Wednesday 27 April 2016

Soviet plastics 2

I finally bit the bullet and started to prep my Soviet plastics in between finishing off a couple of Soviet metal uniform 'testers' and waiting for the base coat on my last section of DAK figures to dry.

I usually base my 28mm figures on 2pm pieces, but this isn't going to work in this case. The reason is that the figures don't have a 'mini base' of their own that can be used to provide some adhesion. Therefore I cut the first section off their sprues and pinned the soles of their feet to the round bases that came with the plastic set. Thankfully some bright spark made these round bases the same size as a 2p piece. 

I drilled though the whole base, pinned the figure and then filed off underneath to make sure the base was smooth. This left a small gap between the shoes or knees of the figure and the base. I filled that gap with green stuff to provide extra support and then textured the rest of the base with filler.  I could then prime the figures with AP Uniform Grey spray.  This helps seal the filler and hopefully should stop any crumbling.  I took a photo of one of the figures pre filling to give an indication of the gap that I left. They should end up the same 'thickness' as if I had based them in my usual style.



I also fixed the right arm on one of the kneeling figures as I wanted to test for a half decent fit for the SMG. Ideally I would paint then glue but I may have to change this process. I am fairly sure that I will add the heads later as that will make painting the uniforms easier.

I am painting a Shtrafbat or penal unit of unfortunate 'tramplers' . They will not all be armed and won't have full kit which is the advantage of the Warlord box set as the figures do not have moulded weapons. These unarmed figures are probably going to have to be those in the most active positions. I have a few spare arms so hopefully that will give a little variety outside of the arms that came in the set itself.

There is one prone figure per sprue. I was going to convert some of these to casualty figures but I picked up some resin casualties at Salute and can save myself the trouble.

2 comments:

  1. That's an awful lot of work if you are having to pin every figure? I spoke to someone recently who has taken to basing on clear plastic bases, a look I quite like. He said that he didn't bother with pinning plastics, but would do so for metals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, this is my first real foray into plastics, it might be the last !

    On the upside you do get rather a lot of spares for conversions. I will give this a run and see how it goes.

    ReplyDelete