Dipping my toes into Napoleonics

With me being away for Christmas and New Year’s, I haven’t had much time to work on the paper boys. Today, however, I did find a moment to finish the first unit of cossacks!

With my shiny new precision scissors work progressed quickly. It is tempting to focus on cutting things out neatly, but with the amount of work I still have before me and the little time to do it, I keep reminding myself to keep it simple. You are going to notice very few details on this scale. And most of all: it is about the overall look!

I’ve been experimenting with glue for the base in an earlier entry:

• General purpose glue dried a bit too quickly and shone through the flock.
• General purpose glue for attaching the minis and wood glue for the flock around it was too much of a faff.

So this time I tried it with just wood glue.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well the paper boys stay in place on top of the wet glue. I was afraid they’d fall over, but if you bend them a bit beforehand (as suggested by Peter himself) there is no issue with that. Other than that it went exactly as expected:

1. You get a thicker layer of flock.
2. The cardboard base starts to bend a bit. Tsk!

Now, I think it’s not too bad with the bending and I’ll try to bend it back a bit once everything has dried. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get worse while I wait…

I really like the fulfillment I’m getting from working on these. The units are built very quickly (I’m just slow) and they look very pretty. I’m looking forward to the next unit of infantry!