A Couple of Questions. . .

Two questions were asked here in the last few days, so let’s address each in turn.

First, the Future floor finish (Klear (sp?) in the U.K. I believe) that I use to finish the figures I paint dries very quickly once it has been applied. I’d say 20-30 minutes before you can touch the figure without sticking to it and leaving a finger print. An open window or other air circulation will obviously help speed things up. It just so happens that I had a 20” box fan moving air around here in Zum Stollenkeller when I did this the other day. A nice side effect of the Future is that it smells nice and, since it is acrylic-based, there are no noxious vapors killing millions of brain cells each time I use it!

Next, I use one of the readily available free hits counters that are available all over the net, which, for the Grand Duchy of Stollen, is placed all the way at the bottom of this blog. This is due primarily to my own ineptitude with technology in general and HTML code more specifically. But I got everything to work in the end and now have a counter that functions properly again. The first one I had was hacked into repeatedly and stopped working, so it seemed like the time was high for switching counters. By the way, the counter I use is from the following site: http://www.website-hit-counters.com/.

Meanwhile, here in Stollen Central, I applied a black undercoat to the next two RSM mounted officer figures last night. These are slated to become another general and ADC combo for the Grand Duchy of Stollen. I’ve decided that the general, a one Pavel Petrovich von Butinski (Russian mother, German-Polish father), will resemble the famous Graf von Grunt, featured in the Battlegames article on the Mollwitz refight a year or so ago. In other words, he'll wear a yellow coat, red facings, and silver lace – as near as I can determine at any rate. Painting will commence in earnest tonight, following our usual Tuesday bicycle ride and dinner.

I also organized, trimmed heads from bodies, placed an order for special soft plastic cement, and prepared the way to continue work on my cuirassier conversions. You can get an idea of this from the photo above, which shows the regiment’s horses all lined up by squadron, each of which will have horses and men in a different position. In a few instances, though, I had to fudge things a bit. Such are the hazards of working with 1/72 plastic figure sets.

Finally, Friday will see me purchase the MDF board and grassy green paint for the planned wargaming table surface here in Zum Stollenkeller. Since the Grand Duchess will be away next weekend, I'll have plenty of time to apply two coats and maybe, just maybe, stage a small solo game. We'll see. Charge!