Husaria - Building a Polish army for the 1620s

The TAG and Foundry Hussars fitted this 1620s feel perfectly. The TAG and Foundry riders can also be mixed in the same units. Their horses however don’t mix in the same unit so well, in my view. On this basis I have decided to form my Hussars units in three ways:

• Foundry horses, with a mix of Foundry and TAG riders.
• TAG horses, with a mix of Foundry and TAG riders.
• Warlord horse and riders. (The Warlord units will be slightly anachronistic, but they are just too nice to leave out!)

With the research and planning done I got to work on the ‘filing and chipping’ of the metal figures. I also needed to carry out some minor conversion to the figures to have the wings saddled mounted, rather then mounted on the riders’ backs. Some green stuff modelling putty was used to make any repairs required to cloaks and animal skins.

I have typically glued horse and rider together at this point, after cleanup. I decided to paint the Hussars separately from their horses, and glue together after painting. I primed / undercoated the figures with Halfords (a cheap UK car and bike parts supplier) black spray primer. I then realised that I didn’t have a method to hold the horseless riders for painting. I came up with a perhaps slightly over-fiddly method. I drilled a small hole with a pin vice in the groin of each rider (ouch!). I then put some 0.5mm metal rod in to some corks I had lying around, and then PVA glued the riders on to the rods. These were a bit wobbly and unsteady. I therefore glued UK 2 pence pieces under the corks and found some magnetic sheeting strips (UK 2p are magnetic) to put on my painting tray. This works ok so far – but seems a right faff! I had to number the riders and horses so that I could remember which rider was fitted to sit on which horse (they were not interchangeable after the chipping and conversion stage).