Preußische Piraten 2

Readers of this blog may have noticed a tendency to flit from cavalry regiment to cavalry regiment without completing anything. I think this was partly because it allowed me to put off an an important decision, which was whether or not to have a go at doing any command figure conversions!

Pictured are my first two attempts, being an officer and a trumpeter of the 2nd Leib Hussars.

The officer was very simple, requiring no more than the removal of his carbine and a slightly different colour scheme.

The trumpeter, on the other hand, was a little trickier as the trumpet is constructed entirely out of solder using a technique known as "stringing". It was the noted Hinton Hunt collector and converter, Steve C, who told me how to do this. Steve's own words tell it best, so here they are:

"I use a 30 watt ANTEX iron with a taper tip. It took me years to get it right but I find the best way is to melt a non-fluxed plumbers solder wire onto the tip and let it build onto the tip until it's almost dripping off . This I think is the critical part.

Clean the figure to be repaired by filing and leaving a bright alloy surface, then gently touch the drop of solder onto the piece to be rebuilt, then 'tease' the iron gently away as the solder stretches. As soon as you have the required length of solder, press the joint into a wet sponge to quench it and it will harden the lead alloy straight away ready for filing to shape .

If you try to be too fast the solder just pulls away, if you try to be too slow you burn the figure away".

Steve's advice also woke me up to the fact that soldering iron wattage is actually quite important. Higher powered soldering irons are probably much too hot for work of this kind!

WM