holes and the pins on the hooves that joined into the base.
I wanted to keep the pins intact therefore drilling them out wasn’t a possibility so I used wire cutters to ‘nibble’ away the base which then exposed the untouched pin.
More .............
